Luciano ZaccaraOn June 13, Israel launched a large-scale military attack deep into Iranian territory, striking what it claimed were nuclear and military targets. Official Israeli statements framed the operation as a necessary preemptive measure to halt Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
But the broader picture, especially the timing and immediate consequences, suggests something else may be at play: a deliberate effort to shift the world’s focus away from the mounting humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
This is not speculation for its own sake—it is rooted in regional context, diplomatic trends, and Israel’s own strategic playbook.
As global pressure mounts over Israel’s war on Gaza—now in its eighteenth month—this strike on Iran appears less like a response to an urgent threat and more like a diversionary manoeuvre to recalibrate global narratives.
The Gaza war has dragged Israel into one of the most serious legitimacy crises in its modern history.
The war’s toll on Palestinian civilians has become impossible to ignore. Hospitals have been bombed. Aid has been blocked. Entire neighbourhoods have been flattened.
International legal bodies—the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court—have taken unprecedented steps. Israeli leaders are facing potential arrest warrants.
Meanwhile, pro-Palestinian protests have swept across university campuses, city squares, and diplomatic arenas across the world.
It is precisely in this climate of growing global isolation that the June 13 strike took place.
Crucially, the timing coincided with the sixth round of nuclear conversations between Iran and the United States, hosted by Oman.
These talks, if successful, might have led to a reduction in regional tensions and a re-engagement with the 2015 nuclear agreement framework.
For Israel, this diplomatic opening posed a threat: the possibility of Iran regaining some level of normalisation with Western powers, mainly the US, at a time when Tel Aviv itself is facing growing condemnation, including traditionally allied Western countries such as Canada, France, the United Kingdom, among others.
By escalating militarily at that precise moment, Israel not only disrupted those diplomatic channels, but also ensured that headlines — recently dominated by the tragedy unfolding in Rafah or Deir al-Balah — would now be focused on the risk of war with Iran.
The world’s gaze shifted overnight from Gaza’s siege to a renewed Israeli-Iranian confrontation. This shift wasn’t accidental—it was instrumental.
Suddenly, the international media began framing Israel once again as a state under existential threat, facing down a hostile, nuclear-aspiring regional power.
This is a narrative Israeli officials have cultivated for years, and it serves an obvious purpose: it allows Israel to reclaim moral and strategic legitimacy, especially in the West, by reasserting itself as a bulwark against so-called Iranian aggression.
Home truths
For Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the strike also offered clear domestic benefits.
His government has faced rising discontent, particularly from the families of hostages still held in Gaza, as well as from reservists and segments of Israel’s security establishment.
Netanyahu, who leads the most far-right Israeli government in history, barely escaped after the opposition moved a bill calling for the dissolution of the Knesset.
Amid accusations of military overreach and diplomatic failure, a high-profile strike on Iran allowed him to project strength and strategic clarity—reframing the national discourse around security rather than accountability.
The tension between Israel and Iran is not new. Israel has long viewed Iran’s nuclear and missile capabilities as a direct and existential threat.
It has repeatedly taken covert and overt measures to sabotage Iranian nuclear infrastructure, including the killing of many nuclear scientists on Iranian soil.
But those actions have historically been calibrated and limited. The latest attack, however, was of a massive scale, comparable with the large-scale attack that Saddam Hussein launched in 1980, which triggered a war that lasted eight years and produced almost one million casualties.
The attack also came at a profoundly significant political moment.
Without firm evidence of an imminent Iranian nuclear breakout — the IAEA board of governors only states that it might have been a military nuclear programme that ended in 2003 – the rationale for such a dramatic escalation remains, at least, questionable.
What is not in doubt is that the timing served Israel’s political needs more than its immediate security ones.
It re-centred the Israeli narrative. It sowed division among international actors. And it bought Tel Aviv time and political space as global outrage over Gaza reached its peak.
The idea of using military action to shift public discourse or escape diplomatic pressure is not new. Israel has employed this tactic before.
The 1981 bombing of Iraq’s Osirak reactor, the 2007 strike in Syria, and the targeted killings of Iranian scientists over the last decade all reflect a similar logic: action as message.
This time, however, the message was not just to Tehran—it was to Washington, Brussels, and beyond: “Pay attention to us as defenders, not as violators.”
The price of war
But such tactics come at a high cost. Tehran has vowed retaliation, and the region now risks spiralling into a broader confrontation involving other regional state and non-state actors, and even US interests in the Gulf—as it was demonstrated by the sudden withdrawal of non-essential personnel from American missions abroad.
The diplomatic fallout could be severe.
Meanwhile, Gaza continues to bleed, and the diversion—however temporarily effective—does not erase the international community’s memory of what has unfolded there.
Importantly, the Global South is not buying into this narrative shift so easily.
Many countries in Latin America, Africa, and Asia, and lately some Western countries as well, have openly condemned Israel’s actions in Gaza and are increasingly vocal in questioning the motives behind the Iran strike.
There is growing awareness that military escalation is being used not only for deterrence but for distraction.
In the short term, Israel may succeed in resetting the narrative. But in the long term, these tactics threaten to deepen its isolation and entrench a perception of cynicism in its strategic behaviour.
A serious reckoning with the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, genuine engagement with ceasefire proposals, and an end to punitive operations against civilians would do more to restore Israel’s international standing than any missile strike could achieve.
The question now is whether the international community will allow itself to be distracted.
Or whether it will keep its focus where it belongs: on ending the war on Gaza, addressing accountability for the war crimes committed over these eighteen months, and finally confronting the political roots of this enduring conflict.
