What the US-Israel war on Iran will not change in the Middle East

In every major Middle Eastern war, the same illusion returns: the belief that bombs can rewrite history. The US-Israel war on Iran is rapidly and forcefully redrawing the map of the Middle East in ways previously unseen. Yet there are enduring realities that wars and bombs, no matter how precise, cannot erase or alter. Experts and analysts have not stopped predicting what the region will look like once the fighting ends. Some insist that this war will reshape the Middle East, topple regional axes and produce a new regional order. Part of this is true; historically, major wars leave deep fractures and transformations in maps, systems and demographics. But there is also a methodological illusion that accompanies every war: the belief that it can wipe everything away and produce a blank page on which a new beginning of history can be written, even though history itself repeatedly disproves such illusions. Across its long history, civilisations and peoples, the Middle East has proven itself exceptional in its ability to absorb massive shocks and reconstitute itself. It has witnessed the Islamic conquests, the Mongol invasions, the Crusades, European colonialism, the Cold War, waves of extremism and civil wars. Despite all this, the Middle East has remained resistant to change except when change has been organic and gradual. …