We know Lenin’s quote, apocryphal but so true: “There are decades where nothing happens and there are weeks where decades happen.”

Well this is exactly what has happened, and is still happening, in the Middle East and beyond, with the booby-trapped pagers of Sept. 17, the defeat, in Lebanon, on Sept. 29, of Hezbollah and one day later, with the advancement of Israeli ground troops into southern Lebanon.

A terrorist army, more powerful than al-Qaida and ISIS combined, is permanently diminished and, for now, decapitated.

The Iranian regime, for which Hezbollah was the avant-garde, the jewel in the crown, or to continue the Bolshevik metaphor, its most precious capital, is weakened by a defeat that comes on the heels of the bombing of its embassy complex in Syria, the execution of Ismael Haniyeh, head of Hamas, in the heart of Tehran, and the failure of its general offensive, April 17, against Israel. And it seems that, for the first time in nearly a half-century, the regime is finally on the defensive, fragile and flailing …

The ports of Hodeidah and Ras Issa, in western Yemen, have been targeted by a squadron of fighter jets after the Houthis, another of the ayatollah’s puppets, made the mistake of hitting Ben-Gurion airport where the prime minister had just landed …

Lebanon decolonizing …

Yes, Lebanon, this glorious country of Adonis and Gibran, which amazed Nerval, Lamartine, and Chateaubriand and was, for a long time, an example of cosmopolitanism and tolerance, then became nothing more than a colony of Iran, a pawn in its imperial strategy and, because of that, a failed state—now the vise is loosening and the Lebanese people, if they wish, can take their own destiny back in hand…

Israel breathes …

Iranian women smile …

What’s left of democrats in Syria remember that Hezbollah was on the front lines of the massacre, by Bashar Assad, of hundreds of thousands of their own, and in Idlib there are great outpourings of joy …

The families of the 58 French paratroopers and the 241 American Marines killed in the dual suicide truck-bombing attacks of 1983, the survivors of the attacks in 1986, in Paris, against the Tati department store, the Renault pub, the police precinct, the RER regional train, the TGV high-speed Paris-Lyon train, and so on, estimate, as does President Biden, that justice is done …

In short, the free world, the real one, the one that stretches from New York, Paris, and Rome to the crowds that, from Tehran to Ankara and from Moscow to Beijing and Kabul, do not resign themselves to living under imbecilic and bloody dictatorships, can breathe a little easier and see the signs of possible change.

Of course, nothing is yet decided.

Hezbollah still has tens of thousands of missiles pointed at Israel.

And history having, as Marx said, to remain in the same metaphorical register, more imagination than man, the “five kings” that are Iran, Russia, the Islamist International, Turkey, and China are not without recourse, far from it.

But the Israelis have delivered a lesson in determination and courage.

They did the opposite to what the European and American Munich Agreement cheerleaders were repeating like broken records: “De-escalate! De-escalate!” After all, according to the theories of just war, and after that, according to Clausewitz, there are situations in the world where, alas, escalation is necessary and the only option.

And the Israelis reminded the world that there are moments in history, when your (Israel’s) survival is at stake, when entire peoples (Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Iraqi and Syrian Kurds) are taken hostage and threatened, when the strategy of compromise is taken by the enemy (formerly Nazi Germany, today the Islamic Republic of Iran) as an invitation to hit even harder—moments, then, where one of those strong acts that the cowards call “escalation” can turn the tide, redraw the power map, and save lives.

The IDF acts alone because that is, today, its situation.

But it acts—contrary to what armchair strategists castigating an “Israel now out of control” repeat everywhere—with measure and without hubris.

It breaks the operational capabilities of a state within a state that terrorized the world. And it does this, as always, while trying to do everything it could to spare innocent civilians.

And, as we all now know since the fall of the great empires and, more recently, of the USSR, dictators fear, not just failure, but the external humiliation that leaves them naked before their internal opposition—such that Israel may well be in the process of fulfilling in Iran itself the great dream of Western republics, moderate Arab countries, and, again, heroines of democracy who have courageously paraded for two years now in Tehran to the shouts of “Woman, Life, Freedom.”

For these reasons, Israel’s allies must urgently regroup to support it, not just in defense, but for victory.