RIYADH: Three months after the US and Israel launched Operation Epic Fury against Iran, the Middle East remains gripped by instability, stretching from Gaza and Lebanon to Iran and the Strait of Hormuz.
For Nomi Bar-Yaacov, the veteran human rights lawyer and international peace negotiator, the verdict on the campaign is unequivocal.
“Frankly speaking, I do think it was an epic failure and I think that there is no question about it,” she told Katie Jensen, host of the Arab News current affairs program “Frankly Speaking.”
Bar-Yaacov said the operation had left the region more dangerous and diplomacy further away than before the conflict began.
“We’re in a far worse place now than we were (before) Operation Epic Fury — that then changed names after 60 days to ‘Project Freedom,’” she said. “And now I don’t know what we’re turning into, but we are a long way away from a peaceful, sustainable resolution to the conflict.”
The conflict, she argued, derailed a potentially significant diplomatic breakthrough that had been quietly taking shape between Washington and Tehran under Omani mediation.
Nomi Bar-Yaacov, the veteran human rights lawyer, tells ‘Frankly Speaking’ host Katie Jensen that Operation Epic Fury has been an "epic failure." (Arab News photo)
“I think that we were actually on the brink of an agreement on February 26 this year, two days before the US and Israel launched the attacks on Iran,” she said.
“When the Omani mediators basically set a date for the technical side of negotiations on the nuclear file. That always is a sign that serious progress is being made — when you move from framework agreement to the technical side of agreements.”
Instead of stabilizing the region or achieving regime change in Tehran, Bar-Yaacov believes the war has empowered more dangerous actors.
“This Iranian so-called new regime, an offshoot of the old regime, is much more dangerous than the old regime,” she said.
The fallout from the conflict has also exposed tensions between US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to Bar-Yaacov, who said relations between the two leaders had sharply deteriorated.
“I know from my own sources that President Trump has been screaming down the line (at) Prime Minister Netanyahu,” she said.
Bar-Yaacov said Netanyahu had spent years attempting to persuade Trump to launch military action against Iran and had dramatically oversold what the campaign could achieve.
“Prime Minister Netanyahu has had seven visits during this particular second term in office, seven visits to the White House, in which he was working very hard to get the US president to bomb Iran,” she said.
The Iran conflict derailed a potentially significant diplomatic breakthroughbetween Washington and Tehran, Bar-Yaacov, an international peace negotiator, told Katie Jensen, host of the Arab News current affairs program “Frankly Speaking.” (Arab News photo)
“And he promised him, this is Netanyahu promising Trump, that regime change is going to be a matter of just flicking your finger.”
According to Bar-Yaacov, Israeli leaders believed that assassinating senior Iranian figures, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, would trigger a popular uprising, including by Iran’s marginalized ethnic minorities.
“This idea that the Kurds are going to be able to instigate a regime change is ludicrous,” she said.
She was particularly critical of Israeli strategic planning, arguing that while Israeli intelligence remained tactically effective, it lacked a viable long-term vision.
“I think the Israeli intelligence has been catastrophic in terms of its forecast, in terms of strategy,” she said.
“They’re good on tactics. They’re good on assassinating those they want to assassinate. They can target, but you can ask the same question on Iran, the same question on Gaza, the same question on Lebanon — what is the strategy?
“There’s a lot of killing. There’s a lot of misery.”
Bar-Yaacov warned that Gulf states will reject normalization with Israel without irreversible path to Palestinian statehood. (Arab News photo)
Bar-Yaacov rejected suggestions that Washington had rushed Israel into the conflict against Israeli advice. Instead, she described the war as the culmination of Netanyahu’s decades-long campaign against Tehran.
“No, I don’t think that Washington rushed Israel,” she said. “I think this has been Netanyahu’s dream in the making for decades.
“Netanyahu has for many decades been saying that Iran is a threat not only to Israel, but to the whole world, and that the regime needs to change.”
She argued that the difference between Trump’s first and second terms lay largely in the advisers surrounding him.
“During Trump’s first term, Netanyahu also tried to persuade Trump to attack Iran. But Trump resisted,” she said. “He had many advisers who were experts in the region who advised him not to attack Iran.”
By contrast, Bar-Yaacov said Trump’s second administration lacked experienced regional expertise.
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and President Donald Trump attend a cabinet meeting at the White House last week. (Reuters)
“Trump 2.0, as it’s known, he’s gotten rid of all these advisers and he surrounded himself with non-experts; with property moguls that are not particularly experts in the region,” she said.“And it's a complicated region.”
Beyond Iran, Bar-Yaacov said the continuing war in Gaza and mounting tensions in Lebanon were symptoms of a broader failure to pursue a meaningful political settlement to the Palestinian issue.
“The two-state solution is the only solution that we have,” she said, pointing to the Arab Peace Initiative first launched by Saudi Arabia and endorsed by Arab League states.
“It is the only plan for a resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, which lies at the heart of the matter.”
Bar-Yaacov also cast doubt on Trump’s push to expand the Abraham Accords by bringing additional Arab states into normalization agreements with Israel.
She said the US president was seeking a symbolic diplomatic victory alongside Netanyahu.
“President Trump would like to have some sort of family photo and announce some great peace agreement,” she said.
But she insisted that Gulf states would not normalize relations with Israel without a credible pathway toward Palestinian statehood.
Palestinians walk along a street surrounded by buildings destroyed by Israeli military strikes in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip on Friday. (AP)
“I don’t think there’s any chance whatsoever that any of the Gulf states that are not party to the Abraham Accords will join the Abraham Accords until there is a new government and a serious path towards Palestinian statehood,” she said.
“At the moment, there is occupation in the West Bank, 60 percent of Gaza is occupied, all of South Lebanon is occupied.”
In Gaza itself, Bar-Yaacov said military operations had failed to eliminate Hamas and were instead radicalizing the conflict further.
“Hamas is there,” she said. “They’re there. They’re not going anywhere … No Arab state is going to disarm Hamas.”
She argued that military force alone could not solve the crisis.
“Military action isn’t working,” she said. “It actually is counterproductive.”
“With every assassination, you get another leader that is just as extreme or more extreme.”
Bar-Yaacov said a future settlement in Gaza would require the deployment of a Palestinian technocratic government backed by regional and international monitoring mechanisms.
“The Palestinian technocratic government that has been appointed and agreed on, currently residing in Egypt, needs to get into Gaza,” she said.
She repeatedly stressed the importance of verification, compliance and dispute resolution mechanisms in any future peace process involving Gaza, Lebanon or Iran.
“There has to be a monitoring, verification and compliance mechanism,” she said.
“There’ll always be violations of ceasefire, always in every conflict. And there’ll always be violations of peace agreements … But there is a mechanism in place to resolve the disputes in a non-military fashion.”
Turning to Lebanon, Bar-Yaacov rejected suggestions that Hezbollah had eclipsed the Lebanese state. “I don’t think Hezbollah is the real center of power,” she said.
“I think the government of Lebanon is a fantastic government that needs strengthening.”
Smoke billows from southern Lebanon, following Israeli strikes on Sunday. (Reuters)
She questioned why the Lebanese government had not received the same level of international support now flowing into neighboring Syria.
“Why isn’t the Lebanese government getting the money that they need in order to strengthen the Lebanese institutions?” she asked.
Bar-Yaacov acknowledged the enormous challenge facing the Lebanese army, which she said had roughly the same number of troops as Hezbollah fighters.
“The Lebanese army has 50,000 troops. Hezbollah have 50,000 fighters who are willing to fight to death,” she said.
At the same time, she argued that continued Israeli military operations inside Lebanon were strengthening Hezbollah politically.
“With every minute that the Israeli army is occupying Lebanon, they’re strengthening Hezbollah and weakening the government,” she said.
She traced Hezbollah’s origins directly to Israeli occupation, arguing that the group’s influence rises and falls in response to regional dynamics.
“The raison d’etre of Hezbollah is Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories,” she said.
“Hezbollah was born in 1983 after Israel occupied Lebanon and all the way up to Beirut in 1982.”
“Then Hezbollah was weakened after Israel withdrew to the international border. And now it’s being strengthened again.”
Despite the bleak outlook across multiple fronts, Bar-Yaacov insisted diplomacy remained the only viable path forward.
“There is no military solution to any of the conflicts that we’ve been discussing,” she said.
“So we just need to strengthen the diplomatic path because it is dialogue and is the only way forward.”
She called for a broader regional coalition committed to stability, arguing that Gulf states had a direct interest in preventing Lebanon from collapsing into another civil war.
“If Lebanon ... becomes again a failed state, if there’s going to be a civil war again in Lebanon, that will threaten the whole region,” she said.
“So it’s in every state’s interest to ensure that the peace process between Israel and Lebanon succeeds.”
Bar-Yaacov dismissed the notion that Netanyahu was merely constrained by far-right coalition allies such as Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich.
“He is the prime minister,” she said. “He’s a very experienced prime minister and he can stop them if he wants to, but he has allowed for this to happen.”
She warned that Israeli territorial expansion in the West Bank, Gaza and Lebanon would create enormous challenges for any future Israeli government.
“Much of the West Bank … has been annexed,” she said. “Sixty percent of Gaza at present is occupied by Israel. A very large percentage of territory that expands by the minute in Lebanon.”
Still, she predicted that Israel’s far-right parties would not remain part of the next governing coalition following upcoming elections.
“I think the public in Israel is really fed up with the extreme government,” she said. “I can firmly predict that the extremes within his government are not going to be in the new government.”
However, she stopped short of predicting Netanyahu’s political demise, noting that several opposition parties could still join a coalition under his leadership.
“With Netanyahu, he’s such a shrewd, calculating politician,” she said. “It’s not possible for me to tell you now what he’s going to pull out of ... how many rabbits he has in the hat.”
