The battle may be over, but is the war truly finished? Twelve days were enough to decide the tactical outcome on the battlefield, but the scale of destruction, the depth of fear and trauma etched into minds and bodies, have become the dominant measure of who won or lost.
Both sides scrambled to claim victory on the field: toppled buildings, scorched earth, and stolen lives as trophies of a tactical score. Yet the missing piece is the strategic dimension — the only true line separating a mere battle from a real war. Whoever holds the strategic upper hand owns the war.
When the American president declares the end of the battle from behind a desk thousands of miles away, it means that he and his advisors concluded that the tactical phase alone would never solve the greater dilemma — that of a world spinning into a new, rapidly changing reality beyond Washington’s full grasp. The era of unchallenged American domination has given way to a multi-polar landscape with complex interests and shifting power centres.
President Trump’s outward hesitation, at times even contradictory, resembled a Russian nesting doll of political motives, leaving think tanks, journalists, and everyday followers alike perplexed about where this would truly end.
Signals Behind the Ceasefire Decision
Several signs pointed clearly to Washington’s resolve to end the battle on its terms:
- The U.S. Secretary of State declared that America does not seek regime change in Iran after the airstrikes.
- Washington directly informed Tehran that the strikes were a one-off with no follow-up waves.
- Iran revealed it had moved enriched uranium out of the Fordow facility before the strike.
- Tehran’s retaliatory focus fell on the Zionist entity — not U.S. bases — even as threats and boasts escalated on all sides.
All this hints at a profound shift — a regional and global recalibration that leaves local realities intact but redraws the larger map through strategic recalculations, not mere battlefield tactics.
The United States: The Eyes of the Merchant
America’s position is best understood through four lenses:
1. Face-saving and strategic prioritisation: America’s interests come first. Washington will not enter a war that does not directly threaten its core interests. As long as Iran’s nuclear project poses no existential threat to the U.S., it will tolerate a delay but not insist on its absolute dismantlement. Trump’s own national security advisor once admitted that Iran’s program posed no imminent danger — until she was reprimanded live by Trump.
2. Knowing its real adversary: The U.S. will not lose sight of its true strategic rival — China. The real battle is economic, technological, and industrial. Losing the AI and information wars would mean forfeiting America’s future dominance. Getting mired in an Iranian quagmire — easy to enter, near impossible to exit — would be a strategic error. Vietnam remains seared into the American mind.
3. Israel’s interests ≠ America’s interests: The contrast was clear in the U.S. brokering peace with the Houthis in Yemen to secure shipping lanes, even as Houthi rockets continued targeting Israel. The U.S. appears to have pressured Tel Aviv into ending the fight. Trump even bragged that he “saved Israel.”
4. Protecting the market’s faith: Investment is the engine of growth, first visible in the stock market’s rise or fall. Trump gambled on investor confidence — which surged with the ceasefire — and will not risk losing it. America’s big-picture strategy is still pinned to the four pillars of investment, production, consumption, and exports.
Iran: A Strategic Gain or a Mirage Built on Rubble?
Iran lost much of what it built through its “Shia crescent” in recent years — and crucially, it lost its broad Sunni grassroots sympathy that once rallied behind its 1979 Islamic Revolution and the early days of its war with Iraq.
Tehran’s catastrophic errors in Syria decimated this moral depth. Its reckless fusion of tactical moves with supposed strategic vision left it with an overstretched crescent but no real plan to sustain its gains on historical or geographical fronts.
Yet this direct clash with Israel has partially reversed that narrative. Images of Israeli cities in ruins, reminiscent of Gaza’s devastation, restored some degree of Sunni popular sentiment — though it remains unclear whether this is a lasting shift or just a tactical illusion.
Iran’s nuclear project has not been buried. It may be delayed by months or years, but the scientific knowledge and thousands of engineers remain. That capacity alone lays the foundation for long-term strategic leverage. But is this only about military might?
True strategies must touch every dimension — political, social, economic, cultural, and psychological. Iran’s regime has survived. The U.S. even reassured Tehran that the strikes were not about regime change but about its nuclear file.
Does Iran’s leadership grasp its own priorities? Balancing popular demands for dignity and prosperity with its scientific and military ambitions is key — especially its growing missile and drone programs and its early entry into the AI arena. These shape the future, but they cannot stand apart from the people’s basic needs.
Israel: A Tactical Cage and Strategic Collapse
When the fate of a single leader outweighs that of an entire people — when a war becomes the last resort for clinging to political survival — you know the nation faces a devastating strategic defeat, no matter how much it spends to conceal it.
Israel has lost the victim narrative that long underpinned its international legitimacy and influence. It has lost the hearts and minds of many in the West who once blindly supported it. It has lost its own people’s faith in their so-called “Promised Land,” and even Israeli leaders have openly voiced fears of an approaching end, recalling the “80-year curse” as former PM Barak put it.
Israel’s strategic bond with U.S. interests has cracked, if subtly. The Yemen example proves it: the Houthis halted attacks on U.S. shipping lanes but kept pounding Israel. Washington hesitated to jump fully into Israel’s fight, reassuring Tehran that it would not pursue regime change and even allowing Iran to move uranium out of Fordow before the strike. Then came the White House’s decisive order to halt the war — a clear sign that Israel’s dream of a major showdown to topple the Iranian regime will not be realised.
Globally, Israel’s image as “the Middle East’s only democracy” has shattered. The fig leaf is gone: no democracy, no human rights — just an internal dictatorship, political thuggery undermining its judiciary, and leaders ignoring The Hague’s rulings.
And on the ground? The Zionist entity failed to “finish the job” in Gaza. Despite its savagery — mass killings, demolition, and starvation — it did not win. It now faces relentless daily resistance operations that bleed its army dry — an open-ended war of attrition dragging it toward ruin. Its obsession with a “war for existence” has become, in reality, a strategy for self-destruction.
This monstrous war — stripped of humanity, ethics, or any moral compass — is unlike anything the world has witnessed since WWII. It has cast Israel as an aggressor in the eyes of millions, shaking the global balance. NATO is already responding — boosting defense spending to 5% of GDP.
A Needed Civilisational Alternative
The seismic shock of 7 October shattered the strategic status quo — not only politically but morally and culturally. It has opened the door to a new world, one whose fabric is still taking shape but whose compass is already swinging.
What collapsed was the grand illusion of “values, principles, and human rights” that the West once claimed as its proud legacy. Those illusions now lie in the dust — stained by complicity and moral decay.
The twelve-day battle between Iran and Israel has proven that no amount of tactical bloodshed can replace genuine strategy. It is, in truth, a wake-up call: the path forward must be rebuilt on a new civilisational vision — one rooted firmly in ethics, humanity, and the intrinsic worth of every soul, East or West. It must sever ties with a brutal model that buried morals and brought untold devastation upon humanity.
