The bloody connection between September 11 and October 7

With the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks and the approach of the third anniversary of the October 7 attacks, it is worth recalling President Biden’s words during his visit to Israel in October 2023: “Justice must be done.” “But I warn you – even though you feel anger, do not let it consume you,” Biden said, adding, “After 9/11, we were angry in the United States.” “While we sought justice and achieved justice, we also made mistakes” – he was referring here to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, which began with great fanfare and ended in a bloody quagmire.

Biden knew why he was delivering this message specifically to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – someone who, for decades, has instigated regional wars, even if by pushing the U.S. to initiate them. On September 12, 2002, a year after the events of 9/11 and six months before the American invasion of Iraq, then-private citizen Netanyahu appeared before the U.S. House of Representatives’ State Department Oversight Committee and said, “An attack on Iraq will create a positive ripple effect in the Middle East and Iran.” He also promised that the overthrow of Saddam Hussein’s regime would bring “enormous positive consequences.”

Six months later, the United States went to war in Iraq. The regime was indeed toppled quickly, but Iraq sank into occupation, civil war, and terrorism, becoming the breeding ground from which ISIS emerged, and Iranian influence in Iraq grew tremendously.

In 2015, Netanyahu again came to the American Congress, this time to try to thwart the nuclear deal with Iran and attempted to convince them that the deal does not block Iran’s path to a bomb but paves it.

Netanyahu failed in 2015, but three years later, Donald Trump withdrew from the agreement at his encouragement. However, instead of stopping Iran’s nuclear program, exactly the opposite of what Netanyahu and Trump sought to achieve happened—during the American withdrawal, Iran adhered to the imposed limitations. Afterward, it gradually began to violate them, installed advanced centrifuges, increased its uranium stockpile, and reached 60 percent enrichment. Thus, with Netanyahu’s encouragement, an agreement intended to keep Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons was replaced by a failed policy that ultimately turned Iran into a nuclear threshold state and an ally of Russia and China, who were on the American side until the withdrawal from the agreement.

As someone who does not learn from his failures, Netanyahu continued to push the entire region into further wars – in June 2025, he convinced Trump to bomb nuclear facilities in Iran, but the enriched uranium stockpile was not affected. Netanyahu did not stop pressuring President Trump to attack Iran again, arguing that there was an opportunity to bring about a regime change. Thus, the latest war began in February of this year and has continued with limited intensity until now.

The Iranian regime is still in power, Iran controls the Strait of Hormuz, and the war has spread throughout the region. Even here, Netanyahu promised easy victories that proved difficult, if not impossible, to achieve.

All of this, of course, is happening alongside the management of the war in Gaza, which fulfilled Biden’s warning and was driven more by rage and revenge than by logic and strategy.

In 2002, Netanyahu presented his three W’s—Winning, Winning, Winning—to his listeners in the congressional committee. But this simplistic notion led the United States and the entire region into an endless cycle of never-ending wars, unstable stability, and everything but victory. This also happened because Netanyahu’s wars, both those he conducts himself and those he pushes others to start, fail to connect military power with the necessary political moves.

This has also happened since October 7, when Netanyahu led fighting on many fronts but completely abandoned the diplomatic field. When this field was neglected, alongside the acceleration of actions to establish facts on the ground throughout the West Bank that would prevent a future settlement, the result was not only a moral and military failure but also significant strategic damage.

In recent days, another illustration of Netanyahu’s failure has emerged, as Britain announced a ban on importing products from the settlements and measures against companies and individuals who finance, build, or enable their expansion, with additional Western countries joining the move or considering similar steps. Even if there is logic in international measures that can stop the expansion of settlements throughout the West Bank, this decision itself constitutes a stinging failure of Netanyahu’s foreign policy.

Strategic leadership is not the ability to persuade another power to use force, but, first and foremost, the ability to understand what will happen after that force is used. Netanyahu proves time and again that he lacks strategic vision, that he cannot see beyond the moment the cannons are fired, and that he cannot transform military power into political strength. Israel needs the United States not only to provide us with weapons or to fight alongside us.

Israel needs the United States not only to provide us with weapons or to fight alongside us. We also need the U.S. as a moral partner that helps us see beyond the next campaign and supports us with its soft power, no less than its military strength.

After almost a quarter of a century of false promises that just one more war would fix the Middle East, it’s time to learn the simplest lesson – military power is an essential tool for security, but it is not a substitute for policy and strategy.