The Iranian crisis is no longer amenable to de-escalatory language or diplomatic statements. The current scene suggests that the region is standing on the brink of an explosion—not because war has become inevitable, but because the tools for preventing it are rapidly eroding. Protests inside Iran are no longer merely an economic issue, and U.S. and Israeli pressures are no longer just deterrent messages. Both sides are moving toward a harsh moment of testing, defined by a single question: who will back down first?
اضافة اعلان
The reality is that popular anger in Iran is real, legitimate, and accumulated over years of economic crises, sanctions, and mismanagement. Yet political realism requires acknowledging that this anger has become a card in a broader international game that goes beyond the Iranian street itself. Washington and Israel are not supporting the protests out of a love for reform or democracy, but in search of an opportunity to break the system from within after failing to break it militarily in the June 2025 war.
Conversely, the Iranian regime views the protests as an existential battle rather than a mere social crisis. For this reason, it raises the security ceiling, sends military deterrence messages, and invokes the rhetoric of “open war.” This behavior reflects not strength so much as an awareness that any leniency could be read externally as weakness and quickly translated into a military strike or direct intervention under banners such as “protecting civilians” or “supporting freedom.”
Israel, for its part, is the most eager actor for confrontation. It has not achieved a decisive victory over Iran and continues to view Iran’s nuclear program and missile capabilities as an existential threat. Yet it also knows that a full-scale war with Iran would not be a walk in the park, and that its home front is not prepared to bear the costs. Hence, it pushes toward a scenario of attrition and internal destabilization within Iran, followed by calibrated strikes to complete what the previous war failed to achieve.
As for the United States, it is playing on the edge—threatening at times, signaling at others, and imposing sanctions—while avoiding a final decision. The reason is simple: a war with Iran would not be limited, nor confined to an airstrike or a political message. It would open the door to a regional confrontation stretching from the Gulf to Lebanon and Yemen. Washington understands this, yet at the same time does not want to appear weak or hesitant in front of its Israeli ally or its Iranian adversary.
In my view, the most realistic scenario today is neither the outbreak of a full-scale war tomorrow nor a rapid return to the negotiating table, but rather the continuation of slow and dangerous escalation—more sanctions, more incitement, more internal tension, and more limited security operations. This path may last weeks or months, but it carries within it the seeds of explosion, because any miscalculation could turn protests into a pretext, pressure into a strike, and a strike into war.
In the end, war is not a preferred option for any party, but it may become a forced outlet if one of the players comes to believe that the losses of waiting exceed the losses of confrontation. Iran knows this, Israel is betting on it, and the United States is balancing between them. Amid all these cold calculations, the real question remains: how long can the region be kept on the edge of the abyss before someone falls?
