From the Six-Day War to the ‘Twelve-Day War’

The first round of the Iran-Israel conflict/war has likely concluded. This round, which consisted of mutual air strikes and missile salvos, will go down in the recent history of the Middle East as the Twelve-Day War. In the past, there was the Six-Day War; on June 5, 1967, Israel attacked Egypt first, followed by Syria and Jordan in the succeeding days, inflicting a crushing defeat on three Arab states in six days and quadrupling its territory.

Israel had previously fought these three states in 1948, immediately after its declaration of independence. In that war, it dealt a serious defeat to Egypt and Syria but was defeated by Jordan. Jordanian forces, largely trained and commanded by British officers, had ‘occupied’ the areas of what are today the West Bank and East Jerusalem. When Israel attacked its Arab neighbors in June 1967, it once again inflicted a devastating defeat on the two states it had beaten in the 1948 war, occupying Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula and Syria’s Golan region. It also defeated Jordan, annexing East Jerusalem and the West Bank, thereby roughly quadrupling its own territory. And because it managed to do all this in six days, these conflicts went down in history as the Six-Day War.

This defeat was not only devastating and humiliating for the warring Arab states and the Arab world in general, but it also brought about the end of the legendary Egyptian leader Nasser. Following his death from a sudden heart attack three years later (1970), it marked the end of the Pan-Arabism ideology not just in Egypt but across the entire Arab world. When the Arab states of Egypt and Syria responded to this defeat in 1973 with what was perhaps their first synchronized and well-planned attack (the Yom Kippur War, October 7, 1973), they managed to reclaim all the territory Israel had occupied in the Six-Day War on the very first day. However, thanks to the most extensive arms and ammunition airlift in history, conducted by the United States with large military transport planes flying directly to the front lines, Israel managed to turn the tide of the war and bring it to a close at its starting point. A similar airlift by the Soviet Union to the Arab countries saved Egypt’s encircled Third Army in the Sinai Peninsula from annihilation, but it was not enough for them to regain the military successes of the initial days.

Israel has not fought a war with any state since 1973

The Yom Kippur War would also be a turning point in the Arab-Israeli conflict. The policy initiated by Egyptian leader Anwar Sadat just before the war—of rapidly distancing from the Soviet Union and moving closer to the US—paid off for Cairo. Through the US-mediated peace process (Camp David), Egypt largely recovered the territories it had lost in the 1967 war, briefly regained in the early days of the 1973 war, and then lost again as the war turned in Israel’s favor. However, when this process, which began with recognizing Israel’s right to exist in the Middle East, progressed to the appointment of ambassadors between the two countries and the signing of the Camp David Accords, Egypt would be expelled from the Arab League at the initiative of Arab nations led by Syria, Iraq, and Libya.

The subsequent years were not at all positive for the Arab states and Palestinians who favored continuing the struggle against Israel to the end. The unipolar world order that emerged under American leadership after the collapse of the Soviet Union opened every window of opportunity for Israel. Eventually, the Iraqi and Libyan regimes that opposed reconciliation with Israel were overthrown, and their leaders (Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi) were killed. Syria, destabilized by our [Türkiye’s] own misguided policies, was added to this chain of events (2011-2024). Meanwhile, the Oslo Peace Process, initiated in the early 1990s, was sabotaged by extremist parties and the political elite in Israel.

During this period, while Israel tormented Palestinians and the groups in Southern Lebanon that would become Hezbollah for years, the instability and popular discontent in Iraq helped Iran gain tremendous strategic depth in that country and in Syria. Thus began the emergence of the forces known as the Axis of Resistance. The Hamas, Hezbollah, Hashd al-Shaabi [Popular Mobilization Forces], and Yemen’s Ansar Allah movements either began or developed during this period. The Syrian state seemed to act as a bridge connecting the Axis of Resistance, from Iran to Hezbollah and even to Hamas.

It would be appropriate to view Israel’s June 13 attack on Iran as a continuation of the series of wars it launched in response to Hamas’s attacks on October 7, 2023, waged first against Hamas in Gaza, which a majority of global expert opinion has deemed a ‘genocide’. Perhaps the most significant development that paved the way for Israel, which had been unable to achieve sufficient success against Hezbollah, was the completely unexpected fall of the Syrian regime in December 2024 and former President Bashar al-Assad’s flight to Moscow.

Israel engaged in war with a state actor for the first time since 1973

Israel’s air operation against Iran, launched on June 13, is its first conflict with a state actor since the three-week war against Egypt and Syria in 1973. Moreover, this cannot be considered a full-scale war, as the land and naval forces of these two states, separated by approximately two thousand kilometers of land borders, did not participate in the clashes, and their special forces did not conduct operations against each other.

Israel’s air strikes on Iran were launched simultaneously with assassination operations by opposition/espionage elements it had cultivated within Iran, killing high-level civilian/military officials in Tehran. In this respect, Israel’s attack must have achieved the effect of a complete surprise raid. However, it is also clear that this should not be exaggerated. Indeed, the Iranian administration made new appointments within hours and began its first missile attacks on Israel that same evening. No Western air defense system could fully stop Iran’s missile attacks, which were carried out with increasing intensity; the legendary air defense system known as the Iron Dome was largely ineffective. In contrast, the Israeli air force’s strikes had only a limited impact. The limited involvement of the US in the war did not significantly damage Iran’s missile launch capabilities, and ultimately, the parties—likely Israel—requested or agreed to a ceasefire.

The results of the Twelve-Day War

In these clashes, Iran’s subjection of Israeli territory to intense missile fire is an extraordinary achievement; since its establishment in 1948, Israeli residential areas had never been comprehensively bombed by any state. In the 1948-49 war that began immediately after its declaration of independence, Israel fought against three Arab states (Egypt, Syria, Jordan). In contrast, in the Six-Day War, it launched a surprise attack on these three states, inflicting a disastrous defeat on all of them. In the 1973 War, it was the one surprised, but in none of these conflicts were its territories and residential areas subjected to any significant air raids by the air forces of the countries it fought.

However, in the last two of these wars—air forces were not widely used in the first—Israel had subjected the major centers of Egypt, Syria, and Jordan, including their capitals, to intense aerial bombardment. While Israel’s superiority in air power was clear in the conflict with Iran, Iran’s undisputed superiority in missiles turned every inch of Israeli territory into a target. The effect this will have on the Israeli public in the short and medium term must be taken seriously. For Israeli citizens, a large majority of whom hold dual passports, the government’s refusal to allow them to leave the country for security reasons during the conflict strengthens this thesis.

The first question after the conflict concerns whether this ceasefire will be permanent. Although Israel has largely adhered to ceasefire processes signed after wars with states, it has not behaved the same way toward actors like Hamas and similar groups—with Hezbollah being a partial exception. How it will act towards a state actor like Iran remains a significant question. On the other hand, even if the ceasefire holds, it would be overly optimistic to think that Israel and the United States have abandoned the idea of regime change.

It is not easy to predict at this moment how Iran’s gaining of considerable sympathy in world public opinion and Israel’s image as a country continuing its aggression after the Gaza genocide will concretely reflect on the field of struggle. In this period, where the limits of what Trump can do for Israel have become clear, it does not appear to be a strong possibility that Israel will change its foreign and security policies by accepting multipolarity as a given.

In this case, one can assume with certainty that Iran will try to fill its gaps by acquiring air defense systems from Russia and advanced fighter jets from China, while Israel, as always, will prepare for the next round with all the systems developed by the American arms industry. It is also among the possibilities that Iran could establish a strong deterrence, dissuading Israel and America from this course. There is no doubt that there are many lessons for Türkiye to draw from this war. Foremost among them would be for Ankara to understand how wrong its Syria policies were, which completely paved the way for Israel, and to act accordingly. The lessons for Türkiye are not the subject of this article and will be addressed in other analyses, so we will leave it at that for now…

Prof. Dr. Hasan Ünal

Başkent University

Department of Political Science and International Relations