A former senior Israeli military commander has warned that a US attack on Iran could unleash consequences far beyond Washington’s intended military objectives, potentially destroying the foundations of the Iranian state, plunging the region into prolonged instability and placing enriched uranium beyond the control of any government.
The warning comes from retired Israeli Major General Israel Ziv, who argued that a military campaign launched by President Donald Trump after the US midterm elections could become particularly dangerous if driven by political humiliation and a desire for revenge rather than clearly defined strategic objectives.
In an opinion article published by the Israeli newspaper Maariv, Ziv raised the possibility that 4 November could mark the beginning of another chapter in the confrontation with Iran, just one day after Americans vote in the midterm elections.
His central concern was not simply that Washington might attack Tehran. It was that the United States could embark on a war whose consequences neither Washington nor Israel would be capable of controlling.
The Dangerous Political Calculations Behind a Possible Attack
According to Ziv, Trump pledged not to launch military action against Iran before the midterm elections on Tuesday, 3 November, while reports have suggested that American and Israeli planners are considering a “short and powerful” strike immediately after voting concludes.
Ziv argued that such a war would be ill-advised, not necessarily because military force could never be justified, but because of the political motivations that might ultimately determine its timing, scale and objectives.
He acknowledged that Washington’s last-minute diplomatic efforts, including the use of military threats to pressure Tehran into reaching an agreement, represented a legitimate negotiating strategy.
In his assessment, a credible threat of force could be the only means of securing concessions from an Iranian government that approaches negotiations as an opportunity to gain time.
The greater danger, however, would emerge if those negotiations failed, particularly if Trump simultaneously suffered a political defeat in the midterm elections.
Ziv suggested that a president confronting both diplomatic failure abroad and electoral defeat at home within the same week might seek to compensate through a demonstration of military strength.
At that point, he warned, the strategic calculations underpinning a potential confrontation with Iran could change dramatically.
Rather than pursuing limited military objectives, Washington could find itself drawn into a campaign intended to punish Tehran for what the American president perceived as a personal and political humiliation.
When Military Strategy Becomes a Question of Revenge
Ziv argued that the United States has a tendency to respond to humiliation with disproportionate force, warning that a military confrontation framed around personal or political honour could push strategic considerations into the background.
Under such circumstances, he suggested, the objectives of an American campaign might no longer be limited to reopening the Strait of Hormuz or restricting Iran’s nuclear programme.
Instead, the purpose could become punishment itself.
That distinction, Ziv argued, would fundamentally alter the nature of the war.
A military operation designed to achieve a specific security objective can, at least in principle, be assessed against measurable outcomes. A war intended to inflict punishment, by contrast, risks expanding without clearly defined limits.
For Iran, the consequences could be devastating.
Ziv warned that an American campaign motivated by revenge might target the infrastructure upon which Iranian society depends, including oil facilities, electricity networks, bridges and other essential services.
Such destruction would affect a country of approximately 90 million people, with consequences extending well beyond the Iranian military establishment or political leadership.
He argued that the outcome might not simply be the collapse of the Islamic Republic’s governing system.
It could be the fragmentation of Iran as a functioning state.
The Libya Precedent: What Happens After a Government Falls?
To illustrate the dangers of destroying a government without securing the future of the country it governs, Ziv pointed to Libya following the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.
He cautioned against assuming that the collapse of Iran’s current political leadership would automatically produce a democratic, stable or pro-Western alternative.
Libya, he argued, offered a warning of what could happen when military intervention removes an established government without creating the conditions for a functioning political order.
The fall of Gaddafi did not bring the democracy that many advocates of intervention had anticipated.
Instead, Ziv noted, Libya descended into fragmentation, with dozens of armed militias emerging, weapons depots destroyed and state institutions unable to maintain effective control.
He described a country that had become a failed state, with weapons and terrorism spreading beyond its borders and continuing to destabilise the surrounding region.
For Ziv, the lesson was that overthrowing a government and establishing a viable state are fundamentally different undertakings.
But he warned that applying the Libyan experience to Iran would introduce an additional danger that did not exist in Libya.
Iran possesses significant quantities of enriched uranium.
The Nuclear Danger That Could Follow Iran’s Collapse
One of the most serious scenarios raised by Ziv concerns the fate of Iran’s nuclear material if the country were to descend into internal fragmentation.
Unlike Libya, Iran possesses hundreds of kilograms of enriched uranium, material whose whereabouts Ziv said remained unknown.
If the Iranian state collapsed or lost effective control over parts of its territory, he warned, some of that material could fall into the hands of armed factions operating outside any central authority.
Those groups could include factions within the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, ethnic militias or terrorist organisations.
The resulting security problem would be substantially more difficult to contain than a conventional confrontation between Washington and Tehran.
Rather than dealing with an identifiable government whose military capabilities and political leadership could be targeted or deterred, regional powers might confront numerous armed groups controlling sensitive nuclear material.
Ziv warned that this could transform a limited confrontation over the Strait of Hormuz into a much broader campaign of retaliatory violence and terrorism.
He went further, suggesting that a fragmented Iran could develop into something resembling the Houthi movement in Yemen, but on the scale of a far larger country possessing greater strategic depth, oil resources and regional influence.
The implications of that scenario would extend beyond Iran’s borders.
A fractured Iranian state, divided among competing armed organisations and potentially containing unsecured nuclear material, would present regional governments with threats that conventional military deterrence might be unable to address.
Why Israel Could Lose More Than It Gains
Ziv’s warning was particularly notable because he framed the dangers of an American war in terms of Israel’s own security interests.
He argued that Israel has no strategic interest in being drawn into a punitive campaign against Iran that lacks clearly defined objectives.
According to Ziv, Israel’s priorities should remain focused on three specific goals: neutralising Iran’s nuclear capabilities, limiting its missile arsenal and severing its relationships with regional proxy groups.
A broad American military campaign intended to punish Iran, he argued, would not necessarily advance any of those objectives.
It could instead replace a familiar adversary with a far more unpredictable security environment.
Ziv drew a distinction between confronting a hostile state that operates through recognisable institutions and dealing with fragmented armed organisations unconstrained by a central political authority.
Even an adversarial state, he suggested, can be deterred if its leadership understands the consequences of military escalation.
A collection of militias possessing fissile material presents a substantially different challenge.
Such groups may not respond to conventional deterrence, particularly if they lack the centralised leadership, territorial responsibilities or institutional interests that ordinarily shape state behaviour.
In Ziv’s assessment, destroying Iran’s governing structures could therefore eliminate some existing threats while creating others that are considerably harder to manage.
Israel’s Own Military History Offers a Warning
Ziv also argued that Israel should recognise the dangers of entering wars without clearly established political and military objectives.
He pointed to Israel’s military history, including the 1982 Lebanon war and its subsequent campaigns in Gaza, as examples of conflicts in which the absence of clearly defined goals carried substantial costs.
His warning was that repeating such mistakes on a regional scale, particularly in a confrontation involving nuclear material, could produce consequences far more severe than those associated with earlier military campaigns.
For Israel, he argued, supporting pressure on Iran should not mean automatically endorsing every form of American military escalation.
Instead, Israeli officials should communicate a clear and measured position to Washington.
That position, according to Ziv, should support diplomatic pressure, credible military threats and targeted uses of force when considered necessary, while firmly opposing a war driven primarily by revenge.
The distinction is critical to his argument.
Military force employed to achieve a limited and clearly defined objective is fundamentally different from a campaign launched to restore political prestige or punish an adversary.
Ziv concluded with a warning about the consequences of allowing personal humiliation to determine the course of military action.
A war launched to settle a political grievance, he argued, would not end on 4 November.
It would only begin.
