Dr. Nikolaos Stelgias
Mere days ago, the Levant Files warned readers of two potential denouements to the unfolding Iranian drama. The first envisioned regime change—a scenario that threatened to unleash upon the region a reprise of the Iraqi catastrophe, magnified across a nation of far greater size and complexity. That particular specter has been banished, at least temporarily, by the Qatari-mediated ceasefire that now holds, however tenuously, between Tehran and Tel Aviv.
Since Monday morning, defying expectations and the occasional missile exchange along the Tehran-Tel Aviv axis, this fragile armistice has endured. The Israeli-Iranian confrontation appears to have concluded for the moment. Yet every regional indicator suggests this drama is far from its final act. The Levant finds itself shackled to a deeply flawed peace—one that threatens to amplify the already endemic instability plaguing the region.
Our apprehension rests upon four fundamental pillars:
First, as astute analysts have observed, by authorizing strikes against Iran's nuclear infrastructure, the American president has betrayed his electoral pledge of non-intervention in foreign conflicts. Intelligence assessments reveal these American strikes not only failed to neutralize the Islamic Republic's nuclear capabilities but have profoundly deepened Tehran's reservoir of distrust toward the West.
Second, the combined American-Israeli offensive failed to bring the Iranian regime to the precipice of collapse. Over twelve harrowing days, the Islamic Republic weathered both aerial assaults and targeted assassinations. As recent documentation demonstrates with chilling clarity, it is Iran's freedom-yearning citizens who will bear the terrible cost of this pyrrhic survival. Reports filtering from within the country paint a grim tableau: executions conducted at breakneck pace have returned to the regime's daily repertoire of repression.
Third, in this theater of geopolitical tragedy, only Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu emerges as an unambiguous victor. His popularity, which had reached its nadir before the Iranian confrontation, has been resurrected. Israeli political analysts now suggest that, should snap elections be called, Netanyahu could secure yet another electoral triumph—a phoenix rising from the ashes of regional conflagration.
Fourth, certain Western commentators herald Monday's ceasefire as the opening gambit toward a comprehensive resolution of Iran's nuclear ambitions, perhaps even heralding a renewed accord between Washington and Tehran. As one Moscow source observed with characteristic cynicism: "The West clings to its fatal naïveté even as Ukraine slips from its grasp." While one might contest assessments of the Ukrainian front, the notion that Iran's nuclear program faces imminent dissolution remains a dangerous fantasy. The Islamic Republic possesses both the technical expertise and the international partnerships—with Russia, China, and North Korea—to pursue its atomic ambitions undeterred.
This ceasefire, rather than representing a genuine step toward regional stability, merely papers over the fundamental antagonisms that continue to fester beneath the surface. It is a pause, not a peace—a breathing space that allows malevolent forces to regroup rather than reform. The Iranian regime emerges emboldened, its nuclear ambitions intact, and its apparatus of domestic repression reinvigorated. Netanyahu's political resurrection comes at the expense of genuine diplomatic progress. And the West, in its eagerness to declare victory, risks sleepwalking into an even more perilous future.
What we witness is not the dawn of a new Middle Eastern order but rather the crystallization of existing pathologies. This ceasefire, although very bad, may have temporarily silenced the guns, but it has done nothing to address the underlying diseases that plague the region. In our haste to celebrate the absence of war, we must not mistake it for the presence of peace. The reckoning has merely been postponed, and when it arrives, it may prove far more devastating than what we have narrowly avoided today.