The world’s craziest ceasefire

The smug idea that Israel can get away with anything without ever paying a price seems to have vanished

Guest post by Andrea Zhok, originally published in Italian on his Telegram channel.

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The world’s craziest ceasefire began just a few hours ago, and it seems to be holding. [TN: as of 12:30 PM CET, Israel has ordered strikes on Tehran after accusing Iran of violating the ceasefire, which Iran denies].

It was not announced by the parties involved, but by Trump, who made it public two minutes before the markets reopened (so much for insider trading). The NASDAQ jumped 150 points in two minutes, the price of oil dropped and a few of Trump’s rich friends got even richer.

Israel, having just concluded a bombing raid on Tehran, immediately adhered to the ceasefire, declaring that “the objectives of the attack have all been achieved”.

Since we never had the pleasure of knowing in advance what exactly those objectives were, we’re left to wonder.

Iran stated it had not agreed to any “ceasefire,” but that if, after the designated hour (apparently 4 AM), there were no further Israeli attacks, it would not proceed with additional strikes.

Just to be clear, in the final half-hour before the unofficial start of the truce, Iranian missile forces heavily struck Beersheba, Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. The message behind this attack was crystal clear: “You started this, we’ll finish it. If that’s acceptable to you, we have a truce. Otherwise, we continue”.

Toward the US, Iran had already clarified its position with the “telegraphed” strike on the American base at Al Udeid in Qatar — a position which, put into words, would sound roughly like this: “We could cause real damage, but we prefer de-escalation without your further involvement. Therefore, we’re carrying out a symbolic strike to which you should not respond”.

The result of this stupid and pointless “12-day war” is widespread destruction, many casualties, but no change in regional power dynamics.

Iran’s nuclear programme will continue.

The guarantor of this — regardless of the extent of the damage to nuclear infrastructure or the assassination of Iranian scientists — is Putin, who reaffirmed not only that Iran has every right to develop civilian nuclear capabilities, but that Russia will continue to cooperate (nearly all Iranian nuclear infrastructure is produced by Russia’s Rosatom). This means that whatever is done to Iran, with Russian help and technology, it can always be rebuilt — and that should put an end to any fantasy of stopping these programmes by force.

Iran has suffered serious infrastructural and civilian damage, but it is a vast country with a large, young and educated population, so it will recover quickly. The regime emerges from this confrontation stronger, having taken the opportunity to purge many Mossad infiltrators, having demonstrated it can wage both war and peace, and having shown it can count on crucial international support. In fact, the meeting between Putin and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi was decisive for the current de-escalation, clearly hinting that Russia might have provided support to Iran in the event of a prolonged conflict.

Israel seems to have run out of targets to bomb in its surroundings, but no one doubts that Netanyahu, unwilling to face a reckoning, will come up with some new creative escalation — perhaps toward Gaza, whose martyrdom has not ceased even in recent days.

In any case, in the history of Israel after 1949, there has never been such a level of internal destruction — not even during the Yom Kippur War — and the smug idea that it could get away with anything without ever paying a price seems to have vanished. Whether and how this will affect domestic politics is unclear, but at a glance, the era of perceived impunity appears to be over, and that is usually an important step toward maturity.

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Thomas Fazi

Website: thomasfazi.net

Twitter: @battleforeurope

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