(LifeSiteNews) — Efforts to prevent World War III from breaking out in the Middle East, with massive loss of innocent human life, are being thwarted by Israel, according to more influential persons who have awakened to the agenda of Netanyahu and his extremist allies.

Pope Leo XIV has become alarmed about the increased hostilities. He is appealing for restraint among the warring parties and has renewed the Church’s calls for nuclear disarmament and peaceful dialogue.

A consensus over Israel’s unjust “preemptive attack” against Iran is building among analysts, such as Alastair Crooke, who says Israel’s attacks on Iran with missiles, drones and car bombs were intended to spark regime change rather than preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons.

Combined with high-level assassinations, Israel’s shock strategy was intended to collapse the Iranian leadership and deliver a quick, relatively bloodless victory, avoiding the need for a wider war. This is the line taken by Crooke, and also by Chaim Levinson in today’s Haaretz.

On Sunday, Netanyahu said that the Iranian regime is “very weak,” fueling speculation of a successful regime change.

Yet, as Yossi Melman reported from Israel, the initial euphoria has given way to a sense of desperation. Instead of its usual swift decapitation strategy succeeding against the Iranian regime, Israel now faces precision strikes on its intelligence and military establishments, with no way to stop them. Melman said the Israelis should seek a deal to end the war quickly. Responsible Statecraft agreed, saying on June 15, “Israel is not winning this war”.

Melman, an experienced security journalist, added in a post today that the war is costing “a billion shekels a day” – not including the damage to the Israeli economy by Iranian attacks on its petroleum refinery.

According to estimates of Iranian capabilities, these strikes could go on for months. Online OSINT (Open Source Intelligence) accounts have geolocated Iranian missile attacks, showing direct hits on air defense batteries; on the Weizmann Institute, its most strategically significant research lab; on its only refinery in Haifa; and centers of its military intelligence units.

Some Iranian strikes on military targets have been claimed as having hit civilian buildings by Israel, but again, geolocation efforts have shown that not only does Israel locate its military establishments in residential areas, but Iran can strike them at will.

How is this possible?

Prof. Ted Postol, a former MIT professor and missile defense expert, argues in a new interview that Iran has developed a hypersonic glide vehicle (HGV) capable of penetrating Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system.

He said on “Dialogue Works” that this new Iranian technology has changed the war game in the Middle East. 

At the same time, Postol says, Netanyahu has tried to “make any negotiation impossible.” That has included the assassination of Iran’s negotiators, as it did in the past with the assassination of Hamas’s political leader and peace negotiator, Ismail Haniyeh, who was in Tehran attending the inauguration of Iran’s new president.

The Christian Science Monitor reported at the time:

[T]o Palestinian rivals, Middle East governments, and many European diplomats, Hamas’ politiburo chief was a pragmatic moderate within Hamas, a figure with whom they could negotiate and prod the movement’s more hard-line factions.

The prime minister of Qatar, who has acted as a mediator in ceasefire negotiations between Israel and Hamas, wrote on X:

Political assassinations and continued targeting of civilians in Gaza while talks continue leads us to ask, how can mediation succeed when one party assassinates the negotiator on other side?

Postol, who is Jewish, says there is “a genocide going on in Gaza” and that Israel is “playing with World War III.”

Aside from these significant dangers, which combine a potential world nuclear war with increasing global outrage at Israel’s actions, Postol says the failure of the Iron Dome exposes a critical weakness of/U.S.-Israeli strategy.

Postol says the U.S. has failed to factor in the Iranian advantage it has gained from the development of hypersonic glide vehicles—missiles that fly at speeds over Mach 5.

Israel’s U.S.-funded Iron Dome and David’s Sling systems cannot counter this threat, says Postol, meaning the Israelis live under an imaginary security umbrella.

As Israelis see their missile shield no longer protects them, they are realizing their sense of security is an illusion.

So far, says Postol, the U.S. has not recognized this reality on the ground.

What Postol is saying is that Iranian hypersonic weapons could see the military balance tipped in Iran’s favor, destabilizing the balance of power.  Not only has Iran struck strategic targets, but it has also hit air defence batteries.  Iranian missile power could accelerate the conflict towards escalation, as Israeli defense and deterrence are diminished in tandem.

READ: Netanyahu is gambling with the lives of Israelis and the survival of his country

Is the war already out of control?

Netanyahu has closed Israeli airports, effectively banning Israelis from flying out of Israel. Those fleeing the country have done so by boat – sailing to Cyprus in private vessels – or are crossing through the Occupied West Bank into Jordan to transit to Western nations.

In recent days, Israeli police have begun to crack down on the use of video recorded on mobile phones by Israeli citizens, to prevent footage of Iranian strikes from being publicized.

Last night, there were reports that foreign journalists had also been arrested or challenged by Israeli authorities for capturing images of Iranian missile impacts in Israel.

On June 16, Times of Israel military correspondent Mannie Fabian said that “[police] officers have set out to clear international media journalists who have been broadcasting live missile impacts in the Haifa area.”

With no means of controlling the conflict it has started, Israel now seeks to control how it is seen – or whether it is seen at all. Its media strategy of censorship at home has combined with fake reports online and inflammatory remarks from its prime minister.

On Monday night, Israel-aligned accounts claimed without evidence that the U.S. had joined the war on Iran and that U.S. planes were striking Iranian targets.

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has also repeated his unproven claim that Iran has been seeking to kill President Trump. In an appearance on ABC News, he said, “I understand America First. I don’t understand America dead,” and warned, “Today it is Tel Aviv. Tomorrow it is New York.”

Netanyahu has often promoted Israel’s expansionist wars in the Middle East to be allegedly necessary for preventing Islamist attacks on Western nations, thereby justifying large-scale American/European involvement in the wars that have consistently been disastrous failures.

Efforts by Israeli propaganda to whip up fear across the West of an Iranian threat also emerged in a hyperbolic IDF video, which warned of an Iranian campaign to destroy the world with nuclear weapons. The only nation in the Middle East that possesses and has threatened to use nuclear weapons is Israel.

“If we don’t stop them, you’re next,” says the Israeli Army video.

If we don’t stop them, you’re next. pic.twitter.com/svE6JSFph2

— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) June 17, 2025

The shocking presentation says that China, the U.S., UK, Italy, Canada and practically every major nation face extinction in the face of an Iranian nuclear threat – that the U.S. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard says does not exist.

In reality, Israel has an undeclared nuclear arsenal which its rumored Samson Option threatens to use to destroy the world – should it feel sufficiently threatened.

Though the U.S. has said it will not enter the war without a direct attack on itself, an attack on U.S. forces in places such as Iraq could trigger the “massive conflict” warned of by Donald Trump last week.

Responsible Statecraft said bluntly a U.S. attack on Iran would be a “middle finger” to MAGA voters, adding in a separate report that “Israel’s illegal aggression” was the root of the crisis.

As Tucker Carlson has noted, this would not only “destroy MAGA,” but it may also “end the American Empire.”

An existential moment is on the horizon. Will the Israeli government survive the increasingly pressurized crisis it has created at home? Will Donald Trump rescue Netanyahu from the consequences of his own actions, and ruin the hopes, dreams and lives of Americans in the process?

Someone’s regime looks likely to change in this crisis. The question is – whose will it be?