There is no doubt that Israel has pushed for many years toward a direct and decisive confrontation with Iran, and that Israel's security considerations were strongly present in the American decision. However, reducing the war to being a product of an Israeli desire is nothing but a flawed simplification and an inadequate explanation for a strategic decision of this magnitude. The question here is not: Did Israel want the war? But rather: Why did Washington find itself now willing to take the risk and move toward a direct confrontation with Tehran? The answer here lies in the folds of the international environment that preceded this war, as the Middle East today no longer moves within the framework of the unilateral American hegemony that the region experienced over the past decades. Today, the world knows a new player with a prominent political presence and influential economic weight, namely China, which has expanded its presence in Arab countries and in Iran in various dimensions, at a time when Washington is engaged in an escalating strategic competition with Beijing, making the preservation of its position in the Middle East part of a broader struggle for power and influence in the international system.
Perhaps the most important feature of the current American approach toward Iran is that it no longer places economic pressure and military intervention on two parallel lines. In many cases, dealing with countries that pose a challenge to American interests was based on employing economic sanctions alongside political and diplomatic pressures, while keeping the military option as a subsequent stage. As for what we see in the current Iranian case, the two lines have met at a clear point, as Washington, through the Department of the Treasury and the Office of Foreign Assets Control, imposes broad sanctions targeting the oil, energy, finance, trade and transport networks, digital assets, and technology sectors, while continuing its military operations against Iran. This shift reveals an important change in the nature of American pressure; economic sanctions are no longer an effective alternative to military interventions, nor has military power ended the need for economic sanctions. Rather, the two tools have begun to work together to achieve the goal of putting an end to Tehran's resilience and forcing it to make concessions. However, the feasibility of the economic tool is no longer what it was yesterday, in light of an international environment that offers an option such as multiple partners, as Iran's economic relations with China have provided outlets that allowed it to mitigate the burden of sanctions on it and bypass aspects of attempts to isolate it economically. China is the most important importer of Iranian oil, and the savior that provides Iran with trade and financial networks that have allowed it to maintain part of its economic flows despite the sanctions. But this does not mean that sanctions have lost their ability to influence the behavior of states; rather, their effectiveness has become more linked to the nature of the international system and the multiplicity of powers within it.