OPINION:
We are living through a turning point in Middle Eastern history with far-reaching consequences for Israel and the entire international order. The events of recent weeks were not just another cycle of escalation. They marked a rupture, a moment when the West’s long-standing faith in diplomacy collided with the reality of a regime in Tehran that thrives on aggression and rejects containment.
The Islamic Republic of Iran is not simply a regional actor. It is a regime built on repression, religious extremism and exported terrorism. For decades, it has armed and directed proxy groups while steadily pursuing the world’s most dangerous weapons, and for too long, Western leaders held to the illusion that diplomacy alone could contain it.
Still, diplomacy with a regime that seeks your destruction is not a strategy. It is a delay tactic that gave Iran time to enrich uranium, expand its proxy network and test the limits of international resolve. What it did not deliver was peace.
The recent Israeli and American strikes on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure have disrupted that dangerous pattern. For the first time in years, Iran is facing direct consequences for its provocations. The idea that the regime can be reasoned with, trusted or deterred through words alone has been decisively challenged. So, too, has the notion that its nuclear ambitions are off-limits to meaningful response.
This shift has not come without consequences. Iran’s retaliatory missile barrage against Israel underscored the stakes. Lives were lost. Homes were destroyed. Millions of Israelis were forced into shelters, confronting the uncertainty and fear that comes when deterrence fails, and then when it is urgently reestablished.
When Israel is under attack, the reverberations are felt far beyond its borders. Iran’s chants of “Death to Israel” and “Death to America” are not mere provocations; they reflect an ideological hostility with global consequences, visible in attacks from Buenos Aires to Mumbai, Paris to Los Angeles. This is not just Israel’s fight. It’s a challenge to the safety and stability of open societies everywhere.
Something significant has now shifted. Iran misjudged Israel’s resolve, underestimated American leadership and overplayed its hand. For the first time in years, the regime has been made to confront the costs of its escalation. The free world is no longer only absorbing blows. It is responding.
This is more than a military operation. It is a course correction, a rejection of the wishful thinking that has guided too much of Western policy. The belief that radical theocrats could be tempered through engagement has now run aground on reality.
An old framework is giving way: one marked by caution, delay and moral hesitation. In its place, a new approach is beginning to take shape: one rooted in clarity, deterrence and the recognition that peace is not achieved through passivity.
A different Middle East is emerging, and with it are the contours of a different future. We are not passive witnesses to this shift. We are its participants. The ground is moving beneath our feet. The task ahead is not simply to endure the changes but to help shape what comes next.
• Aviva Klompas is the former director of speechwriting at the Israeli Mission to the United Nations and co-founder of Boundless Israel, a nonprofit organization that partners with community leaders in the U.S. to support Israel education and combat hatred of Jews. She is a co-host of the “Boundless Insights” podcast.
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