I burnt the fingers of my right hand while cooking and was forced to use my left hand for a few hours. It made me think about how naturally we assume both hands work together, and how quickly we notice that one hand can continue, adapt, or do something entirely different from the other.
That thought came to mind while reflecting on events in the Middle East. Much of what appears contradictory or confusing begins to make more sense when viewed through the lens of one hand building while the other burns.
In many governments, different institutions move at the same time but not always in the same direction. From the outside, it may appear coherent, yet underneath that surface several hands are often moving independently within the same body.
Once you begin to see the world this way, many contradictions begin to make sense.
When the United States publicly calls for restraint, urges de-escalation, and warns against widening the conflict, that is one hand at work. It is the visible hand, speaking in the language of diplomacy and careful calculation. At the same time, another hand is moving through military deployments, strike coordination, intelligence sharing, and weapons support.
Many observers describe this as hypocrisy, and that interpretation is understandable, but it may not capture the full picture.
Hypocrisy assumes that a single actor clearly sees the contradiction and chooses to ignore it. But large states rarely function as a single actor.
The State Department is not the Pentagon. The Pentagon is not the intelligence community. The intelligence community is not Congress. And Congress does not always move in step with the White House.
Each institution carries its own institutional memory, its own strategic assumptions, and its own understanding of what national interest requires. When one part of the system speaks, it often does so sincerely according to its own framework, even as other parts continue pursuing different priorities.
What appears from the outside as contradiction may simply be several hands moving at the same time.
And once you notice that pattern, it begins to appear elsewhere.
Looking eastward, Iran presents a similar picture, though expressed in its own way.
Publicly, the Islamic Republic speaks in the language of resistance and solidarity with Palestinians. Official statements reinforce the narrative of a regional axis standing against Israel and its allies. Support for proxy groups remains part of that stance.
At the same time, quieter signals move through other channels. Conversations about sanctions relief, discussions about nuclear limits, and messages carried through intermediaries suggest that there are also interests within the Iranian system that seek stability and economic breathing space.
The question of which hand represents Iran’s true position may not have a simple answer because both hands reflect real constituencies within the state.
For more than four decades, Iran has balanced tensions between hardliners and pragmatists, between revolutionary ideology and the practical pressures of governing a complex society under economic strain. Different institutions and factions navigate these pressures in different ways.
At least from the outside, it can look like a system where multiple strategies operate at the same time, each hand is serving a different audience inside the same state.
And if that sounds familiar, it is because this pattern is not unique to Iran.
Israel too finds itself operating with more than one hand.
For several years, one part of the political leadership has been engaged in a struggle over the internal balance of power within the Israeli state. Debates over judicial reforms, the authority of the Supreme Court, and the independence of key legal institutions have exposed deep divisions about how Israeli democracy should function.
At the same time, many voices within the security establishment have warned that prolonged internal divisions pose a long-term strategic risk. Military leaders and intelligence officials have repeatedly cautioned that internal fragmentation can weaken national resilience.
The February 28 attacks did not erase those internal tensions. They simply pushed them into the background under the urgency of a new external conflict.
Yet the underlying questions about governance and institutional balance did not disappear.
When a state is still negotiating its own internal identity, it becomes harder to define what a stable end to a conflict should look like. In such circumstances, continuing the fight can sometimes be politically easier than defining the moment when it should end.
Which is perhaps why another pattern becomes visible when diplomacy enters the picture.
Diplomacy and conflict often move alongside each other rather than replacing one another.
The visible hand of diplomacy which includes negotiations, ceasefire proposals, international meetings, and humanitarian appeals etc appears to be trying to slow events down. Yet developments on the ground continue to move forward at the same time.
This dynamic does not necessarily require a single coordinating plan. It can simply emerge from the incentives facing different actors.
Diplomats pursue negotiations because the alternative could be escalation. Military planners continue operations because the strategic environment demands it. Political leaders maintain the process because it allows them to speak to multiple audiences at once.
In this way, diplomacy does not always stop conflict. It simply moves alongside it.
And often, the clearest clues are found not in what is said, but in what remains unsaid.
Listen carefully to the public conversations around this conflict. There are statements, press conferences, diplomatic visits, and carefully worded resolutions. Yet there are also long stretches of silence around certain questions.
Very few people speak clearly about the day after.
What will the political order look like? What security arrangements will hold? What regional balance will emerge once the fighting eventually stops?
These questions appear occasionally and then fade again, almost as quickly as they were raised.
What is missing from a conversation tells us as much as what is said openly. The omissions, the hesitations, and the issues that remain unresolved often reveal the limits of what governments are prepared to confront publicly.
This is because answering those questions would require something difficult; that the the different hands within many governments finally align their intentions.
And that moment has not yet arrived.
From where my feet are, watching events unfold from a distance, the pattern that stands out most clearly is that states rarely move with a single hand.
Different institutions, different interests, and different political pressures push in different directions at the same time. One hand negotiates while another prepares. One hand speaks the language of restraint while another continues shaping realities on the ground.
Seen from that perspective, many of the contradictions in global politics begin to make more sense to me.
The left hand and the right hand are often moving simultaneously, each following its own logic.
Until those hands finally move in the same direction, we will keep witnessing the same pattern: one hand building while the other burns. Of course, this is only one way of reading what is unfolding, but it is the lens that kept returning to me.
I love your way of thinking.
ReplyDeleteYour reflection clearly shows how autocratic and democratic styles of leadership are applied at the same time. States often move simultaneously through diplomacy and military action, much like families where parallel dynamics can appear among core members.