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Developments have been unfolding fast in the Israel-Iran conflict. Overnight, Israel confirmed a cease-fire with Iran, which was announced earlier by U.S. President Donald Trump, and said Israel had achieved its war aims. Iran's foreign minister said that his country would stop its attacks as long as Israel did.

But the ceasefire looks delicate, if not in question. After it was announced, both sides have been accusing each other of violations.

Despite all the uncertainties on the ground, one thing remains unquestionable in the conflict: War is the wrong answer.

The U.S. earlier delivered its response to the Israel-Iran conflict by bombing Iran’s three key nuclear facilities with GBU-57 bunker buster bombs using its B-2 stealth bombers. Just hours after the operation, dubbed as Operation Midnight Hammer by America, U.S. President Donald Trump went on television to tell the American public and the world that it was a “spectacular military success.” His Pentagon chief, Pete Hegseth, said the operation was “an incredible and overwhelming success.”

But there have never been “easy wins” in any war. We don’t need to dig too deep into the history to find proof.

More than 20 years ago, Americans pondered over the question of whether then-Iraqi President Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). Then U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell made the case for a U.S. war on Iraq in a speech delivered at the UN Security Council in February 2003. He said U.S. intelligence proved that Saddam Hussein had WMDs and he also had “no compunction about using them again – against his neighbors, and against his own people." So American troops went in. Following that, in early May that same year, in front of a banner on the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln reading “Mission Accomplished,” then U.S. President George W. Bush took to the deck to announce that “major combat operations in Iraq have ended.”

History shows just how wrong such a conclusion was. Tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis have been killed almost every year since then. By creating a power vacuum, the U.S. invasion of Iraq also allowed opportunists to inflame latent sectarian divisions, spiraling the country into savage tribal conflict. Many of the civilian deaths in the 2010s were also due to the rise of ISIS, a group formed from Islamic insurgent factions that took root following the invasion.

In retrospect, the U.S. invasion of Iraq was never the end. It was just the beginning – it opened the Pandora’s box not just in Iraq but in the Middle East at large.

And similar mistakes were also made in Afghanistan, and Libya. War is the wrong answer and will not bring peace to the Middle East.

Within the international community, no one, not even America’s closest allies – except Israel, supports the U.S. bombing. In a veiled criticism of U.S. action, French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot wrote on the X platform: "France is convinced that a lasting resolution to this issue requires a negotiated solution within the framework of the Non-Proliferation Treaty."

On multiple occasions, Chinese diplomats have emphasized that at present, diplomatic means to address the Iranian nuclear issue have not been exhausted and there is still hope for a peaceful solution. Fu Cong, China’s Ambassador to the UN, reiterated that position shortly after the U.S. weekend bombing.

Diplomacy works and should be the only path to resolve the Iranian nuclear issue. Right now, the first step is to stop further escalating the conflict. The ceasefire, though fragile, brings hope for a de-escalation and paves the way for diplomacy.

For its part, the U.S., first and foremost, should stop exacerbating tensions in the Middle East, withholding itself from further direct involvement into the Isreal-Iran conflict, as well as cutting its further military aid to Israel.

Also, as a global leader and the strong power that has real influence over Israel, as well as Iran, the U.S. needs to take up its responsibility to ensure that both sides should not violate the ceasefire; and together with the international community, it should urge both Israel and Iran to keep calm and return to the negotiating table.

Time and again, diplomacy has been proven to be the truth, such as with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action concluded in 2015. One can only hope this time again that reason and rationality will prevail over might and conflict.

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