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Before diving into the substance of his piece, Hani Al-Masri establishes a foundational premise that colors everything that follows: what is currently unfolding, he insists, is not merely another confrontation in a long series of regional clashes. Rather, it is a full-scale war waged by the United States and Israel against Iran , and its true objectives stretch far beyond the destruction of Iran's nuclear program, its ballistic missiles, or even the severing of Tehran's support for its regional allies.
Al-Masri points out that if the nuclear file were genuinely the end goal, a solution was already within reach. Negotiations in their latest rounds had produced a draft agreement on precisely that issue, a fact confirmed, he notes, by the Omani Foreign Minister serving as mediator. This leads him to conclude that "the real objective is to end Iran's challenge to American-Israeli hegemony and to halt China's advance," given Iran's centrality to the Belt and Road Initiative, the fact that China imports roughly 13% of its oil from Iran, and that approximately 40% of China's total oil imports pass through the Strait of Hormuz. The broader goal, in his reading, is to abort the birth of a new multipolar international system , even if that means accelerating the collapse of the old international order built on international law, sovereignty, and the governing rules of international legitimacy. That order, despite being a post-World War II construct in which Washington and its allies held the upper hand, nonetheless permitted China's rise and its emergence as a genuine rival to American global leadership.
The transition being sought, Al-Masri argues, following this logic, is toward a "new old world" , one governed by the law of the jungle and the imposition of will through brute force. This is why, he writes, we have seen what happened in Venezuela, the threats directed at Cuba, Greenland, and several other countries. From this vantage point, "what is happening in the aggression against Iran represents a decisive test for the future of the entire international order." If Iran holds and survives, the multipolar order advances. If Iran collapses or is swiftly defeated, the door swings wide open for the same model to be replicated against other countries across the Middle East and beyond , paving the way not merely for a new Middle East, but for a new old world dominated by the United States with its allies, chief among them Israel, at the helm.
A scenario of the conflict transforming into a civil and political rights struggle within a single space is on the table if Palestinians do not organize themselves in a unified manner to confront the colonial settler apartheid project on the basis of a shared vision and common program.
It is only within this context, Al-Masri writes, that one can understand why the war became a regional conflict from its very first days , and why it could yet transform into a third world war. He cites findings from seven prominent futures research centers, as reported by futurology professor Walid Abd Al-Hay, which estimate the probability of this conflict escalating into a global war at between 26.7% and 40.5%.
He then turns to what he frames as one of the most consequential questions of his piece: is what is happening an Israeli victory, or the beginning of a fall? And what are the repercussions of the aggression against Iran on the Palestinian cause? These, he writes, are among the core issues that ought to command the full attention of Palestinians , as a people, a leadership, factions, elites, and institutions. But no convincing answer to either question, he insists, can be offered without first mapping out the scenarios through which the war may end. There is a fundamental difference, he argues, between the aggressing party achieving victory and the other being defeated , whether that defeat comes as a crushing knockout blow or a narrow points loss , and a war ending without a clear winner or loser, or even one in which all parties emerge as losers. The difference is essential between the aggression succeeding in toppling the Iranian government and installing another willing to submit to American-Israeli hegemony , accepting conditions on the nuclear program, armament, particularly ballistic missiles, and the cessation of support for allies , and the aggression instead producing the fragmentation of the Iranian state, plunging it into internal chaos, opening the door to domestic conflicts, and perhaps even widening the war regionally, further raising the probability of its transformation into a world war.
On the other hand, Al-Masri writes, the war may take the form of a prolonged war of attrition , a scenario he considers very much on the table, particularly if no agreement is reached at the US-China summit at the end of March. And:
"A war of attrition drowns the United States in the Iranian swamp" , something that may well happen unless Washington resorts to the nuclear option, which he considers off the table.
Washington may also resort to a limited ground war confined to selective operations against varied targets or aimed at controlling strategic areas and positions. Congress may also succeed in reining in President Donald Trump and pushing him toward negotiation and a deal, with or without a relative shift in Iranian policy. This is a scenario that may serve Iran's interests, Al-Masri notes, particularly given that most Americans oppose the war , even within some circles of the Republican Party and the "America First" current , in addition to the staggering costs involved, with daily war expenditures estimated at around $900 million, not counting the broader economic losses at the regional and global level.
Should the Iranian government fail to fall , once the difficulty of changing it becomes clear , this may mean the war ends with a modification in its policies and a deal on the nuclear program ensuring Iran does not acquire the bomb, something Trump himself has hinted at, though Al-Masri pointedly observes that he "changed his positions 13 times in the first week alone." Netanyahu's government, by contrast, openly prefers the complete collapse of the regime, even if it leads to Iran's fragmentation and descent into internal conflicts. Meanwhile, the scenario of a prolonged war of attrition may ultimately push Iran toward actually acquiring nuclear weapons. Historical experience, Al-Masri reminds us, shows that the Iranian system has demonstrated a remarkable capacity for endurance despite the wars, sanctions, and pressures it has faced since the Islamic Revolution , and that foreign aggression typically strengthens popular solidarity around it while weakening an opposition that has no desire to reach power on the back of an American or Israeli tank.
In this context, Al-Masri references former Israeli National Security Council head Tzachi Hanegbi, who wrote in Yedioth Ahronoth that the fate of Gaza will be decided in Tehran: if the latter survives, Hamas survives; if it falls, Hamas falls. He also recalls US Senator Lindsey Graham, who stated that defeating Iran would cement American-Israeli dominance over the region and define its contours for years to come.
Al-Masri then raises a broader regional question: are we witnessing the emergence of a new Arab and regional security order following the collapse of the bet on foreign protection? Regardless of one's position on Iran's policies, its political model, or its mistakes in the Arab world, he writes, it remains a neighbor to the Arabs and an influential regional state with which understanding is possible. Its fate will leave a profound imprint on the region's issues , especially if it is defeated , foremost among them the Palestinian cause, because the Iranian government constitutes one of the barriers to the completion of Israeli hegemony over the region under the American umbrella. The United States, he argues, seeks to assign Israel a central role in managing regional affairs, freeing itself to focus on confronting China's rising influence, which threatens to displace Washington from its position at the helm of the unipolar international order and opens the door to a multipolar world.
A Washington and Tel Aviv victory in this war, Al-Masri writes, would enhance the prospects of implementing the maximum version of the plan to liquidate the Palestinian cause , through expanded annexation, Judaization, internal and external displacement , all to preserve a large Jewish majority in the occupation state, and to reduce the Palestinian cause to a purely humanitarian issue concerning a population rather than a people's right to self-determination, bypassing refugee rights, completing the Judaization of Jerusalem, and altering the status of the holy sites, particularly Al-Aqsa Mosque. Such a victory would also give a powerful boost to normalization projects with the remaining Arab and Islamic states, untethered from the Palestinian cause , and may even be accompanied by the imposition of a liquidationist, capitulatory solution upon it.
Nevertheless, Al-Masri maintains that a decisive victory remains a weak scenario. There is the possibility of a points-based outcome , a result of loser versus loser , though the biggest loser would be the United States and Israel if the war ends with the Iranian government intact, whether or not a nuclear deal is reached. Moreover, any decisive or relative victory in this war would not spell the end of a conflict stretching back more than a century, but would merely represent a new round in its ongoing cycle. And the victory scenario is far from the only one on the table.
In the immediate term, Al-Masri observes, the war has already marginalized the Palestinian cause and diverted attention from what is unfolding in Gaza, the West Bank, and inside the Green Line , as Israeli measures and aggressions have intensified, including the closure of Al-Aqsa Mosque during Ramadan and the shutting of the Rafah Crossing, "without any notable Arab or international attention."
Over the medium and long term, Al-Masri identifies several scenarios for the war's conclusion as it pertains to the Palestinian cause. There is the scenario of resolving the conflict through the liquidation of the Palestinian cause via displacement, annexation, and apartheid , achievable only in the event of a decisive victory by the aggression and a reshaping of the governing coalition in Israel, which he considers an unlikely scenario. Then there is the scenario of a return to conflict management , reverting to the pre-October 7th status quo , a scenario he considers a strong candidate if the war ends in a no-winner-no-loser outcome or a points victory, and if the current governing coalition fails in the next Israeli elections.
As for the scenario of the Palestinian cause returning to center stage, this requires, in his words, a Palestinian, Arab, regional, and international carrier. It may occur amid shifts in American policy, the emergence of Arab and regional frameworks that come to perceive Israel and foreign protection as sources of threat and instability, and the formation of global alliances among powers and states that refuse to bow to the logic of force and absolute hegemony. Harmed and targeted states and forces, he argues, have no choice but to build precisely such alliances , and under these conditions, the possibility of reaching a settlement that includes rolling back the occupation and establishing a sovereign Palestinian state becomes conceivable once more.
Finally, there is the scenario of the conflict transforming into a civil and political rights struggle within a single space , a scenario Al-Masri puts squarely on the table if Palestinians fail to organize themselves in a unified manner to confront the colonial settler apartheid project on the basis of a shared vision and common program, and if Iran and the region's states find themselves consumed by reconstruction and internal affairs.
In all cases, Al-Masri concludes, the impact of these scenarios on the Palestinian cause will be determined primarily , and to a very large degree , by the extent to which Palestinians, as a people, a leadership, an intellectual class, and as institutions, are capable of changing their prevailing political approaches and meeting the requirements of a confrontation capable of defending Palestinian rights and interests. In his closing words: "the ball is in the court of the people and the citizen, because the leadership, the factions, and most of the elites are in another world entirely."