The Rules of Retaliation
Israel, Iran, and the End of Strategic Ambiguity 1. Act One: The Unwritten Rulebook For decades, the Middle East has operated under a brutal yet oddly stable formula: provoke, deny, retaliate, and contain. Israel hit targets in Syria. Iran armed proxies in Gaza. The game had rules, unwritten but understood. Strategic ambiguity kept the fire burning, but not too […]