2025-2026 U.S.-Israel-Iran War

Iran since its Islamic revolution 1979 had supported and in some cases created militaristic proxies operating in Arab countries all around Israel. With Iranian funding and varying degrees of coordination, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Assad regime in Syria, Shia militias in Iraq, the Houthis in Yemen, and Hamas in Gaza and elsewhere formed Iran’s Axis of Resistance to the “Great Satan” (the United States) and the “Little Satan” (Israel). Iranian money, training, diplomatic backing and other support played a part in the Hamas terrorist attack of October 7, 2023, and the subsequent missile bombardments by Hezbollah and the Houthis in support of the Hamas ware effort.

Still, Israel and Iran did not directly battle until April 2024, when Iran fired ballistic missiles at Israel in retaliation for the killing of Iranian military officers in Syria, and Israel replied with a limited strike on Iranian air defenses. The countries had a more extensive but still limited exchange of aerial attacks in October 2024. A 12-day air war broke out in June 2025, during which the U.S. military for the first time directly intervened in an Israeli war in an offensive manner by sending B-2 bombers and naval cruise missiles at three Iranian nuclear sites.

Claiming that the Iranian nuclear weapons program was obliterated, the United States then quickly negotiated the end of fighting between Iran and Israel, although no formal armistice, let alone a peace treaty, was signed.

That absence of war lasted only eight months. On February 28, 2026, the United States and Israel launched coordinated airstrikes into Iran in an effort to end the Iranian nuclear threat, destroy its ballistic missile program, and weaken if not topple the Islamic regime.