Why Israel Wants a War with Iran (w/ Gideon Levy) | Chris Hedges Report
About this episode
Chris Hedges interviews Gideon Levy about the ideological forces driving Israel's push for war with Iran and the consequences of military actions in the region.
As the war between the United States, Israel, and Iran intensifies, the justifications for its outbreak grow increasingly murky, shifting between nuclear fears, regime change, and regional security concerns. In this interview, Israeli journalist Gideon Levy joins Chris Hedges to cut through the official narratives and examine the deeper ideological forces driving Israel’s long-standing push toward confrontation with Iran under Benjamin Netanyahu. Levy argues that the war cannot be understood purely through strategy or geopolitics, but instead through a deeply embedded national mindset. “War is always the first option, not the last one in Israel,” he explains, pointing to a political culture that consistently defaults to military solutions while sidelining diplomacy. This helps explain why lessons from past conflicts—from Gaza to Lebanon—have failed to meaningfully alter Israeli policy, even when those campaigns produced questionable results. At the same time, the human consequences have been dire. As the region destabilizes further, Levy emphasizes the sheer scale of displacement caused by Israeli military actions, noting that “six million human beings…were expelled, uprooted…
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