The US-Israel Hybrid War Against Iran
Understanding the hybrid war tactics helps to explain why Trump’s rhetoric oscillates so abruptly between threats of war and phony offers of peace.
The question is not if the US and Israel will attack Iran, but when. In the nuclear age, the US refrains from all-out war, since it can easily lead to nuclear escalation. Instead, the US and Israel are waging war against Iran through a combination of crushing economic sanctions, targeted military strikes, cyberwarfare, stoking unrest, and unrelenting misinformation campaigns. This combination strategy is called “hybrid warfare.”
Both the American and Israeli deep states are addicted to hybrid warfare. Acting together, the CIA, Mossad, allied military contractors and security agencies have fomented chaos across Africa and the Middle East, in a swath of hybrid wars including Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran, and Yemen.
The shocking fact is that for more than a quarter century, the US and Israeli militaries and intelligence agencies have laid waste to a region of hundreds of millions of people, blocked economic development, created terror and mass refugee movements, and have nothing to show for it beyond the chaos itself. There is no security, no peace, no stable pro-US or pro-Israel alliance, only suffering. In the process, the US is also going out of its way to undermine the UN Charter, which the US itself had brought to life in the aftermath of World War II. The UN Charter makes clear that hybrid war violates the very basis of international law, which calls on countries to refrain from the use of force against other countries.
There is one beneficiary of hybrid war, and that is the military-industrial-digital complex of the US and Israel, with firms like Palantir and others profiting from their AI-supported assassination algorithms. President Dwight Eisenhower warned us in his 1961 farewell address of the profound danger of the military-industrial complex to our society. His warning has come to pass even more than he imagined, as it is now powered by AI, mass propaganda, and a reckless US foreign policy.
We are witnessing two simultaneous hybrid wars in recent weeks, in Venezuela and Iran. Both are long-term CIA projects that have recently escalated. Both will lead to further chaos.
There is one beneficiary of hybrid war, and that is the military-industrial-digital complex of the US and Israel...
The United States has long had two goals vis-à-vis Venezuela: to gain control over Venezuela’s vast oil reserves in the Orinoco Belt, and to overthrow Venezuela’s leftist government, in power since 1999. America’s hybrid war against Venezuela dates to 2002, when the CIA helped to support a coup attempt against President Hugo Chávez. When that failed, the US ramped up other hybrid measures, including economic sanctions, the confiscation of Venezuela’s dollar reserves, and measures to cripple Venezuela’s oil production, which in fact has collapsed. Yet despite the chaos sown by the US, the hybrid war did not bring down the government.
Trump has now escalated to bombing Caracas, kidnapping President Nicolas Maduro, stealing Venezuelan oil shipments, and imposing an ongoing naval blockade, which of course is a continuing act of war. It also seems likely that Trump is thereby enriching powerful pro-Zionist campaign funders who have their eyes on seizing Venezuelan oil assets. Zionist interests also have their eye on toppling the Venezuelan government, since it has long supported the Palestinian cause and maintained close relations with Iran. Netanyahu has cheered on America’s attack on Venezuela, calling it the “perfect operation.”
The United States and Israel are simultaneously escalating their ongoing hybrid war against Iran. We can expect ongoing US and Israeli subversion, air strikes, and targeted assassinations. The difference with Venezuela is that the hybrid war on Iran can easily escalate into a devastating regional war, even a global war. In fact, even US allies in the region, especially Gulf countries, have been engaged in intensive diplomatic efforts to persuade Trump to back down and avoid military action.
The war on Iran has a history even longer than the war on Venezuela. The US started to make deep trouble for Iran back in 1953, when democratically elected Prime Minister Mossadegh nationalized Iran’s oil in defiance of then-called Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (today’s BP). The CIA and MI6 orchestrated Operation Ajax to depose Mossadegh through a mix of propaganda, street violence, and political interference. The CIA installed the Shah and backed him until 1979.
During the Shah’s rule, the CIA helped to create notorious secret police, SAVAK, that crushed dissent through surveillance, censorship, imprisonment, and torture. Eventually, this repression led to a revolution that swept Ayatollah Khomeini to power. Amid the revolution, students seized US hostages in Teheran when the US admitted the Shah for medical treatment, leading to fear that the US would try to reinstall him in power. The hostage crisis further poisoned the relations of the US and Iran. From 1981 onward, the US has plotted to torment Iran, and if possible, to overthrow the government. Among the countless hybrid actions the US has undertaken, the US funded Iraq in the 1980s to wage war on Iran, leading to hundreds of thousands of deaths, but failing to topple the government.
The US-Israeli objective vis-à-vis Iran is the opposite of a negotiated settlement that would normalize Iran’s position in the international system while constraining its nuclear program. The real objective is to keep Iran economically broken, diplomatically cornered, and internally pressured. Trump has repeatedly undercut negotiations that could have led to peace, starting with his withdrawal from the 2016 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) that would have monitored Iran’s nuclear energy activities while removing US economic sanctions.
Understanding the hybrid war tactics helps to explain why Trump’s rhetoric oscillates so abruptly between threats of war and phony offers of peace. Hybrid warfare thrives on contradictions, ambiguities, and outright deceit in US intentions. Last summer, the US was supposed to have a round of negotiations with Iran on June 15, 2025, but then supported Israel’s bombing of Iran on June 13, two days before the negotiations were to take place. For this reason, signs of de-escalation in recent days should not be taken at face value. They can all too readily be followed by a direct military attack in the coming days.
The world’s best hope is that the other 191 countries of the UN aside from the US and Israel finally say no to America’s addiction to hybrid war: no to regime-change operations, no to unilateral sanctions, no to the weaponization of the dollar, and no to the repudiation of the UN Charter. The American people do not support the lawlessness of their own government, but they have a very hard time making their opposition heard. They and almost all the rest of the world want the US deep state brutality to end before it’s too late.
