Tel Aviv is no longer content with turning Gaza into a graveyard—it now flies its missiles eastward, striking Iranian soil with the kind of psychotic bravado usually reserved for Bond villains and colonial empires on their last legs. Over the past year, Israel has escalated its shadow war on Iran into a theater of open provocation: assassinating scientists, bombing consulates, targeting military facilities, and carrying out acts of sabotage with near-total impunity. Not once or twice, but in a sustained campaign that makes a mockery of international law. And yet, through it all, Iran responded not with fire but with what diplomats politely call strategic restraint—a doctrine of carefully calibrated forbearance meant to avoid regional conflagration. That patience, however, may now be wearing thin. With Netanyahu’s Israel running amok, emboldened by Washington’s blank checks and the Muslim world’s blank stares, Tehran is beginning to realize what Gaza already knows: restraint in the face of genocide is not wisdom—it is a slow form of suicide.

It is the year 2025, and Gaza lies in ruins. Again. Except this time, the devastation has reached levels that no euphemism—no “conflict,” no “operation,” no “security response”—can whitewash. Since October 8, 2023, the Israeli state has waged a 20-month campaign of bombardment, starvation, and mass slaughter that has left the Strip resembling a graveyard with Wi-Fi. And while much of the world looked on in horror—or worse, indifference—Muslims everywhere awaited something, anything, from those who rule in their name.

They waited for the Gulf monarchs, drunk on petrodollars and peacocks, to finally do more than issue syrupy condemnations in Arabic calligraphy. They waited for Pakistan and Turkiye—boasting two of the most powerful Muslim militaries on Earth—to emerge from their palaces and barracks with more than soundbites. They waited, because they believed. Believed that perhaps, for once, power would be wielded not just to protect regimes, but to protect the oppressed.

READ: Protecting Israel’s narrative also protects genocide

Instead, what they got was the geopolitical equivalent of ghosting.

It’s not that the Muslim world lacks power. Far from it. The Gulf states alone sit atop a financial arsenal large enough to buy and sell entire Western economies—on Tuesdays. Turkey and Pakistan, meanwhile, field massive, sophisticated armed forces. The former is a NATO member with drones and ambitions. The latter is a nuclear-armed state whose generals never tire of........

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