When Israel and Iran exchanged hundreds of missiles and drones in the past few days, they did not start a war—they created an international tectonic realignment of power. The entire world is bracing itself as these two bitter enemies glare at each other with fire in their hearts and nothing to lose. Should the other powers get involved, it’s no longer a regional war—it’s going to be World War III.
It is frightening to consider that our shared destiny hangs in the balance of how some stubborn leaders respond to a few slurs. The danger is not merely in the Iranian provocative threats and Israeli defensive strikes, but also in the speed at which some coalitions could be ignited. Iran has danced for decades with the Russians and Chinese; Israel, however, has the army and diplomatic muscle of the United States and its Western allies behind it. These are not shadowy militias across from each other in an oasis. These are countries that are connected to global pipelines of military power, diplomatic intrigues, and old wounds that never actually healed. It’s more than just a Middle Eastern rivalry—it’s an animosity ignited alongside a warehouse full of fuel barrels.
What makes this moment more terrifying than previous clashes is the sheer ability to devastate with modern weapons. We’re not speaking of rifles and tanks slopping across borders anymore. We’re discussing nuclear payloads, hypersonic missiles, AI-guided drones, and electromagnetic pulses that can bring entire cities down. If the apocalypse does come—our nations lining up on an international chessboard like pawns on a board—we’ll not merely be witnessing burning cities. We’ll witness entire continents blackened. There’s no verse in that, only ash.
And yet, other countries still toy with intervention. Out of loyalty, pride, economic interest, or ego, they threaten to intervene. But it’s not a sport where you root for your favorite from the stands. This is a war that, if pursued, will have no one cheering. One mistake, one retaliatory blow, and we may be looking down the gun barrel of history’s bitterest lesson. It is staggering how, in a global world so connected by trade, technology, and misery, some politicians still bluster and brag as though their countries are islands of invincibility.
And then there are the civilians—people like you and me—whose lives are broken by each missile launched. Farmers in south Lebanon, kids in Tel Aviv, students in Tehran, businessmen in Gaza, laborers in Haifa—they’re the ones who are taking cover when egos clash. Don’t leave out the OFWs swept up in the middle of all this lunacy, hundreds of miles from home and caught between evacuating for their lives or staying behind to support their families. Wars are not kind to the nameless. The ones who decide to wage them are rarely the ones who pay the price.
What’s terrifying is that this war might “normalize” itself like Ukraine and Gaza do—seemingly continuously burning, yet no longer news-worthy. The world has become oddly at ease with perpetual war. It’s as though, in our haste to scroll, tweet, and forget, we permit the gradual decay of global empathy. If Iran-Israel war escalates into a worldwide hostility, it won’t be because people didn’t know—it will be because people no longer care. That avalanche of human empathy might prove more fatal than any nuclear bomb.
Heads of state can get cool, but only if they’re not wrapped in flags or cooled by politics. The powers of the world need to fight against the lowest tendency to side with one and, instead, side with peace. It is not weakness to pass on a war that will kill us all—it is the very last shred of strength we possess as a species. Let diplomacy stretch until its tendons ache. Let egos ache before bodies hurt. Let leaders bet with their polls, not our planet.
Sometimes the dampest thing that a superpower can do is nothing. Let war rain itself out, like a storm that tires of its own thunder. We cannot afford a third world war—not now, not ever, not when the weapons they’ve built no longer aim to conquer but to erase.
