By Uzma Ehtasham
There is a particular kind of silence that follows the shattering of a long-held illusion. It is not the silence of peace, but the hush of disbelief. For decades, the strategic doctrine of the United States and its most dependable ally in the Middle East rested upon a single, unspoken article of faith: that their combined military might was an immovable object, a shield against which no spear could hope to break. To witness that faith fracture in real time is to watch the geography of power rearrange itself not with the slow erosion of time, but with the sudden violence of an earthquake.
The past fortnight has offered that spectacle to a stunned world. The United States and Israel, in what Tehran describes as a successful bid to impose war on the Islamic Republic, have instead found themselves confronting an adversary whose counter-operations have not only exacted a bloody toll but have done something arguably more consequential: they have shattered the myth of invincibility. When a nation that has built its regional posture on the premise of qualitative military edge finds its capital’s power grids failing and its main airport struck, the reckoning is not merely tactical; it is existential.
The escalation, predictably, has followed its own grim logic. Following the martyrdom of Ali Larijani, the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council—a figure whose loss Tehran regards not as a casualty but as a catalyst—the nature of the retaliation intensified. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ announcement of the 61st wave of strikes under Operation True Promise 4 marked a departure from the shadow-boxing of recent years. This was no longer a war of proxies or whispered threats. The deployment of Khorramshahr-4, Qadr, Emad, and Kheybar Shekan missiles against what Iran claims were over a hundred military and security targets in Tel Aviv represented a leap into a new category of conflict. These were not the weapons of deterrence; they were the weapons of direct engagement.
The human texture of this new phase is found in the small, desperate details that aggregate into catastrophe. In Tel Aviv, the sudden darkness of power outages sweeping through neighborhoods. In Jerusalem, Ramat Gan, and Bnei Brak, the material destruction that turns homes into rubble. The sight of four thousand settlers evacuating, bags in hand, from places they were told would forever be safe. The indefinite suspension of train services in the Israeli capital—a mundane detail, but one that speaks to a society forced to recalibrate its sense of normalcy. At Ben Gurion Airport, the reported destruction of three aircraft was a message delivered not in diplomatic cables but in fire and metal: no place, not even the gateway to the skies, is beyond reach.
What is most striking in the aftermath is the vocabulary of vulnerability emerging from quarters long accustomed to speaking only of strength. The Israeli president’s admission that these new Iranian ballistic missiles—carrying between six and eight kilograms of explosives—are agents of “death and destruction” is a rare and revealing slip in the armor of official rhetoric. It is the language of a leadership confronting a reality it had spent years assuring its public did not exist.
In Tehran, the tone is not one of triumphalism so much as a cold, prophetic certainty. The Iranian military’s assertion that a new balance will emerge in the region—one without the United States—is a prediction that will send shivers through Washington’s corridors of power. It may be dismissed as bravado, but it reflects a conviction born of recent experience. When General Ali Abdollahi of Iran’s Khatam al-Anbiya headquarters warns that Donald Trump should brace for surprises, and when President Masoud Pezeshkian vows to avenge the blood of his slain intelligence minister, they are signalling that the threshold has been crossed. This is no longer a conflict of interests; it has become a conflict of survival.
One does not have to endorse the actions of any party to recognize the terrifying trajectory. The war fever that grips the decision-making circles of Washington and Tel Aviv is not a regional fire that can be contained by border walls or naval blockades. It is a slow-burning fuse laid to the foundations of global stability. The danger lies not merely in the scale of the weaponry now being deployed, but in the psychology that has taken hold: the belief that escalation can be controlled, that the other side will blink first, that the old rules still apply when the game itself has changed.
This is not an appeal to idealism. It is a plea born of grim pragmatism. If this conflagration is not stopped here, the entire world will face irreversible consequences. The moment demands leadership of the highest order—not the leadership of the general or the partisan, but of the statesman who understands that victory, in this context, is an illusion. The only victory left is the one that prevents the total war. The alternative is unthinkable, and yet it is no longer the stuff of fiction; it is the morning news.
(The writer is a public health professional, journalist, and possesses expertise in health communication, having keen interest in national and international affairs, can be reached at uzma@metro-morning.com)
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