Iran's '12-Day War' leaves plenty of unfinished business

Whether the announced truce holds or not, the fallout will linger, not least the uncertain future of Iran's leadership and national priorities.

- Jonathan Eyal

Regardless of whether the ceasefire between Israel and Iran holds, most of the world appears to have decided that the war between the Middle East's top military powers is over.

None other than the US President, whose country also briefly entered the war, is now praising all the protagonists in equal measure as though the US were just an impartial observer of the proceedings. "God bless Israel, God bless Iran, God bless the Middle East," Mr Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social, his favourite social media platform.

Meanwhile, on world financial markets, oil prices promptly sank to lower levels than they were before June 13, when Israeli jets and missiles first started pounding Iran. In short, the mood around the world is that the crisis, which seemed to erupt out of nowhere, has now disappeared into nowhere.

But in reality, what President Trump dubbed "The 12-Day War" has scarred the face of the Middle East in profound and enduring ways. It has unleashed a new and more dangerous phase in the confrontation between Israel and Iran. It may have accelerated, rather than eliminated, Iran's race to acquire a nuclear weapon. And it has shaken broader global strategic assumptions.

THE BOMB: NOW YOU SEE IT, NOW YOU DON'T Critics of Israel's actions have plenty of reasons to claim that the decision to strike at Iran's nuclear installations was just a ruse concocted by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who has spent a lifetime arguing that the only way to deal with Iran is by bombing the country, and who had an immediate interest in deflecting world attention away from Israel's disastrous military operations in Gaza. Allegedly, there was no need to hit Iran now; Iran's nuclear challenge was nowhere near as acute or as threatening as the Israelis made it out to be, critics argue.