Twelve Days Of Fire: How Iran And Israel's First Direct Confrontation Affects The Middle East

The sudden and intense escalation in the conflict between Israel and Iran that sparked a 12-day war brought on by Israel’s unprecedented airstrikes on Iranian military and nuclear installations ended on June 25 with an US‑brokered ceasefire. However, the war was the first direct confrontation between two states, leaving 100s dead and rekindling global fears of larger Middle Eastern warfare.

The conflict began when Israel launched a coordinated campaign of air and drone assaults along with targeted assassinations of senior commanders in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Operation Red Wedding resulted in at least thirty high‑ranking Iranian officers, including Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh of the IRGC Aerospace Force, being reported killed. At the same time, Israel covertly attacked Iran’s nuclear research facilities, in the name of derailed Iran’s uranium enrichment programme.

In retaliation, Iran hit Israel with a barrage of over five hundred ballistic missiles reportedly aimed at Israel’s military bases and larger cities such as Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Israel’s Iron Dome and surrounding US-bases intercepted a majority of incoming missiles. However, Israel’s medi reported at least twenty‑eight civilians and soldiers killed, with hundreds wounded, and 1000s using underground bunkers as shelters.

By June 22, growing concern over war in the middle-east prompted America and Qatar to mediate a ceasefire. US President Donald Trump announced on his social media that both parties had agreed to stop firing from 4am Tehran time on June 24. Iran’s foreign ministry, in the first few hours, denied the existence of any formal deal. The suspension of fire between the two nations is to be followed by US-monitored diplomatic talks, Trump has said.  

With a fragile ceasefire in place, the 12‑day war between Iran and Israel, from June 13 to June 25, is a reminder of how volatile Middle Eastern geopolitics can be. While Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has confidently said that its airstrikes, joined by the United States of America, has severely set back Iran’s nuclear and military capabilities, the cost of these “pre-emptive” attacks could be regional instability in the middle-east. For Iran, the conflict has revealed the limits of its proxy warfare strategy and further isolated the regime. It remains to be seen if the airstrikes and US-brokered ceasefire will be followed by a new order that will bring peace through deterrence, or whether it is a pause in the cycle of aggression.

In less than a fortnight, Iran lost over 600 military personnel and nuclear scientists, as seen by the large state funerals in Tehran during which thousands chanted “Death to America” and “Death to Israel.” The Israeli government reported 24 killed and more than 3,000 injured.

The hostility between Iran and Israel goes back decades. In 1947 and 1949, Iran voted against the UN Partition Plan and Israel’s admission to the United Nations. While the two countries reached a grudging cordiality during the Cold War Era—spurred on by common threats from Arab nationalism and the Soviet Union— Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution and support of Palestinian made Tehran the number one enemy of the Jewish State. Since the early 1990s, with the first Gulf War ending in 1991, the two countries have engaged in a shadow warfare using espionage, cyber-attacks and proxy groups.

Israel has relied on pre‑emptive precision assassinations and air strikes, such as the 2007 destruction of Syria’s covert reactor at al‑Kibar, to neutralise any perceived threats to itself. In turn, Iran maintained its regional proxies, such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and the militias in Iraq and Yemen, to retaliate against the Israelis and Americans. With Israel taking out leadership across Iran’s proxies, the 12‑day war exposed the limits of proxy warfare and vulnerabilities in Iran’s domestic security.

Within the middle-east, the war reshaped alliances as well. Turkey and Egypt condemned the Israeli strikes, while the Gulf Arab states maintained a cautious silence. Russia and China denounced the attacks but their lack of direct intervention spoke louder. Within Iran, hardliners have begun a sweeping internal crackdown, arresting dissidents and reinforcing ideological unity beneath Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s hardline rhetoric.

In its July 11, 2025 issue, Making Bombings Great Again, 온라인 카지노 사이트 explores how the US’s bombings of Tehran is part of a historical strategy informed by country’s economic interests in the middle-east and Global South. 

Harish Khare writes about the irony of the US’s interventions in Tehran given the country’s own track record with economically-led wars in countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan. He adds that the US should reflect on its treatment of its own citizens first. 

Ali Rasheed explains the importance of the Iranian Constitution in propping up an ideological and theocratic state. “Unlike most countries in West Asia that do not have a comprehensive or written constitution—like Saudi Arabia and Israel—Iran drafted and ratified a theocratic constitution for itself after a referendum in 1979, which combines a unique set of Islamic and pseudo-democratic provisions,” he points out. 

Seema Guha questions the future of Iran-Israel foreign relations after this unprecedented conflict. Is this a permanent peace or a lull before the storm, she asks, while Lt General Subrata Saha writes about how modern weaponry has changed the face of war, and Iftikar Geelani explores the history of Persian- Jewish relations.

Pragya Singh explores how women rights are often used as an cover to go to war where the interests are anything but gender-equality. “Policies—whether in the West or in the Muslim world—are imposed on women, not developed with them or for them. How they dress becomes shorthand for community honour, nationalism or piety,” she writes.

For Overlap, Md Asghar reports on how political parties in Bihar was wooing the women vote ahead of the Assembly elections this year. Mahesh Raut, a TISS alumnus and rights activist working for Adivasis and marginalised communities who was arrested in June 2018 in the Bhima-Koregaon Maoist conspiracy case and has since been incarcerated in jail writes about his experience with the rising number of young inmates in a Navi Mumbai jail. From West Bengal, Snigdhendu Bhattacharya dissects whether the WB Supremo Mamata Banerjee’s newfound passion for Lord Jagannath is aimed at nullifying BJP’s Ram-power. Souzeina Mushtaq profiles NYC's Zohran Mamdani who won the Democratic Mayoral Primaries beating Andrew Mark Cuomo against all odds.  

In Sub-strata, Divya Tiwari writes about the fear psychosis that fuels book bans, while Ruchira Gupta reviews the Great Eastern Hotel by Ruchir Joshi. And Yasser Usman remembers the legacy of Guru Dutt. Naveen Kishore explores the nature of the truth in art. In the diary Gaurav Monga writes on the Standard Restaurant.