Many Western analysts and prognosticators turned into doomsayers when the prospect loomed of an Israel attack on Iran. We were told that the Iranians would launch a formidable counterattack. They would be joined by many of the Arab states, wanting to help a fellow Muslim state against the Zionists. Iran’s proxies — Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria, the Houthis, Iraq’s Ka’taib Hezbollah, would all join in the attack on the Jewish state. The Middle East would explode in a full-blown war. The Strait of Hormuz might be blocked. The price of oil could go sky-high. None of that, we now know, happened. Instead of a conflagration that would consume the region, and likely lead to Israel’s destruction, the IDF accomplished one of the most spectacular military successes in the history of the Jewish state. More on this outcome can be found here: “How the West got the Israel-Iran war so wrong,” by Adam Slonim, Times of Israel, July 1, 2025:
In the early days of this overt round of the ongoing Israel-Iran combat, pundits and prognosticators lined up with remarkable confidence to deliver their verdicts: the Middle East was on the brink of a full-blown regional war. From CNN panels to X threads, from Instagram reels to endless political press briefings, the narrative seemed set in stone.
There would be a chain reaction: Sunni Arab monarchies dragged in, Hezbollah launching from the north, the Houthis from the south, Syria lighting up once more. The Strait of Hormuz would close. Oil would spike. And Tehran would unleash waves of asymmetric revenge through a web of proxies from Beirut to Sanaa. Some predicted a war lasting months. Others spoke in terms of years.
Yet here we stand, 12 days later. No Arab nation has joined the fray. The Strait of Hormuz remains open. No ground invasion of Iran has occurred. The oil markets remain remarkably steady. Tehran has neither launched a regional war nor exacted the cataclysmic reprisals so confidently predicted. No new front has opened with Israel, even as it already holds the line across seven existing flashpoints. There was one small attack on one US base, but nothing else. In fact, the response from Iran – a heavily telegraphed barrage largely intercepted by air defences – resembled not vengeance but performance: a bruised regime saving face, not escalating war.
What, then, accounts for this collective miscalculation?
In part, it reflects the enduring Western habit of seeing the Middle East through three flawed lenses: fear, fatalism and faith. Fear that the region will always spiral towards violence. Fatalism, that the ancient hatreds and alliances are immutable and primed to explode. And faith – not religious, but ideological – in diplomacy, de-escalation and process as panaceas for even the most intractable conflicts.
These lenses distort more than they reveal. Western observers, conditioned by decades of conflict and media shorthand, expect titanic struggles and lopsided outcomes. We see escalations as inevitable. What we don’t often see – or acknowledge – is the role of deliberate restraint, especially by leaders we have grown accustomed to villainising. Indeed, it falls to two of the most polarising figures in global politics – Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump – to have demonstrated what one might call a Churchillian clarity: that strength need not lead to recklessness; and that deterrence, if credible, can be more effective than devastation….
Likewise, in 2025, Netanyahu’s strike and Trump’s endorsement were not bellicose spasms. They were calculated lines in the sand, meant to reassert deterrence in a region where deterrence had eroded. Of course, this doesn’t mean the Middle East is pacified.
In fact, the Israelis had been planning, down to the last apartment of the last nuclear scientist, not only what targets they would hit, but in what order. They had been rehearsing for such an attack on Iran for years. And the Americans, too, had been rehearsing the use of their B-2 bombers, that would fly 17,000 from Missouri to Iran and back, and even practiced dropping their bunker-buster bombs, for many months.
Cynthia says
Power and victory is what works.
Diplomacy can be the terms of survival for the defeated.
gravenimage says
How the Doomsayers Got the Israel-Iran War So Wrong
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Hear, hear, Mr. Fitzgerald!
dumbledoresarmy says
My advice to all freedom-minded people who live outside of Israel and outside of America: make sure – if you have not already done so!! – that you say THANK YOU!!! to Israel, and to the USA, for dealing such a shattering blow to the mullahs’ and ayatollahs’ sinister nuclear project.
Find out the addresses of the Israeli embassy and US embassy in your respective countries; then… send them a personal Thank-You note.. the heartfelt THANK YOU that our gutless Islamophile heads of state (e.g. here in Australia, where I live) will most likely NOT have given them.
If, for example, the Israeli embassy in Australia and the US embassy in Australia receive an avalanche of Love Mail from a whole lot of Aussies who were having nightmares about the prospect of mad mullahs in charge of nuclear missiles, and are now sleeping somewhat more peacefully after Fordow, etc, were reduced to smoking holes in the ground by the incredibly-brave and smart IAF and their Yankee allies… then that will enable the Ambassadors to just quietly mention to our Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, as opportunity arises, the plain fact that a very large number of Australian citizens APPLAUDED the Israeli and American strike on Iran’s nuke sites because they were convinced that it was both rational and necessary.
OLD GUY says
It’s not over yet, the west has allowed itself to be infiltrated with islamic migrants who are working to destroy their host countries. It’s easier to destroy a country from within rather than attacking with an army.
Just look at the EU and areas of America that now have muslim/islamic political leaders who hate our countries.