Who can stop this war, and how?

Israel's insolent attack on Iran, Israel being a state whose crimes of genocide have been registered by an international court, was expected to draw additional reaction, but Britain and France treated it as a normal step that had to be taken. When both countries announced that, alongside the US, they would stand with Israel against Iran, the same Israel was continuing at full speed the genocide it has been committing in Gaza for 610 days. It is inevitable that solidarity shown with another genocidal nuclear power against Iran's acquisition of nuclear weapons has completely demolished the modern-secular-humanist paradigm, already badly shaken since the Gaza affair.

Frankly, it is very clear how the message "Iran will not become a nuclear power," which came out of the G7 meeting in all its clarity, will be perceived and understood throughout the Islamic world. Traces of a religious preference and solidarity will be seen behind the refusal to allow Iran to become a nuclear power, despite all the problems in which it has long been a party within the Islamic world. If we need to speak of a real danger, it is Israel that poses a danger to humanity, let alone having a nuclear power, even by having a pistol.

Yet Israel, possessing far more, even a nuclear arsenal, constitutes today a real danger to world peace and to all humanity. We see every day in Gaza, in the West Bank and in Syria how real the danger it poses is. It has an aggressive and insolent nature. But the power with this aggressive nature, moreover with a genocide ruling against it, regards it as a right to decide whether Iran or any other country in the region may or may not possess this or that weapon.

This is one side of the war we are living through. But the other important side is that, by embarking on this war, Israel has lost the comfort of inviolability and unreachability that it has been able to enjoy despite all its aggression until now. From this hour on, Israel can no longer be a power that attacks whatever country it wishes with impunity. The aggression it has been pursuing, relying on weapons obtained from the US and its religious-fanatic friends in Europe, has today run into a very hard wall. That is why its own cities, especially Tel Aviv, have begun to experience destruction similar to the streets of Gaza. Moreover, this destruction, which it is tasting in its own country, comes from a place it had ignored with great self-confidence. It is being struck by a country that, having lived under embargo for 50 years and so under every kind of deprivation, is producing, with its own domestic means, in hardship and scarcity, the weapons that hit it.

In fact this situation also presents an important and instructive case for reflecting on what US and Israeli embargoes do to a country, or what benefit there is in leaning one's back on Western powers. It appears that Iran, which has been subjected to US and Western embargoes and sanctions for 50 years, has reached a level of independence at which it can meet about eighty percent of its weapons needs with its own domestic production. Although its air defense system, which did not perform well at first, has begun to come into play in the second stage, its drones, hypersonic and ballistic missiles will have deeply shaken the position that Israel has attributed to itself in the region until now and made most countries of the region accept.

Actually, in this regard Israel's position had already begun to be shaken by the breakout and resistance shown against Israel on 7 October by the valiant people of Gaza, who have lived under a complete blockade since 2007. In the same lane, Turkey's defense industry story can be added as a far greater, striking example.

By contrast, is it not instructive enough that Middle Eastern and Gulf countries in particular, which rely on external sources such as the US, Europe and even Israel for their defense industry, still need US protection despite the hundreds of billions of dollars they have spent?

On the other hand, Netanyahu misjudged the inaction and patience that Iran has displayed until now against his aggression. It can be said that the whole Muslim-Arab public, which expected a response after every insolent Israeli attack, also served this perception. Iran, it seems, simply did not want a total war with Israel. And this is not incomprehensible.

Yet Netanyahu interpreted this inaction as Iran's weakness and his own absolute power, and hoped for a quick victory against Iran. The great joy of victory that seized him, having caught Iranian targets almost off guard on the first day, turned out in fact to be like a poison presented to him. Now that poison looks set to poison Israel as a whole. Even the Arab public that stood against Iran now stands behind an Iran that is genuinely fighting Israel. Let them watch, if they wish, with what joy Iranian missiles striking Tel Aviv were received in the Arab streets.

Perhaps this is what the US, Israel and Europe need to see. It is by no means a remote possibility that, with these racist, fanatically religious, bigoted Crusader-Zionist aggressions, they will unite the Islamic world they have been ruling by dividing it.

If the US and European countries that support genocidal Israel's attack on Iran, on the pretext that it should not have nuclear weapons, want to avoid the graver consequences of this irrational process they have started, what they must do is clear: give up standing on Israel's side. Because it will not be easy for them to end this war they themselves started. Just as they started the Ukraine-Russia war but could not end it, they may not be able to end this war whenever they wish. At this point too, the one they will have to turn to will be Turkey, and the leader of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

Beyond the dizzying telephone diplomacy that Erdoğan has been conducting for days in this process, his taking the lead in a common reaction "as the Islamic world" by gathering the leaders of the Islamic world in Istanbul will be a founding, constructive step for the new order to be established.