Qatar pushes for Iran deal, new US strikes remain possible

Asked by ILNA how far Iranian society was from a mental-health emergency, Alireza Agha-Yousefi said: “I don’t think we are very far from it.”

He pointed to marriage, divorce and birth rates as areas of concern and said authorities needed to act before psychological and social problems became more severe.

Uncertainty and prolonged stress

Agha-Yousefi said the prolonged state of neither full-scale war nor peace was itself becoming a major source of pressure.

“The overall condition of society in a situation of neither war nor peace can create significant psychological strain,” he said.

He said people normally try to meet their needs while also responding to threats, but when both are present at the same time, threats tend to dominate.

“Uncertainty the future is one of the most difficult situations,” he said, adding that it deprives people of the ability to plan their lives.

Agha-Yousefi said prolonged uncertainty could produce severe anxiety and, over time, lead to both physical and psychological exhaustion.

Effects may emerge later

He cautioned that the consequences of intense stress do not always appear immediately.

“The effects may show themselves one or two years later,” he said, citing depression, marital conflict and physical health problems as possible outcomes.

He also pointed to prolonged muscle tension, joint and spinal pain and gastrointestinal problems as conditions that can be associated with chronic stress.

President Masoud Pezeshkian last week also described the current “no war, no peace” situation as the worst position Iran could be in, as tensions with Washington remained unresolved.

Economic pressure limits access to care

Agha-Yousefi said the same economic conditions contributing to psychological strain were also making treatment less accessible.

He said demand for counselling had risen, but inflation and declining purchasing power meant many people could no longer afford psychological services.

“Psychological services are not covered by basic insurance,” he said, adding that official figures on the number of people seeking treatment could therefore give a misleading picture.

He said some people who need help simply do not seek it because of the cost.

A proposal to bring psychological services under insurance coverage had been submitted to the organization’s central council around four months ago but had yet to be approved, he said.

Pressure on families and social stability

Agha-Yousefi also said Iran appeared to be moving toward greater social dislocation.

“It seems our social situation is, to some extent, moving toward anomie or social normlessness,” he said.

He warned that as social stress rises, the effects can spread into family life and wider social behavior, including later marriage, addiction and greater instability within households.

“When problems enter the family, they can be a sign of deeper social damage,” he said.

He added that severe family pressures could, in some cases, contribute to extreme violence, including killings within families.

Agha-Yousefi said delaying preventive measures would make the psychological, physical and social consequences much harder and more expensive to address later.

War fears add to uncertainty

His come as speculation grows over possible renewed US and Israeli military action against Iran.

Recent reports have said the US military has prepared options for further strikes after the November 3 midterm elections if President Donald Trump authorizes them.

That uncertainty has added another layer of pressure to an economy already strained by inflation, a weakening currency and declining purchasing power.

Destroying Iran’s military capabilities and preventing their reconstruction are different objectives, requiring different measures of success.

Since 1948, Israel has fought conventional Arab armies and armed organizations such as Hezbollah and Hamas, and has increasingly confronted Iran directly through missile, drone and air attacks far beyond its borders. These forms of warfare have overlapped, posing different challenges for bringing the fighting to an end.

Their endings show how battlefield outcomes interact with diplomacy, outside pressure and arrangements for security after the fighting.

1948: Survival without peace

Fighting between Jewish and Arab communities followed the UN’s 1947 partition plan. After Israel declared independence in May 1948, neighboring Arab armies entered the conflict. Israel survived and gained territory beyond the boundaries proposed for the Jewish state.

In 1949, it signed separate armistice agreements with Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria. These established lines separating the forces, rather than permanent political settlements. The Egyptian agreement explicitly envisaged a subsequent peaceful settlement.

Israel’s survival did not resolve the territorial dispute or the displacement of Palestinians. The fighting ended without peace between Israel and its neighbors.

1956: Military gains, withdrawal under pressure

During the Suez crisis, Israel attacked Egypt in coordination with Britain and France, rapidly advancing across Sinai.

Pressure from the United States, the Soviet Union and the United Nations forced a withdrawal, completed in March 1957. Israel could not retain the territory it had captured, despite its battlefield success.

The outcome nevertheless brought security gains: Israel regained access to the Straits of Tiran, while a UN emergency force deployed in Sinai. The US State Department’s historical account distinguishes those gains from the territorial withdrawal.

The episode illustrates why withdrawal is not automatically evidence of military defeat, and why military superiority alone does not determine a war’s political outcome.

1967: Six days of fighting, decades of consequences

Israel’s opening airstrikes devastated Egypt’s air force. Within six days, Israeli forces had captured Sinai, Gaza, the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights. The war ended through ceasefires, without a formal surrender by the defeated Arab states. Israel’s decisive battlefield victory transformed the territorial balance but did not settle the conflict.

UN Security Council Resolution 242 subsequently established a framework linking Israeli withdrawal from occupied territory with an end to belligerency and recognition of states’ right to live within secure, recognized boundaries.

The military result was immediate. Disputes over occupation, borders and Palestinian rights lasted far beyond the fighting.

1973: From surprise attack to a peace treaty

Egypt and Syria attacked Israeli forces in Sinai and the Golan Heights in October 1973, initially making substantial gains. Israel counterattacked and crossed the Suez Canal before US-Soviet diplomacy and UN ceasefire resolutions helped stop the fighting.

The US State Department’s history describes the war as opening the way for Henry Kissinger’s shuttle diplomacy and, ultimately, the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty. Egypt did not recover all Sinai through military action, but the war helped break the diplomatic stalemate.

The 1978 Camp David accords provided the framework for the 1979 treaty. Israel agreed to withdraw from Sinai in exchange for peace with Egypt. The main withdrawal was completed in 1982; the disputed Taba area was returned in 1989 following arbitration.

Egypt recovered territory through a combination of war and diplomacy. Israel exchanged territorial control for a political agreement with a major adversary.

Lebanon, 1982–2000: Initial success, prolonged conflict

Israel’s 1982 invasion drove into Beirut, where US-mediated arrangements secured the departure of Palestine Liberation Organization leaders and fighters. This was an evacuation from Beirut, not the elimination of every Palestinian armed presence in Lebanon.

Israel withdrew much of its force in 1985 but retained a southern security zone alongside the allied South Lebanon Army. Its remaining troops left in May 2000, following years of conflict with Hezbollah. UNIFIL’s historical account records both withdrawals.

The withdrawal was unilateral, without a peace treaty or formal Israeli surrender. Hezbollah portrayed it as a victory; Israel ended a prolonged deployment without resolving the underlying confrontation.

The departure of one armed organization’s leadership in 1982 had not produced a lasting end to fighting.

2006: A ceasefire without disarmament

The 2006 war followed Hezbollah’s cross-border attack and capture of two Israeli soldiers. Israel launched extensive air and ground operations, but Hezbollah remained armed and continued firing rockets during the conflict.

Neither side’s survival or military performance alone explains the settlement. The operative mechanism was UN Security Council Resolution 1701, adopted on August 11, followed by a cessation of hostilities on August 14.

It called for Hezbollah to stop attacks, Israel to stop offensive operations, and Israeli forces to withdraw as Lebanese troops and an expanded UNIFIL deployed. It envisaged an area between the Blue Line and Litani River free of armed personnel and weapons other than those of the Lebanese government and UNIFIL.

Hezbollah was not disarmed. Nevertheless, UNIFIL says the arrangements helped sustain almost 17 years of relative calm before the escalation beginning in 2023. An incomplete settlement still had significant practical effects.

Gaza: Repeated campaigns and rebuilding

The Gaza wars of 2008–09, 2012, 2014 and 2021 ended without Hamas surrendering or losing all its military capabilities.

Scholars Efraim Inbar and Eitan Shamir described Israel’s approach as “mowing the grass”: periodically degrading an adversary’s capabilities and restoring deterrence rather than expecting a permanent political resolution through force. Their study appeared online in 2013 and in the Journal of Strategic Studies in 2014.

After Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack, Israel set broader objectives, including dismantling its military and governing capabilities and recovering the hostages. Shamir argued that the attack marked a departure from the limited-campaign approach. That was his strategic assessment, rather than proof that eliminating Hamas was achievable.

The ensuing war devastated Gaza. The October 2025 ceasefire did not settle its future: a year later, the UN human rights office was still reporting killings despite the agreement.

Lebanon after 2023: Military damage and state authority

Israel’s 2024 campaign killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and other senior commanders, severely damaging its leadership. The fighting nevertheless moved toward a negotiated cessation of hostilities rather than formal surrender.

The US-French-brokered arrangement took effect on November 27, 2024, and again rested on implementing Resolution 1701, Lebanese state authority and Israeli withdrawal.

Disarmament remained contested. In October 2026, The Wall Street Journal reported that Hezbollah demanded the return of explosives seized by Lebanese authorities, illustrating the continuing struggle over weapons outside state control.

Iran: Ending operations or preventing reconstruction?

The June 2025 war involved Israeli attacks on Iranian military and nuclear targets and direct US strikes on Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan. US involvement therefore preceded the broader war of 2026.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry described the nuclear threat as “existential and imminent” in its account of the operation. That characterization was Israel’s stated justification, not an independently established finding that Iran possessed nuclear weapons. The same document records Israel’s acceptance of a US-proposed ceasefire on June 24. The broader confrontation in 2026 extended to shipping and energy supplies. By October, the US naval blockade and the standoff over reopening the Strait of Hormuz remained unresolved.

Netanyahu has explicitly advocated moving beyond containment. Addressing military cadets in February 2026, he declared there would be “no more containment of threats” and emphasized preemptive action. This supports describing a shift in his stated approach, without assuming a uniform doctrine across every Israeli institution.

Destroying launchers or facilities has measurable immediate effects. Preventing their reconstruction depends on industrial capacity, supply networks, political decisions and whatever monitoring or enforcement follows.

Within the approach of seeking to prevent Iran from rebuilding its military threat, two scenarios can be considered. Neither is a prediction or an exhaustive account of how the conflict might end.

The first is a military defeat sufficiently extensive to destroy much of Iran’s offensive capability and substantially constrain its reconstruction. Lasting results would depend on measures that prevent replenishment, rather than destruction alone. The second combines military defeat with the end of the Islamic Republic and its replacement by a political system that abandons hostility toward Israel and support for armed proxies.

That scenario depends on more than a change of leadership. It assumes a successor government both chooses and can enforce a different policy, including ending financial, military and operational support for allied armed groups. A government’s collapse would not itself establish those conditions.

The scenarios may overlap, but neither guarantees stability. Their outcomes would depend on political authority, security arrangements and the capacity to enforce commitments after combat ends.

Other possible outcomes include a negotiated agreement that constrains Iran’s capabilities without changing its government, or a prolonged armed standoff sustained by deterrence. Neither would necessarily eliminate the underlying hostility, though either could bring the current fighting to an end.

Israel’s earlier wars provide different benchmarks: territorial withdrawal under international pressure in 1956, land exchanged for peace with Egypt, unilateral withdrawal from Lebanon, and ceasefire arrangements that reduced fighting without disarming Hezbollah. Each ended a particular phase of conflict; only some produced a broader political settlement.

Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi says Iraq will not participate in any war, while Iran-backed factions describe supporting Tehran against the United States and Israel as a duty, raising questions over Baghdad’s ability to control how its territory and airspace are used.

“Iraq will not participate in any war,” Zaidi told state-run Al-Iraqiya television on Friday, saying Baghdad wanted to remain a meeting point for regional rivals and was working to ease the confrontation between Iran and the United States.

On Saturday, the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an umbrella of Iran-aligned armed factions, declared that standing with Tehran was a moral duty and portrayed the conflict as a struggle between righteousness and falsehood, Rudaw reported.

The statement did not announce a resumption of attacks. It underscored the factions’ commitment to Iran at a time when Zaidi is promising to bring weapons and military decisions under state control.

Baghdad also faces economic and diplomatic costs from the conflict. Zaidi said disruption at the Strait of Hormuz had harmed Iraq and that his government had hoped its political, religious and popular ties with Iran would secure an exemption for Iraqi shipping.

He stressed the importance of relations with Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf states, saying some believed attacks against them had originated in Iraq.

Reports of Israeli fighter jet activity near the Iranian border have put Iraqi airspace at the center of the confrontation even as Baghdad seeks to avoid direct involvement.

Axios reported this week that dozens of Israeli fighter jets flew toward Iran’s border in a demonstration of military capability. The aircraft passed through Syrian and Iraqi airspace before turning back near Iran.

Hardline Iranian lawmaker Mahmoud Nabavian demanded that Iraq tale action against the flights, alleging they were preparations for an attack on Iran.

“The Iraqi government must explain why the Zionist regime’s fighter jets are training and preparing to attack Iran in Iraqi airspace,” Nabavian wrote on X.

“If no action is taken, the Iraqi people, Iraq’s resistance groups and the Iranian nation will fulfill their duty,” he added, without specifying what action he meant.

His warning invoked Iraqi armed groups as potential actors alongside Iran if Baghdad failed to respond.

The Islamic Resistance in Iraq has separately accused US forces of conducting 171 violations of Iraqi airspace between September 30 and October 23.

The umbrella group alleged on Saturday that the United States was using military bases in Jordan and Turkey to conduct flights over Nineveh, Duhok, Erbil, Salahuddin, Anbar and Kirkuk provinces.

It said it had detected 17 aircraft on Friday, including reconnaissance drones and specialized aircraft. The figures and allegations were the factions’ account.

The dispute over foreign military flights also complicates efforts to restrain militia operations. When Iran-backed Kataib Hezbollah announced a suspension of military operations on September 30, it excluded responses to what it called hostile aircraft and airspace violations until Iraqi government air defenses were fully established, Asharq Al-Awsat reported.

Suspected strikes on weapons stores

Iraqi officials suspect Israel attacked two sites storing Chinese-made man-portable air defense systems recently transferred from Iran to Iraqi factions, Awsat reported Saturday, citing unnamed sources.

The sources said a large shipment was destroyed shortly after arriving at the facilities.

On October 17, the Iran-backed Popular Mobilization Forces reported an explosion at an ammunition storage facility in eastern Baghdad that injured five people. Its initial account pointed to an internal malfunction.

The newspaper also quoted an Iraqi political adviser as saying intelligence officials were examining whether renewed US-Israeli fighting against Iran had already begun covertly on Iraqi soil, targeting weapons shipments to Tehran-aligned groups.

Israeli responsibility and the reported contents of the warehouses remain unconfirmed. The suspected strikes nevertheless raise the prospect that Iraqi factions could become targets in renewed fighting regardless of Baghdad’s stated position.

A state with factions

Zaidi presented his campaign to bring weapons under government control as a test of whether the Iraqi state could exercise sovereignty.

“Are we a state with factions, or factions with a state?” he said in the television interview.

He said his government had reached understandings with five factions, completing arrangements with three and working to finalize them with two others. Discussions were continuing with another two, he said.

Zaidi pledged that no weapons would remain outside state control by June 30, 2027.

That deadline represents an extension of an earlier September target, and some factions have disputed the government’s account of progress.

Rudaw reported on October 19 that Kataib Hezbollah had described negotiations over its weapons as remaining at “square one,” accusing Zaidi of failing to respond to a proposed agreement.

The group also demanded clarification of Baghdad’s positions on US sanctions against Iran and conflicts elsewhere in the region, tying the weapons dispute to issues beyond Iraq’s borders.

Another attack in Kurdistan

A separate drone attack on Saturday highlighted the exposure of Iraq’s Kurdistan Region, where Iranian Kurdish opposition groups have repeatedly come under fire.

An explosive-laden drone struck a camp northeast of Erbil, Reuters reported, citing security sources.

The Kurdistan Komala Party of Iran said one of its bases in the Alana Valley was hit, causing material damage but no casualties. The available account did not establish who launched the drone.

Iran has repeatedly launched missile and drone strikes against Iranian Kurdish opposition groups based in northern Iraq, accusing them of organizing attacks and fueling unrest inside Iran.

Baghdad agreed in 2023 to disarm the groups and relocate them away from the Iranian border.

The groups also figured in discussions a possible ground offensive after the US-Israeli war began in February. Reuters reported in March that Iranian Kurdish factions had consulted Washington attacking Iranian security forces in the country’s west, although it could not establish the extent of CIA involvement or whether US weapons had been supplied.

Trump initially welcomed the prospect of Kurdish fighters crossing into Iran, telling Reuters on March 5 that it would be “wonderful.” Two days later, he said he had told them to stay out.

“They’re willing to go in, but we really—I’ve told them I don’t want them to go in,” Trump told reporters. “The war is complicated enough without having, getting the Kurds involved.”

“We must do everything we can to bring down the leaders of the Islamic Republic, so this regime is gone and the people of Iran are free,” she told Iran International’s Babak Eshaghi.

Sharifian, a Persian speaker who was born in Iran in 1982 and lived there until she was seven, is a candidate for the Knesset in Tuesday’s election. If Yashar joins the coalition, she could hold a role in government.

‘The last hope of Iran’

Sharifian called the Islamic Republic Israel’s greatest enemy and an enemy of Iranians as well. Iran’s wealth, she said, goes to Hezbollah and the Houthis instead of to the people it belongs to.

Asked what Yashar’s policy toward Tehran would be, she said it would continue the course set by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Eisenkot’s main rival.

“We must intensify this pressure on the leaders of the Islamic Republic,” she said. “We do not want to put pressure on the people of Iran. The people of Iran are the last hope of Iran.”

She called for every available means to be used to end the Islamic Republic’s rule. “I have great faith in the people of Iran,” she said.

Her emphasis on pressure differs from her party leader’s. Eisenkot, a former military chief, said this month that the Islamic Republic’s fall is necessary but cannot be achieved by military action, and that it must come from within Iranian society.

From Tehran to the Mossad

Sharifian was born into a Jewish family. After the 1979 revolution, some relatives left for the United States and Israel, but her father, who ran businesses in Tehran and Isfahan, refused at first to leave. The family fled when she was seven.

In Israel she served in the army, then in the Shin Bet internal security service and the Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence agency. Her Persian, she said, was one reason she was moved to the Mossad. She has since taught Persian and Middle East strategy to hundreds of Israeli students.

“I am very proud that my being is Iranian,” she said. Representing Iranians in Israel would be a great honor, she said, adding: “I expect to speak Persian in the Israeli parliament in the future.”

She hopes to bring more people of Iranian origin into Israel’s state institutions, she said, and that one day Iran will be returned to its people.

That is the thread through 47 years of Israeli policy toward the Islamic Republic, and it runs straight into Tuesday’s election. Whoever wins, the goal will be the same. What changes is how hard, how openly and with whom Israel pursues it.

Before 1979, Iran was Israel’s most important partner in the region. Under David Ben-Gurion’s “periphery doctrine,” Israel courted non-Arab neighbors to outflank hostile Arab states, and the Shah’s Iran was the prize.

Tehran recognized Israel de facto in 1950, sold it oil through a jointly owned pipeline, and let its intelligence services work with Israel’s Mossad. Israeli engineers, farmers and arms dealers worked across Iran. The relationship was discreet, profitable and close.

The revolution ended it overnight. Islamic Republic's founder Rouhollah Khomeini cut ties, and Israel’s mission in Tehran was handed to the Palestine Liberation Organization.

The enemy of my enemy

Israel’s first leaders after 1979 did not try to bring the new order down. They sold it weapons.

When Iraq invaded Iran in 1980, Menachem Begin’s government shipped arms to Tehran, and Israeli sales ran to an estimated $500 million between 1981 and 1983, according to Tel Aviv University’s Jaffe Institute. Saddam Hussein was the threat, and Iran was the counterweight. In 1985 and 1986, under Shimon Peres, Israel was the go-between in the Iran-Contra affair, passing American missiles to Tehran.

Yitzhak Rabin, then defense minister, explained the logic in October 1987. “Iran is Israel’s best friend and we do not intend to change our position in relation to Tehran, because Khomeini’s regime will not last forever,” he said. The expectation that the Islamic Republic would fall was already there. Israel simply did not think at the time that it was its job to hasten it.

Rabin was also the one who turned. Back as prime minister in 1992, he received the first intelligence reports on an Iranian nuclear program and concluded, aides recalled, that only a nuclear Iran could pose an existential threat Israel could not answer. Part of his case for peace with the Palestinians and Jordan was to clear the near front before facing the far one.

Ariel Sharon took the same view further. In November 2002, as the United States prepared to invade Iraq, he told The Times of London that Iran should be put under pressure “the day after” Baghdad fell, calling it a center of world terror.

As prime minister he carried aerial photographs of Iranian sites to George W. Bush and said Israel “cannot accept” a nuclear Iran. Ehud Olmert, his successor, kept the military option on the table while, according to later reporting, the first cyberattacks on Iran’s centrifuges were set in motion with Washington.

None of them spoke of regime change. Their target was the bomb.

The man who talked to Iranians

Benjamin Netanyahu made Iran his signature cause. Across 15 years in office before 2021, he drew a cartoon bomb at the United Nations, addressed the US Congress against the 2015 nuclear deal, and displayed an archive of Iranian nuclear documents his agents had smuggled out of Tehran.

He also began speaking past the government to the people. He recorded messages to Iranians, offering water technology during the drought and insisting that Israel’s quarrel was “not with the Iranian people.”

The message was new: the problem is not Iran, it is the people who rule it.

The head of the octopus

Naftali Bennett, prime minister in 2021 and 2022, turned that view into a doctrine. Israel, he argued, had spent decades fighting the arms of the octopus, Hezbollah and Hamas, while leaving the head untouched.

He said he launched 30 operations against the Islamic Republic with the Mossad and other agencies, not all of them military, and predicted it would collapse like the Soviet Union.

Yair Lapid, who succeeded him for six months, spent his term lobbying against a revived nuclear deal.

Since returning to power at the end of 2022, Netanyahu has moved from hoping to aiming. In June 2025, as Israeli jets struck Iran in the 12-day war, he told Iranians that “as we achieve our objective, we are also clearing the path for you to achieve your freedom.”

The war that began on February 28 this year, fought with the United States, killed former Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Last week Netanyahu went further than any Israeli leader before him: “This regime must fall and I will topple it.”

What the candidates say

Netanyahu, leading Likud, has made bringing down the Islamic Republic his campaign’s primary objective and says he has told the security services to work toward it. He has also said he opposes a preemptive strike before the vote.

Gadi Eisenkot, the former military chief whose Yashar party is Likud’s main rival, says the Islamic Republic’s fall is necessary but cannot be achieved by force. “This must come from within the Iranian people,” he said, and he would strike again only if Tehran raced for a bomb.

Bennett and Lapid, running together on the Together list, want to hit harder, not softer. Bennett says attacks by Tehran’s allies should be answered on Iranian soil. Lapid has called for striking Iran’s energy infrastructure, including the Kharg Island oil terminal.

Avigdor Lieberman of Yisrael Beiteinu has long called for overthrowing the Islamic Republic and says past efforts fell short. Itamar Ben-Gvir of the far-right Jewish Power backs military operations until Israel’s goals are met. Mansour Abbas, whose Ra’am party draws Arab Israeli voters, has set out no position on Iran.

From Rabin’s prediction that Khomeini’s rule would not last to Netanyahu’s promise to end it himself, the conclusion has barely moved. What Israelis will choose on Tuesday is not whether to want the Islamic Republic gone, but how loudly to say it and how much to risk to get there.