So, that’s that then. Despite two countries fighting so long and hard “that they don’t know what the f*** they’re doing (actually, scratch that. If the leader of the free word can drop the f-bomb in front of the world, why am I bothering with asterisks here? Fuck. There. Said it. Don’t tell the editor).
After 12 terrifying days, the missiles have stopped. Israelis can finally go about their day without remaining within leaping distance of a bomb shelter and the existential dread that’s lingered for 40 years: that an Islamist regime sworn to their murder is inching closer to a nuclear bomb.
As a friend in Tel Aviv put it last night: “It feels like a miracle. A shadow that has followed me most of my life has gone. People are looking to the future with renewed optimism. I hope better things are waiting for everyone. Including the Palestinians and Iranians.”
Alongside this new hope, something else now echoes across the Middle East.
Silence.
Not just in Gaza, where Hamas, with such brutal consequences for the people of Gaza – thousands dead, neighbourhoods reduced to rubble, lives shattered, futures lost – has been crushed.
Iranian’s humbled Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (Photo: Handout via Reuters)
Not just across the Red Sea, where the Houthis have gone back to goat herding rather than ship hijacking.
Not just in southern Lebanon, where Hezbollah’s surviving jihadists – the ones not important enough to be given Mossad pager wireless plans – are conspicuously quiet north of the Litani.
And now, at long last, silence in Tehran, too. Because, for the first time, Iran itself has paid the price.
Iran’s aura of regional invincibility has evaporated like smoke over Fordow, Isfahan and Natanz
For the sharp end of two years, since the Iranian-sponsored slaughter of 7 October, Israel has been at war with Tehran’s triple-H goon platoon. Through it all, the ayatollahs smirked from afar, sat in their leather swivel chairs, pinkies to mouths, stroking their hairless cats and cackling “mwah-ha-ha” from a safe distance. Not anymore.
For the first time, the Islamic Republic can no longer cower behind its unholy trinity. Regime change would, of course, be nice, but it now seems almost unnecessary as far as Israel and the Gulf states are concerned. The ayatollahs’ aura of regional invincibility has evaporated like smoke over Fordow, Isfahan and Natanz. Israel knows it. The West knows it. And, crucially, the entire Arab world knows it too.
Now there’s a new status quo Israel might, just might, be left alone long enough to pursue peace
Yes, Israel has suffered. Unimaginably. 7 October was an echo of the Holocaust, a day of horror forever etched into the soul of the nation and Jewish people. Benjamin Netanyahu’s day of reckoning will come. But, as my friend suggests, Israel is more secure today than at any point since 1979.
Israeli security forces inspect destroyed houses that were struck by a missile fired from Iran, in Rishon Lezion, Israel on Saturday, June 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)
In this new status quo Israel might, just might, be left alone long enough to pursue peace. Real peace. Not the hollow Oslo sort but the Abraham Accords kind. With Riyadh. Maybe, if extraordinary whispers are to be believed, even with Syria and Lebanon too. With states who’ve also had their fill of Iran’s Islamist theocracy and proxy enforcers and are quietly grateful that someone finally stood up to it.
A regional alliance could emerge from this regional silence. Not because other Middle East states have any affection for Israel, but because they know who the real enemy has always been.
