For the first time in over a month, there was no alert, no siren today.

The last one came at 3:30 a.m when a cluster munition warhead passed overhead en route to Tel Aviv. We huddled in bomb shelters as we have so many times before. It was there, underground, that word reached me: US President Donald Trump had declared a two-week ceasefire an hour earlier. It certainly didn’t feel like one.

That same day, Trump had threatened to wipe out Iran’s civilization, or at the very least, its power plants and bridges. The whiplash was staggering. A maximalist message, one with deeply destructive implications, was suddenly replaced by a temporary ceasefire in which most of Iran’s demands were accepted as a “starting point” for negotiations. It took hours to fall asleep, trying to process it all.

Nothing about this war has made sense atleast in terms of messaging and results.

What initially appeared to be a lightning campaign to incapacitate the regime quickly devolved into a war of attrition between Israel, the United States, and Iran. Many expected the Iranian people to rise up. Yet no such uprising came. Some argued it was simply too dangerous; even exiled figures like Reza Pahlavi urged restraint.

In Israel, however, expectations had been different. With near-total air superiority achieved early, the assumption was that Israel........

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