Israel’s biblical Lebensraum hits Iran

Hitler came up with the concept of ‘Lebensraum,’ or a living space that is vital for Germany’s survival. The Nazi idea meant that overcrowded Germany needs more space to grow into, exploit and inhabit. Expanding into surrounding countries such as Poland, Czechoslovakia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, today’s Ukraine and Belarus, among others is thus justified. Under this ideology, other peoples and societies were deemed inferior or "unworthy" communities that were to be displaced or destroyed to ensure the dominance of the "Aryan race".

The ultimate objective was perpetual expansion and the subjugation of others, using demography as a primary pretext.

In Middle East, decades-long Israeli ‘Lebensraum’, whose goal is also expansion and subjugation, but with security as its pretext, took a toll on many Arab countries. In the 1967, Israel launched what it described a ‘pre-emptive war’ on Egypt, Syria and Jordan, tripling its size by occupying the Sinai, the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip, and the Golan Heights.

A decade later, and still suffering the catastrophic defeat, Egypt made peace with Israel, then removed from the conflict, and ‘peacefully’ subdued. In 1982, the Israeli Lebensraum security engine was activated again when Israel invaded Lebanon, besieged its capital, and started a military occupation of South Lebanon that lasted until 2000.

When Israel is not the primary war-maker, the US does the job ultimately serving Israel’s regional security and its Lebensraum.

The permanent profiteer of the American wars on Iraq in 1991 and 2003 and the destruction of the Iraqi army twice is Israel. Iraq with all its resources, military capabilities, institutions and population, was thrown in chaos for years to come, effectively subdued. Now it's Iran’s turn to be eliminated.

The logic of Israel’s Lebensraum expansive security is so frightening as its appetite is never fulfilled. At the core of this logic is achieving a flattened, fragmented and weakened Middle East as a condition for its survival and dominance. Any rising power anywhere around the region is closely monitored by Israeli radars and conceived of as a potential enemy until proven otherwise.

Yet, another dangerous element is recently and publicly added to the mix: the discourse of biblical greater Israel. Ancient religious myths, where God promised the Jews the lands between today’s Egypt’s Nile and Iraq’s Euphrates, merged with Christian Zionists fanaticism and apocalyptic thinking, are fed into Israeli perspectives of regional control. This gives a religious justification for an already aggressive doctrine.

From the pronounced dreams of Benjamin Netanyahu, to public statements by American officials, the millennial idea of Greater Israel is no longer in the shadows.

Mike Huckabee, the American ambassador to Israel shockingly said, in February, it is fine if Israel took all what it was given by God between the Nile to the Euphrates. The ‘promised area’ in this imagination includes massive territory of Egypt, Syria and Iraq, all of today’s Jordan, Lebanon and Kuwait, along with the northern part of Saudi Arabia.

Ahmet Davutoglu, a former Turkish foreign minister and chairman of Gelecek party, described Huckabee’s statements as “a declaration of an openly expansionist doctrine.” If demography was Hitler’s drive behind his expansionist campaigns, security is Israel’s engine for its own ‘Lebensraum,’ or living space.

Israel’s is also different in another aspect. Here, there is no need for material military occupation of the massive space indicated by the ‘promise.’ The nature of dominance takes various forms of control such as maintaining military superiority across the region, a free hand to intervene anywhere anytime, and forced favorable economic and intelligence connections that are imposed with indirect intimidating.

The permanent goal is to guarantee that no present or future military power should be tolerated around Israel’s Lebensraum

It is against this background that the current Israeli-American attack on Iran should be understood. This war intends to finish the last military power in West Asia that stands in the face of Israel’s crowning as the unrivalled force in the region. Using the same typical pretext of security, Iran must be destroyed as Iraq was destroyed.

This is the new Middle East that Netanyahu keeps bragging about. In this Middle East the military equation and imbalance of power that must be persevered is drawn on the strangest example of ceasefire ever existed:  enforced in the Gaza Strip and South Lebanon. Israel enjoys a free hand to strike Palestinians and Lebanese as it wishes, while others are prevented from defending themselves.

In this equation, Israel controls the skies through its superior American air force, and controls the lands through intelligence and technology. Israel’s direct and indirect dominance dictates the version of stability and economic prosperity that Israeli and American masters prescribe for the region.

The expansiveness of the Israeli security paradigm is astonishingly destructive. This paradigm stretches way beyond the immediate occupation of the Gaza Strip, to controlling ‘buffer zone’ territories deep inside Syria and South Lebanon. At a bigger scale and even before ‘finishing’ Iran, Turkey and Pakistan started to markedly feature on Israel’s ‘threats’ agenda and its next targets.

Netanyahu has repeatedly pointed to the potential threat of an “emerging Sunni axis,” referring to Turkey, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. That these states are close American allies is irrelevant for him. The Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennet warned in February that “Turkey is the new Iran.”

In November 2025, Amichai Chikli, the Minister of Diaspora Affairs described Turkey as “the greatest threat to the State of Israel.” Similar statements in this vein are numerous; all confirms the dominant idea of regional expansion.

Even Algeria, located thousands of miles from Israel’s borders, has been flagged by Israeli officials as regional security concern.In August 2021 during his visit to Morocco, then-Foreign Minister Yair Lapid expressed worries about the role played by Algeria in the region, specifically citing Algeria’s closeness to Iran and the campaign Algiers led to block Israel from obtaining observer status at the African Union.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesperson later stated that Algeria had become a "passage for terrorist movements" at the instigation of Iran and that the cooperation between the two was a matter of "particular concern."

These are not passing comments. They reflect an increasingly established orientation across the top echelon in Israel, where a state that is drunk on power and unfettered American support is led by desire to destroy all it faces in what it perceives as its living space at whatever cost, unapologetic, and facing no deterrence.

Khaled Al Hroub is Palestinian academic and author of Hamas: A Beginner’s Guide, and Hamas: Political Thought and Practice.

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