Sarra Grira & Philippe Agret
ORIENT XXI / January 8, 2026
During the Doha Forum (December 6–8, 2025), Orient XXI spoke with political scientist Trita Parsi, an expert on Iranian-US relations. Against a backdrop of growing tensions between the United States and Israel on the one hand, and Iran on the other, he sees reconciliation between Tehran and Washington as a way out for the Iranian regime.
Orient XXI: In an article published in August 2025 in Orient XXI, you predicted that Israel would launch a new war against Iran before the end of the year. That deadline has passed. Do you think an Israeli attack is still inevitable ?
Trita Parsi: Yes. I think the fundamentals have not changed. There are other factors that have come into play. The Gaza deal, for instance, that has changed political calculations, the environment. Israel overreached, got strong pushback from the US. A lot of anger that already had existed in the White House against Netanyahu in particular really came to the fore.
The America first component of MAGA (Make America Great Again) had aggressively turned against Israel over the course of many months and years, but particularly over the summer. Trump recognized that Israel is really becoming a political burden which is a key factor as to why he went for the ceasefire and was willing to push Netanyahu as aggressively as he did.
Why haven’t there been any Israeli bombings against Iran yet ?
As I explained in the article, Israelis need to subjugate Iran to establish that hegemony in which they cannot be challenged by any country. This is their game. That has not changed in this light. Because in fact, if this new current situation becomes the new normal, this is very bad for Netanyahu’s legacy from his standpoint. Because there is right now a balance of terror between Iran and Israel. There is an effective deterrence. Israel did not agree to a ceasefire in Gaza for more than two years. And whenever it did, it immediately broke it. It did not agree to a ceasefire in Lebanon for quite some time. And when it did, it immediately broke it. And it continues to break it.
It agreed to a ceasefire with Iran after 12 days. And it has not broken it. There’s a reason for this. It’s because the deterrence actually is there. It doesn’t mean that Iran won the war. It doesn’t mean that Iran has an advantage. But it means that this is very costly for Israel. But it is precisely because of that deterrence that Netanyahu is likely going to attack again. He cannot allow his legacy to be that Iran and Israel ended up in a situation in which despite Israel’s attack, mutual deterrence is the outcome.
And it has now been proven that if he were to leave office now, this would be his legacy. Failure in Gaza and Iran deterring Israel. This would be his legacy. I don’t think he will accept that. And that is beyond the fact that if he’s about to leave office or to go to jail, he would probably start a war to avoid that, which is exactly what he already has done.
According to its own military doctrine, Israel must dominate in order to survive.
But starting a war with Gaza is not enough. Starting a war with Lebanon, according to many Israelis, is not going to be big enough for him to escape jail. When it comes to the timing, my original view was that this would likely happen before end of December. But there’s a likelihood that it will go further.
It has many different factors. Military readiness. The Israelis are working very hard to figure out how they can improve their air defense system so that the Iranians cannot take advantage of the gaps. They’re probably thinking of how they can surprise the Iranians again. Surprise was a critical element in their first attack. It’s more difficult now. Much more difficult now. So a lot of those factors, it’s very difficult from the outside to know exactly what the time frame is.
So what we can know, however, is the political time frame. And the political time frame is the elections in the U.S. is just going to make this much more complicated. Starting a war with Iran in the midst of the midterm elections at a moment when the Israelis are already so unpopular in the American base. The political window probably is most open up until end of January on the American side. So all of these different things come together, makes it very difficult to predict exactly when it will happen. But I have not seen any serious analysts tell me that no, it will not happen, that the Israelis are not going to attack again. They did not finish the job. Leaving the job half-finished is worse than not having started in the first place.
Israel wants to be the regional hegemon. Can other players compete with it, such as Turkey, Saudi Arabia, or Iran ?
By definition, there cannot be more hegemon. From the Israeli standpoint, there is no choice but to focus on a national security strategy that aims for hegemony, because they must dominate in order to survive. In the eyes of the Israelis, October 7, 2023, happened not because they continued the occupation, not because they repressed the Palestinians, but because everyone always intended to destroy them. That then leaves you with a national security strategy that is hegemony because you essentially have to dominate to survive. And instead, the West tends to view Israel as just a democracy that wants to live in peace. It’s complete bullshit. In order for it to survive according to its own military doctrine, it has to dominate. Which means it cannot tolerate that Iran can deter Israel. And this is not changing. In fact, it’s intensifying.
The Israelis are now seeing that they can do things and get away with it in a manner that they couldn’t do before. They have capabilities but also they have political permissibility in the way that they didn’t have before. So they’re going even more full in that direction.
What is the reaction of the States in the region ?
From the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) point of view, Iran is no longer the main threat in the region and the only real threat in the region is Israel. The Qataris say it openly: Israel is now striving for hegemony. As one official from the countries explained it, he said, we’re worried about Iran, we have problems with Iran but we have found a way to manage Iran. We have no way of managing the threat from Israel. How do you manage that when you are entirely built on American weapon systems and the Americans decide when you can use them or not? And the Israelis apparently know one way or another to get around the American systems. So we have no way of managing that.
”The Iranian regime has shown far greater resilience than the Israelis and Americans imagined.”
But we have found a way of managing with Iran because they’re not looking for the same domination. They have their competition, they have their problems etc. But Iran doesn’t have a security doctrine that is even closer than the Israelis. They have a security doctrine in which they needed the forward defense, which they had presence in other countries through groups.
But this strategy reached its limits with the defeating of the Lebanese Hezbollah…
There is a view that says Iran’s forward defense was a failure. But there’s also a view that says, well, it worked until it didn’t. Because in 2006, the Israelis would have attacked Iran had Hezbollah not stopped… And the reason why it came now is precisely because Hezbollah had been weakened, and because the others had been weakened. So it worked until it didn’t work.
But with the Israelis, unless you have a fundamental mentality shift in terms of how they define their security, you’re not going to have an exit. And everything that has happened in the last two and a half, three years now is not going in the direction. In fact, it has reinforced.
Again, in their view, 7 October happened precisely because they were right. Not because they continued the occupation, not because they suppressed the Palestinians, but because everyone is always having the intent to destroy them. So as long as that is the case, and it’s been reinforced, I don’t see any pathway for a real fix here. And this was an issue that was always there. I wrote about it in my book 20 years ago, but it wasn’t in front of the face of the GCC. Now it is, at least with some of them.
What about the internal situation within Iran ?
The regime showed that they had far greater resilience than the Israelis thought, the Americans thought, and I think, the regime thought. They are certainly surprised by the extent of nationalism that came around in the country as a result. Because this is not a popular regime at the end of the day, and for good reason. There’s reasons for it. One, I mean, this was taking place in the middle of negotiations.
At a moment when the Iranian people saw that the Iranian government was more flexible than ever before to make peace with the U.S. That’s when the Israelis hit, in the midst of those talks, right before there perhaps was a solution. And of course the manner that they struck. They were killing a very large number of civilians. Not as indiscriminatory as they did in Gaza, but still very indiscriminate in the sense that no concern that they were killing the families and the neighbours of civilian scientists. They were not military people. I think it’s quite clear the program was a civilian program.
So the gap between the society and the regime shrunk a bit as a result of this. But it’s already been wiped out. Because the mismanagement, the water crisis, all of these things come back. And we see the repression against left-wing intellectuals. But at the same time we feel that there is an opening, like with the veil, the concerts in the streets, the big cities.
That said, the Israelis did not succeed in bringing down the regime.
The Israelis never looked for a regime change. Regime change means you take out the regime and you replace it with another one. And that way you do need to do something to make sure that too much anger is not against you, etc., etc. You also need to make sure that you have some sort of a relatively competent government taking over, but that you can still control. It requires foot soldiers, which the Israelis could not put in Iran. That’s not what they’re looking for. They’re looking for state collapse. If you’re looking for state collapse, you actually don’t care what the Iranian people think of you. Israel want the dismemberment of Iran or want Iran to turn into a civil war in which Iran’s power is consumed internally, which is the worst outcome for the Iranian people, of course.
“The only thing that no one else can offer is reconciliation between the United States and Iran.”
So clearly Israelis don’t give a rat’s ass about the Iranian people, but they have to pretend as part of their propaganda that they do. So the fact that this war ended up bringing the regime and the population closer together is only a problem for the Israelis from the standpoint that they were hoping that the strikes would cause protests and that the protests would bring down the regime.
Where do you put the US in the frame ?
First of all, starting off by saying the Trump administration believes that it already has resolved the issue. So Trump is not really interested in a nuclear negotiation. Why would he negotiate something he’s already fixed ? Right now it would be essentially to accept capitulation, unless the Iranians change something. The Iranians are trying to figure out new nuclear configurations that may be acceptable, and I think it’s a mistake. I don’t think this is what the Trump administration is interested in.
Can Iranians offer access to the Iranian market, a $1 trillion economy ?
True, to some extent, but Qatar can offer a lot. Saudi can offer a lot. The one thing no one else can offer is reconciliation between the US and Iran. It’s the only country that can offer that. And if there’s anything that Trump is looking for, it’s something big. It should be something that is really valuable to Trump, something that says, I am the one who fixed this. Barack Obama didn’t do it. Biden didn’t do it. “I’m the one who managed to raise an American flag in Iran,” whether it was an embassy or something else.
Something that would get him the Nobel Peace Prize.
He wants the Nobel Prize, exactly. And He won’t get it with a nuclear deal. That is a deal that brings about an end to the US-Iran enmity. For the last 20 or 30 years, when the Iranians have tried to resolve tensions with the US, they’ve tried to resolve tensions without reconciling. Reduced tensions, but no friendship, no normalization, none of that. And I think they’ve reached the end of the road. They cannot have reduction of tensions without reconciliation. And they have to make a decision.
But I fear that if they’re not willing to reconcile, their other ideas of waiting out Trump, etc., is not going to work. Something will happen within the next three years. I don’t think they can just kick the can down the road. And also, what is the basis to believe that in three years there’s a different president that will behave differently on this issue ?
”President Trump compelled Netanyahu to read an apology in the Oval Office in the presence of a Qatari official.”
In fact, if it goes back to a normal president, that will be a president that may not attack Iran, but will sanction Iran, maximum pressure, and will have no desire for a deal at all. At least with Trump, he wants a deal. Whatever Iran gains, Trump loses (and vice versa). We have to get out of here.
But what about Netanyahu? He will protest to his friends in the United States…
If there is one president that might do it, regardless of whether Netanyahu cries, it’s Trump. This would be a completely unthinkable thing under Biden, precisely because Netanyahu would cry. And to Biden, that was more important than anything else. But not to Trump.
After the Israelis struck Qatar, Trump forced Netanyahu to read from an apology in the Oval Office with a Qatari official sitting in the room. And then later on, when the Israelis denied that they had done it, they released a picture of Netanyahu reading the apology with the Qatari official in the room.
So again, while a lot of things are very problematic right now, and in many ways worse than they were under Biden, there are also opportunities now that did not exist under Biden. Because this guy is willing to say no to Trump. He’s not to Netanyahu. He’s not blindly following Netanyahu. Sometimes he’s doing it more than Biden did, but sometimes he goes in the opposite direction. For better and for the worse.
“Iranians no longer need Palestine to mobilize their own population against Israel.”
If I was in Iran’s position right now, I would think the fact that the nuclear issue is resolved in Trump’s mind is a good thing. Let’s actually fix the relationship and make the nuclear deal a component rather than the center of it. Because that has become such an impossible issue to center a deal on. This is actually a blessing rather than something negative. But of course, there’s a human psychology in this that is very difficult to overcome. They just had a war. They got attacked. The Israelis killed 17 or whatever it was of Iran’s top military officials who were very close to Khamenei, who he fought in the war against Iraq alongside (1980-1988).
So there’s a human psychology here that obviously we cannot just completely dismiss. But if you just look at it from the structural position, situation, this is a better opportunity the Iranians have had in a long time in my view.
One last question. How does the regime deal today with the Palestinian question ?
Palestine is always important rhetorically, but now in some ways they don’t need Palestine to motivate their own population against Israel. Israel has done that for them. So Palestine may still, of course, be an element as a way, as a card against Israel, but not one in which they sell to the population that their enmity with Israel is because of Palestine. No, it’s because Israel attacked.
I think there’s elements in Iran that definitely want to find a way to make sure that their own destiny is not tied to Palestine. It’s one thing to support the Palestinians. It’s a different thing to feel that you’re handcuffed to the Palestinian cause. The Iranians handcuffed themselves to it and then they’ve lost the key. I think they want to avoid a scenario in which just because there was a war between Hamas and Israel, Iran got dragged into it.
Sarr Grira – journalist, doctor in French literature; chief editor of Orient XXI
Philippe Agret – ancien journaliste de l’Agence France-Presse (AFP)
