Just hours before US President Donald Trump was to make good on his threat against Iran that “a whole civilisation will die tonight”, a face-saving ceasefire deal was facilitated by Pakistan — and the world breathed a huge sigh of relief.
But it was relief tinged by a growing realisation that a tsunami of turmoil is smashing the old certainties upon which the post-World War 2 consensus was based, and that a new and more perilous era is upon us.
The ceasefire effectively halted Trump’s plan to wipe out Iran’s power plants and bridges, and also saved the Gulf states from what Iran vowed would be a devastating reprisal assault.
As ceasefires go, this one was unusual in that the belligerents strongly disagreed on its terms. First, Israel claimed it was not bound by it in Lebanon, and to prove the point launched attacks against Hezbollah, part of Iran’s “axis of resistance” to the Jewish state.
In the space of 10 minutes, 300 people were killed. In response, Iran insisted that despite US claims to the contrary, the Strait of Hormuz, a vital artery for the Western economy, had not been opened, which had been the main Trump demand.
The language used by Trump, demanding that Iran open the “f***ing strait” and describing its leaders as “crazy bastards”, provided a glimpse of what the US has become under his presidency — unhinged and reckless, threatening all who refuse to bend a knee to supposed Western superiority. The US has exposed itself as a belligerent superpower that seeks only its own interests as the post-World War 2 global order crumbles before our very eyes.
Whatever emerges from peace talks taking place in Islamabad, Pakistan, this weekend, the new reality is proving a bitter pill
Critically, the latest events in the Middle East serve to underline the dire urgency of reforming the UN Security Council, which remained paralysed as the world edged towards a conflagration.
Trump was reduced to almost begging for a ceasefire, illustrated by the instances in which he stopped short of his maniacal threat to bomb Iran back to the Stone Ages. If the US and its strategists had thought Iran was an impotent backwater, its people waiting anxiously for Western help to topple the ayatollah regime, they were in for a rude shock. Ordinary Iranians formed human chains around power plants and other infrastructure, making clear the assembled might of Western armoury might meet its match in a people galvanised by 47 years of Western sanctions.
Regardless of how much Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had tried to persuade Trump otherwise, Iranians defied Trump’s claims that they were praying that the bombing continue. This was a body blow to the notions of cultural superiority that underpin the Trump crusade.
Never before has so much force been deployed to so little effect. Before the war began, tankers moved freely through the Strait of Hormuz; now the Iranians want control and the right to levy a toll on passing ships. US insistence on Iran not possessing a nuclear weapon, including what appears to have been a botched US operation to secure its stash of enriched uranium, might tempt Iran to move ahead at full speed to acquire just such a weapon. Where before it might have been unthinkable for Iran to lob missiles at Israel, it now does so with impunity and regularity. And the Gulf states must be having second thoughts about the reliability of their protector in Washington.
Whatever emerges from peace talks taking place in Islamabad, Pakistan, this weekend, the new reality is proving a bitter pill as Western illusions are challenged, and the world becomes a more dangerous and unpredictable place. And all this from a war whose purpose, if there ever was one, has yet to be fully explained.
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