Global terrorism can finally begin to rebuild.
Two years of all-out war in Gaza have flattened the strip, while images of the dead, wounded, and rubble have fueled hate speech toward Israel, resurrecting painful anti-Semitism in Europe (and beyond).
Two years of war in Gaza were enough to destroy Hamas and Hezbollah on an unprecedented scale.
However, they were not enough to eradicate the networks and infrastructure of the two terrorist groups, and even less were the two years of war in Gaza to uproot the ideology of Hamas and Hezbollah (moreover, the ideological dimension will be impossible to eradicate as long as the fight is carried out only in the military domain).
Hamas and Hezbollah are weakened today. However, the times we are going through point to a revitalization of terrorism as there is growing instability in the Middle East, a proliferation of the jihadist insurgency in Africa and an expansion of the use of foreign mercenaries (from Africa and the Middle East) by Russia in Ukraine, amid the shortage Russian troops.
Social media (and more recently the advance of AI) is conducive for spreading jijadist and extremist, fascist and terrorist narratives, for recruiting new followers and for coordinating armed operations or attacks.
From this point of view, there could not be worse news than the war in Iran, unleashed by the US and Israel. Beyond the fact of an outbreak of a new war, is the way the three sides are carrying it out.
Every day since February 28, the Iran conflict is becoming more asymmetrical.
The Americans and Israelis liquidated regime leaders and drop bombs on cities (causing “collateral victims”), amid an increasingly heated public discourse.
The Iranians are escalating horizontally, striking indiscriminately at neighboring countries, trying to set fire to everything in the region – from the economy, to social peace, to political stability and to the extremely fragile religious balance.
In addition, what survived from Iranian regime quickly got involved in the fight with the remaining Hezbollah cells in Lebanon, drawing this battered country into the conflict at lightning speed and inviting Israel to invade it again.
In the war now underway in Iran, the military component is contaminated by the political-ideological virus, seen in speeches from Washington, Tel Aviv and Tehran alike.
On Wednesday, U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth showed a lack of inspiration when he stated: “We control their fate.” The fate of the Iranians, of course, but this is somewhat inaccurate.
There are at least three categories of Iranians:
- The criminal regime
- The smaller fraction of its supporters, among the people (up to 20%, according to most calculations).
- The significantly larger fraction of the people, who hopelessly yearn for freedom.
As usual, on Wednesday, the braggart at the head of the Pentagon inaccurately boasted that America has “their fate under control.”
So far, the only truth is that the US and Israel are in control of Iranian airspace, but from here to controlling the regime, its supporters and the prospect of its internal enemy is a very large step.
The war in Iran has, unfortunately, all the ingredients to awaken old monsters whose agendas, dynamics and histories cannot be rationally understood and explained.
Despite the self-confidence displayed in public by Hegseth and Trump, the prospects opened up by this war and especially by the way it is waged are alien to what the Trump administration understands by the term “control”.
The global threat posed by the Islamic State has “steadily increased” since the summer of 2025. It is becoming more “complex” to stop it, due to the group’s ability to adapt, according to a recent estimate by the UN body in charge of the fight against terrorism (UNOCT).
At the same time, al-Qaeda fascias also tend to intertwine around the globe, with the aim of striking globally at some point.
Meanwhile, in addition to the existing favoring factors, a new one has emerged – the war in Iran. A war that will soon become one of narratives rather than bombs, a war that will soon undergo the necessary mutations that will allow it to take over sick hearts and crooked minds.
Donald Trump initially spoke of a war lasting a few days, then a war of a few weeks, then a war that will last as long as he wants. The same Trump, confused like a drunkard, according to an algorithm that probably escapes even him, including the goals he pursues in Iran.
No one, even if they have their head screwed on is able to understand what Trump wants from this war, how much Trump wants this war to fight, or what follows for Trump after this war.
But it doesn’t make sense to decipher Trump’s speech about the war, because what is emerging is certainty infinitely more painful than the uncertainty maintained by the US president:
- This war will continue not for weeks, but over a significantly longer timeframe, although perhaps in forms that are more difficult to frame.
- This war may have an official end (dictated, of course, by Donald Trump). But in reality it will continue long after the “official closure, precisely because it is not a classic war, because it is not only to do with Iran and not only do with planes, bombs and the latest technology.
- This war is, as I said above, increasingly a political-ideological one and decreasingly one of pure military strategy. It is a confrontation that has more to do with mythology than with the narrow coat of objective reality.
The Iran of the Islamic Republic has lasted for almost half a century not because it has produced wealth, but because it has produced poverty.
It lasted for half a century not because it got on well with it neighbors, but because on the contrary, antagonism was a way of life.
It has lasted for half a century not because it had the majority on its side, in a vast territory with a huge population, but on the contrary, it has always had a vast number of citizens against it or at least deeply dissatisfied and frustrated with it.
The Iran of the Islamic Republic has resisted for half a century despite and with contempt for rationality, because it bet on myth, terror, death, lies and corruption.
Most often, it did not have all the cards in his hand, but more often than not it defined and divided the stakes.
And for half a century, the Iran of the Islamic Republic has waged a cruel war with Iraq, decades of cruel international sanctions, and has also managed to build a spider web of militias with which it has been able to dramatically influence the domestic politics of several countries.
The Islamic republic’s Iran has endured for nearly half a century even despite the fact that its regime has systematically sown hatred and discord internally, in the face of a complicated and large-scale multi-ethnic demographic.
I repeat, the Iran of the Islamic Republic has done all this by exploiting the little-understood force of myth, and the reservoir of myth has proven to be sufficient and effective enough to compensate for the chronic handicap that the regime has faced non-stop in the material world.
NATO shoots down Iranian ballistic missile headed for Turkey
