Was that all, folks?

I’m not surprised that financial markets were the first to call Iran’s retaliation “de-escalatory” (Bloomberg) – oil fell, equities and futures rose as ballistic missiles targeted the al Udeid airbase in Qatar. It’s remarkable how markets now decode foreign policy more astutely than the press briefings meant to explain it. Within minutes, risk assets began recovering, pricing in not the beginning of a regional war, but a carefully orchestrated endgame.

But I’m still trying to make sense of how the war fizzled out so suddenly.

Because if Iran really telegraphed the move perfectly enough to get a public “thank you” from Donald Trump himself—especially if POTUS also tipped the ayatollahs off before dropping Midnight Hammer, helping save lives and uranium—then Netanyahu would not be a happy man. Either that, or Israel too is reeling from Iran’s shocking response and isn’t sure about the opportunity cost of pushing for regime change at this point.

Whatever the case, he’ll have to work harder to sell “victory” to his people than Khamenei. Even after successfully engineering genocide in Gaza, destroying Hamas, gutting Hezbollah, ending the Assad dynasty rule in Syria, isolating and then bombing and pulverising Iran, even finally getting America to “obliterate” its nuclear facilities, he knows he still needs to feed more blood and war to the extremist coalition that’ll keep him in office till the next election.

He’s done so much for their cause, but he didn’t come back from Iran with the head of the mullah regime. Instead, memories of the failure of the Iron Dome—and Gaza-like images from Tel Aviv and Haifa—will linger. Also, who’ll answer for the 400kg of missing Iranian uranium?

But all that’s true only if Trump can be trusted this time. After all, his penchant for deception is now at the heart of the most important policy calculus of the most powerful country in the world. In just the last two weeks, he’s twice boasted about lying to fool Tehran. First, he admitted that direct talks were a ruse—a way to “pin down” Iran’s leadership before giving Israel the green light. The same was true for his two-week window, when America directly bombed Iran. Two is a trend—and this trend of talks-betrayal-war-spin shows duplicity as doctrine.

Besides, he mulled regime change just a day before thanking Iran for its restraint, not long after his secretary of state and VP went to great lengths to stress that the US only targeted nuclear facilities, not the leadership. So who’s to know if Trump really meant it when he ordered Israel to “BRING YOUR PILOTS HOME, NOW!” or if this is the prelude to another video showing Netanyahu smirking about how they once again tricked the Iranian leadership into lowering its guard—just before going in for the kill.

People close to the region are in no doubt. Author, journalist and editor of the Palestine Chronicle, Ramzy Baroud, calls Trump’s latest burst of anger at Israel a “manufactured farce”.

“What we are witnessing is a staged political performance—a carefully orchestrated spat between two partners playing both sides of a dangerous game,” he wrote in his column.

“In truth, this was always a joint US-Israeli war—one planned, executed, and justified under the pretext of defending Western interests while laying the groundwork for deeper intervention and potential invasion.”

Nobody who knows this business really doubts that the Israelis and Americans have been working to take out Iran’s theocratic regime ever since Bashar al-Assad was forced to flee Damascus on the early morning of 8 December 2024. And almost all of them are convinced that the plan had to be shelved—or at least paused—because of Iran’s shocking success in hitting Israeli targets, repeatedly and with precision.

Even after Israel’s brilliant campaign successes—especially the early wave that took out Iran’s entire military high command and top scientists—and the fact that four militaries from three countries and two seas attempted to intercept Iran’s ballistic missiles, Iran still scored higher in terms of beating expectations, even though much more of it lies in ruins than Israel.

It has also shattered the myth of the IDF’s invincibility. Now everybody knows that even a sanctioned, cornered, poor and badly hit country can easily target Israel’s vulnerabilities—the biggest being its reliance on a much bigger power for something as basic as its own security. Even the Iron Dome works only when American taxpayers subsidise its interceptors.

So far, the choreography of this de-escalation has left a lot of people breathing easier. Trump doesn’t know what more he needs to do to win the Nobel peace prize. The Iranians honoured their reputation, fighting back with dignity and pride even against the most overwhelming of odds, always preferring death to disgrace. The ayatollahs survived the most direct lunge at their jugular. The markets are calm and war risk premiums are fading.

But the real mood in Tel Aviv—even as it publicly celebrates victory over evil—will only become clear once Bibi’s radical cabinet delivers its own verdict on the restraint Trump has apparently forced on it. They have elections in October next year. And if, by then, the same mullahs that bombed their cities are still entrenched in power—and also able to resume their nuclear programme—then they’ll want Netanyahu to deliver yet more.

And that, more than Trump’s peace tweets or f-bombs or Tehran’s self-congratulatory broadcasts, will determine whether this ceasefire holds.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2025