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Iran: The Wall on the Eastern Edge

Iran is a nation of about 90 million people, far larger than any of Israel's immediate neighbors, with its own ancient language (Persian) and a Shia Muslim government since the 1979 revolution. It does not border Israel. Between them lie Iraq and Syria, or Jordan and Iraq, depending on the route. On the biblical map of Greater Israel, which stops at the Euphrates River in Iraq, Iran sits just outside the line.

That is the key to understanding why Iran is being bombed. Iran is not the land Greater Israel wants. Iran is the power that has stood in the way. For forty years it has armed and funded the forces that fought Israeli expansion in Lebanon, Syria, Gaza, and Iraq. Knock out Iran, and the rest of the map opens. Israeli voices have said this in their own words; Iran's leaders say it from the other side; and the order of events since 2024 shows it.

"Not a hindrance to the establishment of Greater Israel"​

On 2 October 2024 the English account of Channel 14, the Israeli pro-government network that calls itself "Israel's leading news channel," posted: "At the moment, given that Iran shares no border with Israel and is not a hindrance to the establishment of Greater Israel, Israel should focus on Syria before starting the war with Iran. Syria has been a critical battleground due to its proximity to Israel, its role as a host for Iranian military presence, and its support for Hezbollah in Lebanon" (C14 News English on X, 2 October 2024).

Read that sequence and then read the calendar. Syria's government fell on 8 December 2024, and Israel took Mount Hermon that day. The "war with Iran" came next: June 2025, and again from 28 February 2026. In between, Israel's army went to the Litani River in Lebanon. An Israeli news channel used "Greater Israel" as a goal and placed the war on Iran as a later step, after Syria. That is the obstacle reading in an Israeli outlet's own words.

The last of the seven​

In 2007 General Wesley Clark, the former NATO commander, said a Pentagon officer had shown him a memo after 9/11 listing seven countries to be taken down in five years: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and finally Iran. By 2026 six of the seven had been through war, regime change, or collapse. Iran is the last. One account put it plainly in June 2025: "Iran is the last of what's known as the WesleyClark 7... Their plan was to have America defeat Israel's adversaries, (like Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria), so they can expand Israel's borders in the 'Greater Israel' project" (post, 21 June 2025). Full account: The last of the seven, and in the Pentagon section, The seven-country scorecard.

Israeli leaders tie Iran to remaking the map​

  • "Change the face of the Middle East." Netanyahu, during the June 2025 war: "Two days after the war began, I said: we will change the face of the Middle East. That is exactly what we are doing" (JNS, June 2025).
  • "Very much." Two months later he told i24 he connects "very much" to the vision of Greater Israel and is on a "historic and spiritual mission" (Times of Israel, 12 August 2025).
  • The "curse" map. At the UN in September 2024 Netanyahu held up a map titled "The Curse," with Iran and its allies shaded dark (Times of Israel, 27 September 2024).
  • Three security zones. In May 2026: "We have changed our security concept. We initiate, we attack, and we have created three security zones deep within enemy territory" (NPR, 31 May 2026).
  • From prevention to regime change. Israeli reserve colonel Udi Evental wrote that the 2025 operation "may perhaps be considered as prevention of a nuclear threat. But Operation 'Lion's Roar' in 2026 was already intended to eliminate the threat entirely through regime change in Iran" (Udi Evental on X, 25 April 2026).
  • "Regime and state collapse." Daniel Levy, a former Israeli government adviser and peace negotiator: "Israel wants to be surrounded by failed, fragmenting, or co-opted states. Its goal in Iran is regime and state collapse, not regime change" (thread with the clip, 25 April 2026). He told a British program that after Iran, "Israel's next target is Türkiye" (Afshin Rattansi on X, 7 May 2026).
  • The circles. Yoav Gallant, defense minister for most of the Gaza war, described Israel's strategy in September 2026 as circles: the West Bank and Gaza; then "Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Egypt"; then "hostile states with no shared border, historically Iraq and Libya, and in recent years... we are mainly speaking of Iran" (Yoav Gallant, The Rod Martin Report, 10 September 2026). The essay's title: "How Israel Is Changing the Map Around Iran."

Even voices inside Israel describe the cost. An Israeli writer, reacting to a failed army push in Lebanon that he said was meant to undercut a US-Iran agreement in June 2026, wrote in Hebrew: "You send the sons and daughters up to Moloch as a sacrifice to the eternal war for the vision of the complete Land of Israel" (Shaul Hanuka on X, 19 June 2026, translation for this page).

Iran's leaders place themselves on the map​

Iran's government says the same thing from the other side. Its new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, wrote on 4 June 2026: "Imperialism, led by the US, has built a military base called Israel over the past 80 years. And they don't accept the existence of strong, independent Iran on the eastern border of the false, illegitimate geography of Greater Israel — that is, east of the Euphrates River" (Roya News English, 4 June 2026). President Masoud Pezeshkian: "Their goal was to completely disarm us. If they do that, they'll come and destroy our land, just like they're doing in Gaza... We aren't seeking territory or expansion—unlike Zionist Israel, which aims for Greater Israel. We're not looking for Greater Iran" (video caption, 7 August 2026). Full account: East of the Euphrates: how Iran's leaders see the map.

Breaking Iran apart​

Some Israelis say openly what should follow. Meir Swissa, writing in Ynet (the website of Israel's largest newspaper) on 3 March 2026, days into the second Iran war, argued under the headline "Sykes-Picot 2026: time to redraw the Middle East map" that a fall of the Iranian regime could split Iran along ethnic lines (as summarized by Middle East Eye, 7 March 2026, and cited by Mansur Peixoto on X, 23 March 2026). President Trump said in March 2026 that the map of Iran "will probably not look the same after the war" (r/islamichistory, 8 March 2026). Full account: Breaking up Iran.

What happened on the ground while Iran was under attack​

The land Israel holds now was taken as Iran's network was being dismantled. Syria's Assad, Iran's main Arab ally, fell in December 2024, and Israel took Mount Hermon and southern Syria. Hezbollah, Iran's main ally in Lebanon, was pushed back in 2024 and 2026, and Israel took southern Lebanon to the Litani. Hezbollah's leader Naim Qassem described Netanyahu's thinking: "Netanyahu, believing that striking Iran as the pivot of the resistance would cause the collapse of other parts, sought the complete destruction of the resistance movement in the Islamic world" (post, 21 June 2026). An American critic summed it up: "So I guess Israel is realizing the greater Israel project while it unleashed America on Iran. While all eyes r on Iran, Israel gets more Gaza, more West Bank, South Lebanon, & South Syria" (post, 22 September 2026).

The American part​

The journalist Jeremy Scahill said: "The Iran war is the apex of the Israeli agenda to build a Greater Israel. Israel needs Iran destroyed to make the rest of the project easier" (as quoted on X's #GreaterIsrael page), and "I don't think there's any doubt that the agenda of Israel is a so-called greater Israel. I don't think that that's a conspiracy theory. I think that history has shown it" (YouTube, May 2026). Paul Craig Roberts, an assistant secretary of the Treasury under President Reagan, said the Iran war "cannot be understood in isolation" from Greater Israel and that Israel "has succeeded in pushing US President Donald Trump into confrontation with Iran, something it had failed to achieve with previous US presidents" (Middle East Monitor, 28 April 2026). A former CIA counterterrorism officer: "Blatant reason for Syrian, Iranian wars is a thing called Greater Israel... The president, for whatever reason, signed on to that. It's a disaster for US" (RT on X, 19 March 2026). A settler-leader clip that has circulated since 2024, in which Daniella Weiss includes "part of Iran" in the promised land, was reposted in June 2025 with the warning, "Americans may be sent to DIE against Iran for the Greater Israel project" (Afshin Rattansi on X, 18 June 2025). That is the question this whole investigation puts to American families.

Evidence rating: STRONG that Iran is the obstacle whose defeat opens the Greater Israel map, shown by Israeli outlets' and officials' own words and by the order of events. CONFIRMED that Israeli leaders tie the Iran war to "changing the face of the Middle East" and that Iran's own leaders describe themselves as the barrier on Greater Israel's eastern border.

Status: Benjamin Netanyahu, Wesley Clark, Udi Evental, Daniel Levy, Yoav Gallant, Shaul Hanuka, Mojtaba Khamenei, Masoud Pezeshkian, Meir Swissa, Donald Trump, Naim Qassem, Jeremy Scahill, Paul Craig Roberts, Daniella Weiss, and Afshin Rattansi are alive. Ali Khamenei is deceased (2026). Nothing on this page states that any living person committed a crime.

Sources​

Research captures: twitter/t28__v325.md through twitter/t28__v336.md

Last Updated: 2026-09-26

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