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To make lasting peace in the Middle East, the U.S. must end its blank check to Israel’s perpetual wars and join with the rest of the world to force Israel to live within its internationally recognized borders of June 4, 1967.
Jeffrey D. Sachs and Sybil Fares forCommon Dreams
A two-week ceasefire has partially halted the Israel-U.S. war on Iran. The war accomplished precisely nothing that a competent diplomat could not have achieved in an afternoon.
The Strait of Hormuz was open before the war and it is open again now, but with more Iranian control.
Meanwhile, the chaos continues. Israel is intent on blowing up the ceasefire, as this was Israel’s war from the start.
Israel dazzled U.S. President Donald Trump with the prospect of a one-day decapitation strike that would put Trump in charge of Iran’s oil. Israel, in turn, was out for bigger prey: to bring down the Iranian regime and thereby become the regional hegemon of Western Asia.
The foundation of the ceasefire is Iran’s 10-point plan, which Trump (perhaps unwittingly) called a “workable basis on which to negotiate.” The plan makes sense, but it is a major climbdown for the U.S. and probably a redline for Israel.
Among other points, the plan calls for an end to the wars raging in the Middle East, almost all of which have Israel at their root cause. The plan would also resolve the nuclear issue, essentially by going back to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) that Trump ripped up in 2018.
The Iran War, and the other wars raging across the Middle East, trace back to one core Israeli idea, that Israel will permanently and steadfastly oppose a sovereign Palestinian state and will topple any government in the Middle East that supports armed struggle for national sovereignty.
It is crucial to note that the U.N. General Assembly has passed multiple resolutions, such as Resolution 37/43 (1982), affirming that political self-determination is so vital, that armed struggle in the quest for self-determination is legitimate.
The U.N. was born, in part, out of the determination to end the centuries of European imperial domination over Africa and Asia. Of course, there would be no cause for armed struggle if Israel would accept a political solution, notably the two-state solution that has overwhelming support throughout the world.
Netanyahu’s core goal may be summarized as Greater Israel. This means no Palestinian sovereignty, and no clear boundaries for Israel even beyond the boundary of historical Palestine under British rule after WWI.
Zionist extremists like Netanyahu’s political allies, Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich favor Israeli control over parts of Lebanon and Syria, as well as permanent control over all of what was British Palestine.
America’s Christian Zionists, exemplified by the U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, and a strong voter base of Trump, speak of God’s promise to Israel of the lands between the Nile and the Euphrates. Crazy stuff, but these are real beliefs, nonetheless, and they are conveyed in the White House.
Israel’s strategy is therefore regime change in every country that resists Greater Israel, a plan already foreshadowed in the famous political document “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm,” written by U.S. Zionist neocons as a platform for Netanyahu’s new government in 1996.
We’ve had constant wars in the Middle East since then to implement the Clean Break vision. This has included the war in Libya to overthrow Moammar Qaddafi, the wars in Lebanon, the war to overthrow Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, the war to overthrow Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, and now the war to topple the Iranian regime.
Condolences at the Iranian embassy of Baku on March 4, following the Feb. 28 U.S.-Israeli assassination of Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei. (President.az/Wikimedia Commons/CC BY 4.0)
This is not to say that the U.S. lacks its own grandiose ideas. Israel wants regional hegemony, this is not a secret. Netanyahu confirmed these ambitions in his recent remarks about Israel becoming “a regional power, and in certain fields a global power.”
On the other hand, American officials dream of global hegemony. And Trump dreams of money. He craves the Iranian oil and repeatedly said so.
In any event, it’s clear that this war was Netanyahu’s creation. He and the Mossad chief came to Washington to sell Trump a bill of goods. It’s not hard. Trump was suckered, while everybody else had their doubts about Netanyahu’s claims of an easy one-day decapitation strike — essentially a replay of the U.S. operation in Venezuela.
It’s pathetic to “listen in” on the White House discussion, as revealed by The New York Times. Netanyahu, a con man, presented rosy scenarios of regime change that U.S. intelligence contradicted, yet Trump foolishly accepted.
Trump and Netanyahu were cheered on by Christian Zionists (Pete Hegseth), Jewish Zionists and real-estate developers (Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff), a faith healer (Franklin Graham), and high-level sycophants (Secretary of State Marco Rubio and C.I.A. Director John Ratcliffe).
Trump and Netanyahu in the White House on Sept. 29, 2025. (White House/Daniel Torok)
Until Tuesday evening, it looked like Trump might lead the world blindly to World War III.
The vulgarity and brutality of his public rhetoric was unmatched in U.S. presidential history.
Now we know that he was desperately seeking an off-ramp and using Pakistan for that purpose. While Trump was telling the world that Iran was begging for a ceasefire, it was Trump himself who was begging for a ceasefire. The Pakistani leader delivered it.
The ceasefire is good, and the 10-point plan is good, even if perhaps Trump didn’t know what was in it when he said that it was a good basis for negotiation. Israel will, in any event, work overtime to break it, and has already started to do so, with carpet bombing of Beirut that is killing hundreds of civilians, and with other strikes.
A permanent U.S,-Iran agreement is the last thing that Netanyahu wants. That would end his dream of Greater Israel.
Yet there is a way to peace and that is for the U.S. to face reality. Israel is the real “terror state,” waging perpetual war throughout the Middle East for a wholly indefensible reason — to have unchecked freedom to terrorize and rule over the Palestinian people and to expand its borders as Israel’s zealots see fit.
To make lasting peace in the Middle East, the U.S. must end its blank check to Israel’s perpetual wars and join with the rest of the world to force Israel to live within its internationally recognized borders of June 4, 1967.
Iran’s 10-point plan can be the basis of a comprehensive regional peace — if the U.S. accepts the reality of a state of Palestine. In that case, Iran would likely agree to stop funding non-state belligerents, and Israel, Palestine, Lebanon and the entire region could live in mutual security and peace.
That outcome should be the basis of a negotiated agreement of the U.S. and Iran in the next two weeks.
The American people have made their views clear. A 2025 Pew survey finds most Jewish Americans lack confidence in Netanyahu and back the two-state solution. Most Americans now view Israel unfavorably, the highest unfavorability in history.
Sympathy for Israel has hit a 25-year low. Now the political class must catch up with the public.
The peace is within reach, if the U.S. grasps it. Iran’s proposal is serious and the ceasefire is a fragile opening for a comprehensive settlement.
The question is whether the U.S. will, once again, allow Israel to destroy the peace, or rather this time stand up for America’s interests and the world’s interests in a lasting peace.
Jeffrey D. Sachs is a university professor and director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, where he directed The Earth Institute from 2002 until 2016. He is also president of the U.N. Sustainable Development Solutions Network and a commissioner of the U.N. Broadband Commission for Development.
Sybil Fares is a specialist and adviser in Middle East policy and sustainable development at SDSN.
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