Israel fears a confident Muslim power—and that’s exactly what the region needs

What happens when a nuclear-armed state bombs a non-nuclear one—and the world shrugs? Israel’s June 2025 strike on Iran was not just another Middle East flashpoint. It was a strategic broadside against the very idea of Muslim deterrent power. By assassinating top Iranian scientists and targeting its nuclear infrastructure, Israel wasn’t merely confronting a rival, it was sending a chilling message: no Muslim nation will be allowed the tools to assert sovereign parity. The real target wasn’t Iran alone. It was the possibility of a confident, self-reliant Muslim power shaping the region independently.

For the first time in decades, a Muslim-majority nation with real deterrent capacity responded with calibrated, direct force. On the first few days of the retaliation, Iran launched over 200 ballistic missiles and drone swarms in retaliation, reaching deep into Israeli cities, including Tel Aviv and Haifa. The age of impunity is ending.

Much of the Western media has framed Israel’s attack as a defensive act. This is laughable, because the reality is more troubling: a nuclear-armed Israel, operating with impunity, launched a pre-emptive strike on a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) which possesses no nuclear weapons. This is not self-defence nor deterrence. This is monopoly. And monopolies do not seek stability; they seek submission.

Israel remains the region’s only undeclared nuclear power, unsupervised by the IAEA, while Iran, with no weapons, faced 15 IAEA inspections in 2024.

Israeli military superiority has not brought peace; it has entrenched a strategic asymmetry that fuels cycles of violence. From Gaza to Damascus, Beirut to Tehran, Israel’s doctrine of pre-emption and escalation is built on the belief that its dominance must remain unchallenged. And that domination, to its belief, is preserved by waging war and military attacks on any country that it believes to be a threat to such dominance. That belief is the problem.

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The tragic consequence of this imbalance is most evident in Gaza. The 2023–2025 genocidal campaign has killed over 56,000 Palestinians, including thousands of civilians and children. Entire neighbourhoods lie in rubble. The international system has failed to stop this not because it lacks moral outrage, but because it lacks a countervailing power capable of enforcing limits on Israeli conduct.

From Osirak in Iraq (1981) and again the Gulf Wars which destroyed Iraq, to Syria (2007) to post-Qaddafi Libya, every attempt at Muslim strategic autonomy has been crushed, militarily or diplomatically.

If peace is the goal, then strategic balance must be the foundation. The region does not need more managed instability enforced by drones and airstrikes. It needs the emergence of confident, capable Muslim powers that can deter aggression, uphold sovereignty, and demand mutual respect.

This is not merely about geography or weapons. It is about reclaiming agency for a civilisation that has, for decades, been denied its place in the regional security calculus. The Muslim world must not be consigned to permanent observer status in a conflict that implicates its history, peoples, and sacred sites. If deterrence is to be credible and just, it must emerge from within the civilisational sphere most acutely impacted. No actor, Western or Eastern, can substitute the legitimacy that a confident Muslim power brings to the table.

Iran, for all its internal complexities, has become a lightning rod because it defies this imposed inferiority. Its scientific progress and resistance to Israeli hegemony are treated as existential threats, not because of what Iran is, but because it disrupts the hierarchy. When Israel possesses nuclear arms, it’s framed as responsible deterrence. When Iran seeks strategic self-reliance, it’s branded a rogue.

This double standard is no longer tenable. Strategic self-reliance is not extremism. It is a basic sovereign right.

Some argue that parity invites conflict. History shows it is the opposite. The Cold War never became a direct clash between the U.S. and USSR precisely because deterrence held. In contrast, Israel’s unchecked superiority invites adventurism, a temptation to strike first, define the rules, and dictate the outcome. Peace without balance is not peace. It is conditional surrender.

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Critics might ask: why must this counterweight be Muslim? Because the suppression has been civilisational. The dispossession of Palestinians, the targeting of Muslim-majority states’ strategic programs, and the broader narrative that paints Muslim power as inherently destabilising—these are not random. They form a pattern of marginalisation that only a Muslim power can credibly challenge. Western states are compromised by alliances. China and Russia lack the historical, moral, and religious stake. Brazil or South Africa may offer solidarity, but they are not of the region. Muslim powers are.

Religious double standards must be redressed by religious equals. Just as Israel falsely claims Jewish identity as a strategic asset, Muslim states must assert their own civilisational legitimacy, not as a threat, but as rightful participants in shaping regional order.

This is not a call for proliferation. It is a call for strategic dignity. For too long, the Muslim world has been told to disarm, defer, and depend. That formula has delivered neither justice nor security. Deterrence is not the exclusive right of the West or its allies. It is the prerogative of any nation seeking to live in freedom, not fear.

Malaysia, along with other principled voices in the Global South, must speak clearly: this war is not just about Israel and Iran; it is about the Islamic world’s right to chart its own destiny. As several OIC leaders have rightly noted, the silence in the face of Israel’s unilateral aggression reveals a deeper double standard. Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim has consistently called out these hypocrisies, urging that Muslim nations must no longer be viewed as passive subjects in a rigged world order.

As the rubble settles in Tehran and Tel Aviv alike, the choice before us is stark: return to one-sided domination, or forge a new equilibrium where peace is sustained not by bombs, but by balance.

If the world truly wants peace, it must stop demanding Muslim obedience and start enabling Muslim agency. Only then can justice and stability be achieved not through fear, but through fairness.

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The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.