Majid Nabi Burfat
The geopolitical landscape of 2026 has been scorched by a firestorm that was as predictable as it was avoidable. As the dust settles over the charred remains of Iranian command centers and the world mourns a decapitated leadership in Tehran, we must confront the chilling reality that international law has been replaced by a theological manifest destiny. The joint US-Israeli strikes of late February—timed with surgical malice during the sacred month of Ramzan—were never truly about the specter of a nuclear-armed Iran. Rather, they represent the apex of a “Greater Israel” agenda, fueled by a US political system that has been entirely co-opted by a singular, expansionist monopoly. To understand this moment, one must look past the smoke of the explosions and recognize the calculated strategy of “encirclement and erasure” that is being deployed across the Muslim world.
While Pakistan finds itself tactically pinned down on its western border, fighting a grinding, manufactured insurgency against a TTP that thrives under the suspicious silence of the Afghan Taliban, the true center of gravity has shifted. This is a classic “pinning maneuver” in grand strategy: keep the regional powers distracted with internal fires so they cannot look toward the external inferno. In Tehran, the assassination of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei and the destruction of the Iranian security apparatus was not a move of last resort. It was a pre-emptive strike against peace. Authentic diplomatic reports from the Oman-led backchannels had confirmed that Tehran was on the verge of a historic “Zero Enrichment” agreement. Iran was ready to talk, ready to trade, and ready to exist within a rules-based framework. But for the US-Israeli axis, an Iranian peace was more dangerous than an Iranian bomb. A compliant, stable Iran would have blocked the path to the “Greater Israel” visualized by the likes of Ambassador Mike Huckabee and Secretary of State Marco Rubio—a vision where the map of the Middle East is redrawn based on ancient scripture rather than modern borders.
This doctrine of “Regime Change for Territorial Expansion” is not a new invention of the Zionist lobby; it has a dark, well-documented lineage. We have seen this playbook used with devastating effect in Latin America, where the “Monroe Doctrine” was weaponized to ensure that no sovereign power could defy Washington’s economic and political monopoly. Consider the 1973 overthrow of Salvador Allende in Chile or the more recent “soft coups” and hybrid warfare used against sovereign governments in Venezuela and Bolivia. In those instances, as in Iran today, the rhetoric of “democracy” or “security” was a thin veil for the installation of compliant, neutered regimes that would not challenge the hegemon’s control over vital resources and trade routes. Just as Latin American leaders were eliminated to secure a “hemispheric monopoly” for the US, the Iranian leadership has been liquidated to secure a “regional monopoly” for the Zionist entity.
The mask has slipped completely with Ambassador Mike Huckabee’s recent declarations regarding Israel’s “Biblical right” to vast swaths of the Middle East. This is no longer a covert agenda; it is an overt crusade. The “Greater Israel” being visualized—and now physically paved with American bombs—seeks to expand the borders of the apartheid state from the Nile to the Euphrates. To achieve this, every regional power capable of defiance must be dismantled. The goal is to create a landscape of “friendly” satrapies—nations that are sovereign in name only, but possess neither the military infrastructure nor the political will to question the ongoing genocide in Palestine or the illegal occupation of Arab lands. The US military buildup, the largest in decades, is the scaffolding for this new colonial architecture, ensuring that the Zionist state is surrounded only by the weak and the silent.
Perhaps the most tragic aspect of this unprecedented breach of global morality is the role of the Muslim world. During the holy month of Ramzan, a period of Hurmat where the shedding of blood is a profound transgression, several Muslim nations brazenly opened their air jurisdictions and bases to facilitate the strike on Tehran. These regimes have committed a dual betrayal: they have violated the sanctity of their faith and the security of their region. By allowing their soil to be used as a launchpad for the decapitation of a fellow Muslim power, they have signaled to Washington and Tel Aviv that their own sovereignty is a commodity for sale. They have forgotten the lesson of South America: that those who help the tiger eat their neighbor are usually the tiger’s next meal. The “Greater Israel” map does not stop at the borders of Iran; it is an insatiable project that views the entire region as a landscape to be “cleansed” and reordered.
The legal justification cited by Washington—a pre-emptive strike to prevent “imminent” nuclear threats—is a mockery of Article 51 of the UN Charter. One cannot claim self-defense against a nation that was actively engaged in a verified diplomatic de-escalation via Oman. This was an act of raw, unprovoked aggression, carried out in total defiance of the international order that the US itself claims to protect. It is a transition from a “rules-based order” to a “might-based order,” where the Bible is used as a land deed and a cruise missile as the enforcement officer. The assassination of a head of state and the blind pursuit of regime change in a nuclear-capable region is an unprecedented gamble that threatens to drag the entire globe into a religious apocalypse.
As the smoke clears, the reality remains: the “nuclear issue” was a phantom used to justify the removal of a strategic counter-weight. The US political system, now a hostage to the Zionist monopoly, has chosen to burn the Middle East to satisfy a theological fantasy. The world must now wake up to the fact that the “Greater Israel” agenda is no longer a fringe theory discussed in backrooms; it is the official, armed policy of the world’s lone superpower. From the meddling in the Southern Hemisphere to the fires in Tehran, the doctrine remains the same: total submission or total destruction. The question for the remaining sovereign powers of the world, including Pakistan, is no longer how to negotiate, but how to survive a hegemon that has traded its reason for a crusade.
Majid Burfat is a former civil servant (CSP), social development practitioner, political analyst, and columnist based in Karachi.