![A protestor holds a sign reading ''Silence=complice'' during a demonstration to show support for activists aboard a boat stopped by Israeli forces en route to deliver aid to Gaza, in Paris, France, on June 9, 2025. [Jerome Gilles/NurPhoto via Getty Images]](https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/GettyImages-2218877814.jpg)
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 […]