No One Has a Plan for the End

Donald Trump is impatient. On Monday he said at the White House that the level of enthusiasm from other countries is not enough for him. Several states have signaled that they are on their way to jointly secure the Strait of Hormuz - but the way they said it, the way they hesitated, the way they first consulted their teams before giving an answer: that bothers him. Keir Starmer, the British prime minister, felt it directly. Trump said that Starmer told him on Sunday that he first had to speak with his team. Trump’s reaction: “Why do you have to ask your team first?” It is the tone of a man who expects determination and instead receives processes. There is more behind it than impatience. Trump spoke of reciprocity - or the absence of it. The United States protects these countries, he said, but if America ever needed help, they would not be there. It is an accusation he has made many times before, but rarely at a moment as concrete as this.

Europe is clear in its restraint. Friedrich Merz, the German chancellor, said after a meeting with the Dutch prime minister that Iran cannot be turned into a democracy through bombs. There will be no military solution. NATO is a defensive alliance, not an instrument of intervention - even though history shows that this line has not always been so clear: eighteen years in Afghanistan, the airstrikes over Libya in 2011. Merz also addressed Israel directly. A broader ground offensive in Lebanon would be a mistake, he said in Berlin - it would further worsen the already tense humanitarian situation and trigger an exodus of refugees. He condemned Hezbollah for entering the conflict on behalf of Iran and called on the militia to stop attacking Israel and to disarm. But to his Israeli friends, as he called them, he made a clear request: do not take this path.

In Brussels the foreign ministers of the 27 EU states met. Kaja Kallas, the Union’s foreign policy chief, had proposed expanding the existing naval operation Aspides in the Red Sea to also cover the Persian Gulf. That would have been the simplest path. But Germany was skeptical, and others followed. Kallas summarized the result soberly: at the moment there is no willingness to change the mandate. And at the same time: this is not Europe’s war - but Europe’s interests are directly at stake. EU Energy Commissioner Dan Jørgensen spoke of an existential choice: Europe can remain dependent on volatile global energy markets - or finally take control of its own energy future. Prices are rising. Households feel it.

While diplomats were meeting, people were dying. In Iraq’s Anbar province a checkpoint of the Popular Mobilization Forces was attacked. Six fighters died, four were injured. The PMF, a network of mostly Shiite militias supported by Iran, was officially integrated into the Iraqi armed forces in 2016 - but some factions still operate on their own. Who was behind the attack initially remained unclear. Neither the United States nor Israel commented. Since the beginning of the war, about 200 American soldiers have been wounded according to U.S. Central Command, and 13 are dead. Nadav Shoshani, spokesman for the Israeli army, said on Monday that they are prepared for at least three more weeks of military operations - and longer if necessary.

In Tehran an airstrike hit a police station in a residential neighborhood. An eyewitness, who wanted to remain anonymous, described how the shockwave made his eardrums vibrate, how cars in front of him were destroyed, how stones and debris fell into the street. He drove backward as fast as he could. Others left their cars and ran. Authorities sealed off the area and arrested anyone who was taking photographs. Another resident of the city described the economic situation: money has become scarce, day laborers are suffering particularly hard. Internet access was temporarily interrupted, merchants who sell online lost income. The streets are nevertheless fuller than at the beginning of the war - because people cannot stop working. They have to.

Food is still available. Gasoline too. The banks are functioning. But the fear runs deep, he said.

America and Israel have set something in motion that has no clear objective. No endpoint. No answer to the simplest of all questions: and then? History knows such moments. They rarely end the way those who started them imagined.

We are here. In the dust of Tabriz, in the streets of Tehran. We listen, we write it down, we send it out - into a world that currently has other things on its mind. The world usually looks away. At some point wars become routine. The people inside them become smaller the longer they last.

But in Tehran the spring cleaning is approaching. The trees are standing. Someone is buying bread. The windows, if they are still intact, are being cleaned because spring demands it - and because life goes on even when there is war outside. There are many people there, most of them, who did not want this war and still have to carry it. The same in Iraq, where men die whose names will never appear in any major newspaper.

This is the story we tell. Even if no one ordered it.