Most recently, Israel has confounded expectations in its war against Hamas. The IDF has ground Hamas into the rubble of Gaza, killing most of its leaders. It has wreaked sufficient devastation on Hezbollah to produce a ceasefire agreement, albeit a shaky one. Commentators warned solemnly of ‘escalation ladders’ and a ‘wider regional war’, predicting that Iran would not stand idly by as its proxies were degraded. Yet apart from a few token missile strikes, that is precisely what has happened.
