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........

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