Is Israel winning the war against Iran? A deep dive into Netanyahu’s claims and vision for Middle East energy shift

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claims his country is winning the war with Iran, which, he says, is being decimated. At a press briefing yesterday, the first since the outbreak of the ongoing war, the Israeli PM spoke extensively about what he described as the severe degradation of Iran’s military capabilities. He claimed that the joint military campaign led by Israel and the United States had delivered a decisive blow to the Iranian regime.

Netanyahu argued that the campaign had destroyed large parts of Iran’s ability to enrich uranium and significantly weakened its ballistic-missile production capacity. He also claimed that Iran’s air-defence systems had been severely degraded, leaving much of the country exposed to continued air strikes.

Netanyahu, however, made it clear that Israel’s objectives go well beyond immediate retaliation. He framed the current operations as an attempt to remove what Israel sees as three long-term threats: Iran’s nuclear ambitions, its expanding missile arsenal and its growing regional influence through allied militant groups.

A major turning point in the conflict has been the escalating war over energy infrastructure. Netanyahu confirmed that Israel had carried out a unilateral strike on Iran’s South Pars gas field, one of the most strategically important energy sites in the world. The field forms part of the largest known natural gas reserve and is central to Iran’s domestic electricity supply as well as its long-term economic strategy.

Targeting the energy site marks a dramatic shift as until recently, most attacks were focused on military targets, weapons facilities and infrastructure linked directly to the nuclear programme. The attack on South Pars has shown that Israel was now willing to target the economic foundations of the Iranian state itself. It was a strategic assault, making it clear that Jerusalem is trying not just to weaken Iran’s military capacity, but also to put sustained pressure on the regime from within.

Tehran retaliated with missile and drone attacks aimed at energy installations across the Gulf region. The strikes raised immediate fears that the conflict could spill beyond the direct confrontation between Israel and Iran and begin to destabilise the entire global energy system. The Gulf remains one of the world’s most critical energy hubs, and any sustained disruption there would have consequences far beyond the region.

The effect on the global financial markets was quick. Oil prices surged, while gas markets also showed signs of rising volatility. For decades, the stability of that narrow maritime corridor has been one of the central assumptions behind the global energy trade. The current conflict has suddenly made that assumption far less certain.

Despite the increasingly aggressive tone of the military campaign, Netanyahu also emphasised the exceptionally close coordination between Israel and the United States. He suggested that the strategic alignment between the two countries has been stronger than at any point in recent years. However, the economic consequences of the strikes on energy infrastructure appear to have forced a partial recalibration. After the sharp reaction in global markets, the United States urged Israel to avoid further attacks on major energy facilities. Netanyahu confirmed that Israel is now pausing additional strikes in that specific sector.

This pause does not indicate any broader reduction in the intensity of the conflict. On one side is the military objective of weakening Iran as decisively as possible. On the other is the risk that a prolonged energy crisis could trigger economic instability far beyond the Middle East. The conflict has therefore become as much about strategic restraint as it is about military escalation.

Netanyahu’s broader strategic vision goes well beyond the immediate war. During the briefing, he outlined what he sees as a long-term geopolitical transformation that could emerge from the conflict. His strategic thinking seems to rely on the belief that the ongoing war may ultimately reshape the global energy map by reducing dependence on vulnerable maritime chokepoints such as the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab-al-Mandab. He thinks future oil and gas infrastructure could be redirected westward across the Arabian Peninsula towards Israel’s Mediterranean ports.

Such a proposal reflects a larger strategic calculation. If the war succeeds in permanently weakening Iran’s regional influence, it could also create the political space for new energy and transport corridors that bypass the traditional routes dominated by the Gulf. In that sense, the conflict is not just about the balance of power between Israel and Iran. It is about who controls the future architecture of energy in the Middle East. The central question now is not whether the conflict will continue, but how far it will spread.