Missiles fall on Tel Aviv. Entire housing blocks lie in ruins. Yet Israeli markets are rising. The shekel is strengthening. Have investors lost their senses? No, the smart money is on the Jewish state. They see not only a military power rewriting the rules of warfare and an economy built on relentless innovation; they sense this war will be transformative. Israel is not merely on course for a brilliant military victory, it is poised to reshape and lead a new Middle East.
Setbacks remain possible. Some of this may be overtaken by events unfolding at breakneck speed. But if ever a major conflict’s outcome could be predicted with confidence, this is it.
Less than two years ago, Israel endured perhaps its worst military and intelligence failure since independence – bloodied, exposed, momentarily stunned. Yet it rose swiftly, with clarity and ferocity. It decimated Hamas in Gaza, neutralised Hezbollah’s northern threat, and now strikes over 2,000 km beyond its borders to confront the regime behind the region’s misery. It is methodically dismantling Tehran’s nuclear and missile programmes, eliminating key scientists, and crippling the machinery of Shiite imperialism.
In doing so, Israel is finally executing what the late King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia urged the US to do some 15 years ago: “Cut off the head of the snake.” Much of the Arab world, whatever the official communiqués, quietly hopes Israel succeeds. Qatar may be the lone exception. The rest know the alternative is endless war and terror.
The collapse or crippling of the Islamic Republic would not just save the region and the world from the regime’s terror and aggression, it would mark the death knell of Islamism as a global force. When the ayatollahs seized power in 1979, they created not only a Shiite theocracy but turbocharged Sunni jihadism. The fall of ISIS was the first great blow to this Islamist movement. The fall, or disabling, of the Iranian regime would be the second, perhaps final, rupture in the global jihadi project.
Whatever remained of Tehran’s proxies after their own, earlier encounters with the IDF will wither away without support from the regime. Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis and the Shiite militias in Iraq will not only cease to be a threat to Israel but to their own societies. And with the regime either toppled or incapacitated, also Qatar, the last wealthy state-backer of Islamism and the Muslim Brotherhood, would have to fall in line.
In the entire region, a better order could emerge. The Abraham Accords would expand. Imagine an Iran no longer ruled by clerics. Rich in resources and human capital, it could reconnect to its civilisational greatness. If indeed the Jewish state helps free the Iranian people, repaying a 2,500-year-old debt, we could even see the rise of “Cyrus Accords”, in honour of the Persian king who in 583 BCE freed the Jewish people.
A new regional architecture could be constructed: Israel, a reborn Iran, a modernising Saudi Arabia and UAE forging together a Middle East renaissance – a high-tech corridor of peace and shared prosperity.
The fall of the regime in Iran would also offer Palestinians their best hope. So long as the mullahs endure, they will pour cash and ideology into hatred and war. Without Tehran, Hamas would lose their lifeline.
Europe, meanwhile, resumes its familiar role: anxious irrelevance. Its leaders, if that term still applies, have scrambled to say what they won’t do: strike Iran, support Israel, or even defend the Jewish state, or, frankly, themselves. After all, Iranian missiles could also reach Europe. The mullahs regularly call for “Death to Britain” and have plotted countless terror attacks on UK soil. To let Israel face a shared threat alone is more than weakness. It is strategic self-harm.
While Israeli pilots strike Iran’s nuclear programme with pinpoint accuracy, Britain and its European partners couldn’t even sign a statement demanding Iran halt uranium enrichment. Instead, they reportedly offered failed concepts from the past, the very ones that got us into this mess, insisting on “monitoring” instead of dismantling nuclear sites. The resulting draft document was so out of touch with the realities on the ground and what would be necessary to really bring about the “stability” Europe claims it so craves, that Donald Trump rightly refused to sign it, according to media reports.
Regardless of European dithering, one thing is clear: Israel’s campaign will be studied in war colleges for generations. Behind closed doors, even those now snubbing it will queue for its expertise. Israeli know-how, in war and peace, is becoming indispensable. That alone all but guarantees Israel’s continued ascent.
But there is more to it than hard power. A country whose citizens rush to leave beach holidays to board “rescue” flights back home into a war zone has something profound to offer to the world. Not least the conviction that even after three millennia, their story is far from over, that each one of them has a purpose in their country, and that destiny is theirs to write rather than something to fatalistically await.
Whatever Israel’s eternal critics may say, those who matter see the truth: The Jewish state is not a cause of instability. It is the agent of its end – and the architect of what comes next.
