Who claims victory?

Loneliness, Narrative Power, and the Cost of Silence in Asymmetric Alliances

When Trump and Vance began blaming Israel in an effort to pave the way for a new agreement with the Iranian regime, voices that had remained silent for a long time finally began to speak. That rupture is itself a data point, and it is where the analysis must begin.

In the sociology of politics, asymmetric alliances are typically analyzed through the lenses of power imbalance, resource dependence, and the alignment of interests. This framework is useful, but it consistently obscures one crucial dimension: the production of the symbolic field. Who fought? Who won? To whom does victory belong? These are not merely questions of diplomatic etiquette. In Pierre Bourdieu’s terms, they are the moments in which capital is transformed from one form into another. Military capital operations conducted under existential risk, strategic targets destroyed, commanders eliminated becomes symbolic capital only through a voice willing to claim it. Without that voice, the conversion never occurs. The capital flows instead to whoever claims ownership of it.

The twelve-day campaign offers a clear and observable illustration of this dynamic.

The Anatomy of Twelve Days

Operation Rising Lion, widely regarded as the most ambitious and sophisticated air campaign in Israel’s history, was carried out through close coordination between the Israeli Air Force, Military Intelligence (Aman) and Mossad. Israel neutralized Iran’s air defense systems, decapitated the senior leadership of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and eliminated some of the regime’s highest-ranking figures, including Chief of Staff Mohammad Bagheri, IRGC Commander Hossein Salami, Khatam al-Anbiya Headquarters Commander Gholam Ali Rashid, IRGC Aerospace Force Commander Amir Ali Hajizadeh, along with numerous nuclear scientists. A substantial portion of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure was destroyed.

Each of these outcomes represented not only a military achievement but also the raw material for the narrative battle that would inevitably follow.

While the regime was still reeling from strategic shock, Washington entered the stage. It claimed the victory. Israel remained silent.

That silence can certainly be interpreted as a tactical decision. I interpret it differently, as the transfer of symbolic capital to an actor that had no operational claim to it. Because this transfer occurred at the precise moment when Israel possessed maximum leverage, it laid the foundation for every political confrontation that followed.

Phase Two: Whose Plan, Whose Mistake?

The second phase proved even more consequential. Israel again carried out the decisive military operations. Yet what ultimately shaped the narrative economy of the war was not the battlefield itself but an entirely different event.

An airstrike on the Shajareh Tayyebeh Elementary School in Minab killed 156 civilians, including 120 children. Multiple independent investigations concluded that the strike was carried out by the United States. An internal U.S. military review found that the attack resulted from targeting based on outdated intelligence. Trump initially blamed Iran, but as the investigations progressed, that position became increasingly untenable.

To understand the sociological weight of this event, one must first understand how markets of legitimacy function. In asymmetric conflict, the weaker party compensates for conventional military disadvantages by shifting competition into the symbolic realm. Who produces the most compelling images of human suffering? Who earns international sympathy? Who succeeds in constructing a narrative of resistance for domestic audiences? Wars are fought through these questions as well.

A regime struggling under years of sanctions, mass protests, economic collapse, and the decapitation of its military leadership could not generate that legitimizing imagery on its own. Children’s coffins, crayon drawings, and the rubble of a demolished school instead became the images through which the regime regained international sympathy—images created by the mistakes of its adversary.

According to a Congressional Research Service report, between 42 and 46 U.S. aircraft were lost or damaged during the operation, bringing the total operational cost to approximately $29 billion. Two MC-130J transport aircraft stranded inside Iran were deliberately destroyed. These losses were significant in military terms. Sociologically, however, they carried far less weight than the narrative damage produced by the images from Minab.

Historical Pattern: From 1967 to 2025

Viewing this dynamic outside its historical context would be analytically misleading. The structural pattern is not new.

In June 1967, Egypt closed the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping, a de facto declaration of war. Following Gamal Abdel Nasser’s move, approximately 250,000 Arab troops massed along Israel’s borders. Barely twenty years after the Holocaust, Israel was a country of only 2.5 million people, digging trenches and preparing burial grounds for anticipated casualties.

What did Washington do?

On May 26, 1967, President Lyndon Johnson told Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban: “Israel will not be alone unless it decides to go alone.” It was one of history’s most elegantly phrased warnings. Washington urged Israel to wait for diplomacy, promising an international maritime coalition. In the end, only Australia and the Netherlands agreed to participate. Weeks passed. Nothing materialized.

On June 5, Israel concluded that it could wait no longer. It struck alone.
Within six days, it had defeated three armies on three fronts.

What followed?

The Johnson administration quickly portrayed Israel’s military victory as an American strategic success. Victory was appropriated. It was soon followed by UN Security Council Resolution 242, the formula of “land for peace,” and immediate pressure for negotiations. Israel fought alone—and once again carried the consequences alone.

Fifty-eight years later, the structure remains remarkably similar. The details have changed. The underlying logic has not.

Yet one crucial difference changes everything.

In 1967, Israel did not remain silent. It narrated its own victory. Moshe Dayan at the Western Wall, Yitzhak Rabin’s account of the war and even the phrase “Six-Day War” itself became symbolic capital produced by Israel and sustained its strategic identity for decades.
In 2025, military victory existed but symbolic capital did not because the narrative was surrendered to others. Trump named the conflict. Washington wrote the story. Israel remained silent.

The same loneliness produced two entirely different responses and two entirely different outcomes.

When Leverage Disappears

In alliances, what ultimately matters is not who bears the risk but who defines the outcome.
The operation was halted while Israel still possessed strategic advantage. Six months later, calls came to resume action but by then the window had closed. Regional support had dissipated. The adversary had recovered from strategic shock. Any subsequent phase became inevitably more costly, more chaotic, and significantly less aligned with Israel’s own strategic design.

In asymmetric alliances, the actor that assumes operational risk but fails to claim narrative authority forfeits its greatest leverage precisely when that leverage is at its peak. Once lost, that leverage is rarely recoverable. When political reckoning arrives, the dominant partner reframes the outcome as the inevitable consequence of the dependent partner’s behavior, thereby justifying its own exit.

Why Does the Bill Always Fall on the Same Side?

The memorandum of understanding signed on June 17, 2026, includes provisions on oil exports, sanctions relief, and a $300 billion reconstruction fund for Iran. It contains no concrete mechanism for dismantling Iran’s nuclear program.

How did a regime that had just lost its supreme leader, suffered catastrophic military damage, and endured annual inflation approaching 60 percent secure such favorable terms?
The answer lies not in Iranian strength but in Washington’s exit strategy and its need for a partner capable of signing an agreement.

That partner first had to be rehabilitated. Rehabilitation required a counter-narrative.
Vance supplied one explicitly. Trump was described as “the only world leader who genuinely sympathizes with Israel,” while Israeli cabinet members were accused of “attacking the only powerful ally within the world’s only superpower.” This rhetoric was not accidental. It served a political function. It reframed Washington’s strategic pivot toward Iran not as a shift in American interests but as the unavoidable consequence of Israeli behavior.

Georg Simmel observed that authority often rests upon the tacit consent produced by the silence of the subordinate party. The dominant actor interprets silence as acceptance. The subordinate actor interprets it as strategic patience. Because both sides assign different meanings to the same silence, the divergence remains invisible until the relationship breaks down. By then, however, the dependent party has already lost both the leverage to object and the narrative authority necessary to make that objection meaningful.

The Sociology of Loneliness

At this point, it is worth pausing, because loneliness cannot be understood merely as a strategic variable.

For Israel, international isolation is structurally different from the strategic isolation experienced by most states. A society founded in the aftermath of the Holocaust, carrying existential threat as part of its national identity and guided by the principle of “Never Again” experiences abandonment as something far deeper than a diplomatic setback. It touches the deepest layers of historical memory.

In 1967, that stark reality was unmistakable: no one was coming, we would have to act ourselves. That reality compelled Israel to speak.

In 2025, however, confidence in the alliance or perhaps fear of standing alone without it produced the opposite effect. It drew Israel inward. Silence came to be dressed as strategic wisdom.

That difference proved decisive.

Why the Breaking of Silence Matters

The fact that Israeli voices have finally begun to speak matters precisely because they remained silent for so long.

It is tempting to dismiss these statements as emotional reactions or wounded pride, but that interpretation is incomplete.

The idea that Washington acts according to American interests rather than Israeli interests was always understood in theory. In practice, however, many assumed the alliance functioned as a relational partnership one in which trust accumulated over time, past cooperation generated future loyalty, and mutual obligations endured.

The alliance’s fundamentally transactional nature became visible only when the Strait of Hormuz closed, energy prices surged, and Washington began calculating its exit.
The language of betrayal emerged from that realization.

Sociologically, betrayal can exist only where a relational contract is first believed to exist and is subsequently perceived to have been violated. The very use of that language reveals that many actors understood the alliance as relational rather than transactional and that this assumption has now collapsed.

When I compare these two moments, 1967, when loneliness strengthened Israel’s voice, and 2025, when it silenced it, I keep returning to the same question: What changed?
The threat is the same. The isolation is the same. Israel’s capabilities are vastly greater than they were in 1967.

Yet in 1967 there was a stark certainty: no one was coming, we would have to go ourselves. That certainty made speaking unavoidable. In 2025, faith in the alliance produced the opposite effect. It pulled the voice inward and clothed silence in the language of strategy.
Over years of working with people, I have repeatedly observed the same mechanism, the stronger party shapes the narrative, while the silent party gradually disappears within it. The same mechanism operates among states. The difference is that individuals usually regret the moments when they remained silent. States often realize the cost only after the bill arrives.
Israel in 1967 spoke before paying the price.
Israel in 2025 spoke afterward.
That sequence changes everything.
In asymmetric alliances, silence is never neutral. It accumulates.
And the bill almost always arrives for the party that remained silent the longest.