Voices from the Arab press: When the ceasefire prolongs the war

According to an old saying, the history of any war is written by the victor. This is because the loser is either dead, too wounded to write, or, in some cases, eager to turn the victor into a friend. But for that saying to hold true, the war must conclude with a recognized victor. That presents another problem: no one can crown themselves triumphant and place a laurel on their head unless their opponent formally admits defeat.

This is the dilemma Israel has faced ever since it fought to secure its small place on the map. Each time it won a war, it was forced to accept ceasefires imposed by its friends. This time, too, it was the US – yet again – that robbed it of the spoils of victory. The do-gooders who forced a “conflicting” final outcome forgot that the purpose of war is to disrupt an unstable status quo and replace it with a new one acceptable to the warring parties, by defining clearly who prevailed and who was defeated.

War, as the saying goes, is politics by other means. But here, world powers have turned war into a deceitful form of diplomacy, resembling a game of snakes and ladders. Some foreign leaders profited from meddling, winning elections, or even receiving the faintly absurd Nobel Peace Prize.

Since 1947, dozens of new states have emerged on the map, and dozens of wars have erupted, with winners and losers alike, establishing a new reality that has secured long periods of peace and stability. In all those cases, war, which Aristotle considered among humanity’s noblest endeavors, served as the means to determine who won and who lost. The purpose of war is to slice through the Gordian knot with a single stroke and then let things return to their natural course. As for the advocates of ceasefires, they turn war into a knife left inside the wound, to be twisted again and again.

In some cases, a ceasefire can be the enemy of peace. That could be the case with the ceasefire ordered by US President Donald Trump between Israel and Iran, which temporarily froze a conflict that had simmered for nearly half a century since Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic, made it his mission to eliminate the “Zionist entity.”

ACCORDING TO Iranian estimates, Israel damaged or destroyed the Islamic Republic’s military and nuclear infrastructure by hitting over 600 targets, inflicting more than $1.8 trillion in damage. In a classic display of military precision, Israel struck targets in 20 of Iran’s 31 provinces without losing a single warplane.

Fatemeh Mohajerani, spokesperson for President Masoud Pezeshkian, claimed the Israeli attacks killed over 600 people, including 54 women and children. Among the dead were 23 generals with one or two stars, along with 300 other military personnel, including noncommissioned officers. Forty-six Iranian nuclear scientists were also killed, while 4,746 Iranians were wounded. On the Israeli side, Iranian retaliatory strikes killed more than 30 people, among them an 18-year-old conscript, and left 3,238 wounded.

Ordinarily, this would have made Israel the clear victor in the 12-day war. However, as before, it is labeled the loser by Iran and, even more disturbingly, by certain self-proclaimed experts in the US and Europe. To further complicate matters, President Trump cast himself as the victor who ended the war by “eliminating Iran’s nuclear program forever” and securing a ceasefire within 24 hours.

Iran tried to outbid Trump in claiming victory. “We broke the American bull’s horns and rubbed its nose in the dirt,” said Mohammad Reza Aref, the first vice president of Iran. Tehran’s propaganda machinery seized on the fact that the war lasted 12 days. An editorial on Tasnim News, tied to the Revolutionary Guards, bragged: “The Arabs, led by Egypt, collapsed after six days against the Zionists in 1967. But the Islamic Republic withstood the Zionists and their American backers for 12 days, forcing them to beg for a ceasefire.”

Iran’s claims of triumph have emboldened Khomeinist hardliners to prepare for another round of fighting. “We have defeated the Great Satan and his Zionist agent,” proclaimed Gen. Ebrahim Jabbari, a one-star general. “But we must not stop there. We must keep our boot on Netanyahu’s neck until he chokes.”

Iran is positioning itself as triumphant despite the heavy losses it suffered, and despite having been compelled to abandon its nuclear ambitions, its ballistic missile program, and its network of regional proxies such as Hezbollah. Preserving the regime itself became Iran’s overriding priority after Israel succeeded in taking the war directly into Iranian territory, assassinating a significant number of military leaders and nuclear scientists, and exposing the deep vulnerabilities of the Iranian regime.

One telling sign of the weakness of the Islamic Republic was the language its officials used throughout the conflict, appealing to international law and highlighting their supposed commitment to legal principles. Suddenly, the Islamic Republic remembered international law, conveniently forgetting its long record of promoting its regional ambitions through assassinations, violence, coercion, and sectarian incitement.

One need only look at its domination of Lebanon, a project that began more than 43 years ago with the Revolutionary Guard’s first deployment to a Lebanese army barracks, the Sheikh Abdullah barracks in Baalbek. The Lebanese experience illustrates the broader collapse of Iran’s expansionist strategy, which effectively unraveled with Bashar al-Assad’s flight from Damascus on December 8, 2024.

For decades, Iran had pursued its goals in Lebanon, often under Syrian cover, with tireless determination and the tacit acceptance of Israel, which itself is hardly a model of respect for international law. Iranian influence in Lebanon culminated in the 2023 war in support of Gaza, through which Tehran demonstrated that it ultimately controlled the Lebanese state’s decision-making power via Hezbollah.

IRAN’S SUDDEN rhetorical embrace of international law and the UN Charter is deeply ironic, given that since the 1979 overthrow of the shah, the Islamic Republic has repeatedly shown contempt for these very norms, most memorably during the 444-day hostage crisis at the US Embassy in Tehran beginning in November 1979. It is hardly necessary to look far to see that Iran has never truly respected international law but instead followed its own rules, exploiting America’s periodic willingness to treat Iran as a useful boogeyman for pressuring Gulf states into viewing the US as their only protector.

This dynamic, marketed under the slogan of “exporting the revolution,” has played out for decades. It is useful, even today, to remember Iran’s activities in Lebanon from the very first days, including the kidnapping of David Dodge, the president of the American University of Beirut, who was eventually released from Tehran after being routed through Syria.

Successive American administrations have too often remained silent about Iran’s outrages. In the 1980s, they stayed silent about the kidnappings of Americans such as CIA station chief William Buckley and Col. William Higgins, who was working with the UN’s international observer mission in southern Lebanon.

US administrations likewise ignored Hezbollah’s violence, which ultimately prompted the withdrawal of US forces from Lebanon after the bombing of the US Embassy in Beirut and the suicide attack on the Marine barracks near Beirut airport on October 23, 1983.

Nowhere in Iran’s regional record does respect for international law appear – unless one truly believes that the assassination of Rafic Hariri and his companions on February 14, 2005, was carried out in accordance with the UN Charter on Human Rights. That killing was designed to crush the only serious attempt to revive Beirut and Lebanon after decades of civil war, which began with the conflicts of April 13, 1975. This is precisely what President Joseph Aoun should have noted, instead of ignoring it, during the celebration of lighting up Martyrs’ Square and Nejmeh Square.

Theoretically, the Israeli-Iranian war has stopped. The direct American intervention on Israel’s behalf during this conflict will stand as one of its most consequential chapters since hostilities erupted on June 13, 2025.

However, the cessation of open warfare does not mean the challenges facing the Iranian regime have vanished. Those challenges persist, despite the collapse of its regional expansionist project, the uncertainty now surrounding the regime’s own survival, and the demonstrated ability of Israel to penetrate both Iran’s security services and its society at large.

It is too early to confirm that Israeli society has fully accepted the results of the recent confrontation with Iran, or that what was achieved represents a historic victory, as Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu is currently promoting.

The fragile national consensus that emerged may persist for several reasons, chief among them the continued presence of the Iranian threat regardless of the confrontation that took place. This issue will provoke intense disagreement within the government and across the political and military establishment in the coming period, especially as the war on Gaza resumes.

What occurred with Iran could well repeat itself in Gaza, while the current situation might be exploited politically and strategically to pursue a long-term truce. All parties involved in managing the Gaza conflict know that the matter is in the hands of President Trump, who, if he chooses, could replicate what he did between Iran and Israel rather than allowing the process to slip back into a vicious cycle of pointless negotiations.

Within this context, the stability of the government itself may need to be reassessed, based on the fact that – contrary to some perceptions – Netanyahu’s government is not in a political deadlock, neither domestically, thanks to a relatively solid majority in the Knesset, nor internationally, especially given support from the US and major European powers, which reached its peak when the US joined the war effort and then pressed for a ceasefire under Trump’s influence.

The point is that despite the appearance of broad political consensus and a near-popular alignment, certain reservations have arisen about the timing of the war, its results, and Israel’s ability to achieve its stated objectives of completely dismantling Iran’s nuclear program or toppling the Iranian regime. The military establishment will continue to play a decisive role on these matters, especially given recent shifts within the army’s leadership and intelligence circles, and considering the scale of the recent confrontation with Iran.

It is expected that the current governing coalition will continue a policy of preserving unnecessary ministries, advancing the tax evasion law, alienating the ultra-Orthodox from military service and broader Israeli society, supporting education budgets for the ultra-Orthodox who do not participate in the liberal state education system, ignoring the high cost of living, and avoiding structural reforms that do not support sustained economic growth – trends that could once again deepen societal divides and return Israel to the state it was in before the Iran clash.

This concern has already driven the Knesset to raise the defense budget by NIS 3.6 billion [$1.1b.] for 2025, an increase that includes NIS 699 million [$208m.] to fund food shipments to Gaza residents and NIS 2.953 billion [$877.4 million] to cover expanded military costs from the resumption of the war on Gaza.

One can stress that Israel’s political future will depend on the degree to which the public accepts the outcome of the present circumstances and on whether the Hezbollah-Israel agreement and the Iran-Israel agreement can hold up over the medium term.

Added to this are the massive losses the government will be forced to absorb, which public opinion will bear and the opposition will spotlight among voters, constantly repeating warnings about the persistent Iranian threat in the region, particularly with its ongoing missile and nuclear program. This is likely to become a central argument for the opposition and fuel continued tensions over Israel’s national priorities, which in turn could lead to more fragmentation.

Herein lies the danger to the broader political stability that Netanyahu claims, even as he seeks to highlight Israel’s successive victories and the supposed total neutralization of the Iranian threat, despite the severe costs to the Israeli home front. Overall, disagreements will inevitably surface between political and military leaders about the post-conflict phase with Iran and the renewed war with Hamas, which may expose the realities of many details previously kept under wraps.

This was soon followed by Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu declaring that Israel had removed what he described as an existential nuclear threat, celebrating what he framed as a historic victory over Iran.

Meanwhile, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian proclaimed the war’s end after what he hailed as a heroic resistance, affirming Iran’s victory thanks to the steadfastness and sacrifice of its people. Thus, all three parties emerged to declare victory. But who, in reality, won, and who lost?

Early assessments suggest that Israel initiated the conflict and successfully dismantled Iran’s air defense network, completely disabling the Iranian air force and leaving its skies open to Israeli aircraft, which launched what were described as “painful” and “effective” strikes on military targets, nuclear facilities, oil infrastructure, and Iranian leaders and scientists. Afterward, the US intervened with devastating airstrikes on the three most important nuclear facilities at Fordo, Natanz, and Isfahan, with President Trump exchanging words of victory with Prime Minister Netanyahu.

On the Iranian side, Tehran managed to demonstrate its resilience, exposing vulnerabilities in Israel’s multilayered air defenses by striking military installations, research centers, and key economic targets in Haifa, Tel Aviv, Ashdod, and other cities.

Perhaps most symbolically, Iran was able to replicate, even on a smaller scale, the images of destruction long familiar in Gaza, projecting those scenes onto Israeli cities in a way never before seen in Israel’s history. Iran did not allow the US airstrikes to go unanswered, responding with a “coordinated” attack on the American Al Udeid air base in Qatar, an operation that effectively marked the transition toward a ceasefire.

In my view, what has happened amounts to a fragile pause, with the question of victory or defeat deferred until further notice, pending fresh negotiations between the Iranian and American sides on several critical files, foremost among them Iran’s nuclear program. The second issue will be Iran’s ballistic and multi-warhead missile capabilities, and the third concerns Iranian-backed armed factions, the Palestinian resistance, and Iran’s evolving regional role.

The manner of the ceasefire declaration provided a convenient face-saving exit for all sides, allowing them to proclaim victory before their domestic audiences. Yet the coming negotiations on these thorny matters will ultimately determine where this conflict heads. There is no doubt Iran’s nuclear program has been heavily damaged, and it will require years to recover.

However, the real test lies in the days ahead: will the US, along with its protégé Israel, be content with what has already been accomplished, or will they remain determined to continue reshaping the region to meet Israeli interests, at the center of which is the ambition to change or even overthrow the Iranian regime?