The Middle East currently stands at a crossroads. The future geopolitical balance and perhaps also the historical direction of the region depend on the outcome of the war currently underway between Israel and Iran. With the US poised on the cusp of possible intervention, it’s important to grasp the nature and dimension of what is at stake.
To understand the weight of the present moment, it is necessary to accurately define the nature of the current conflict and its roots. This is a war not only or primarily between states. It is a conflict between systems of governance and between rival visions of the region.
The objective needs to be the decapitation of the regime
On one side, the Islamic Republic of Iran and its various militia allies are committed to a particular conception of political Islam. Their vision mandates the subversion of regional states by the insertion of political/military proxies of Tehran. These forces, as witnessed in Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen, then seek to turn the area in question into a space from which Iran can continue to advance its project. The goal: Iranian hegemony, Islamist rule, and perpetual war until victory over Israel, the US and western-aligned regional states is achieved.
On the other side, Israel is the sole regional power with the military capacity to effectively counter this ambition. It is also the only non-Muslim majority state in the Middle East. In its recent diplomatic advances, in particular with the United Arab Emirates, one may glimpse the outline of a rival vision for the region, one based on economic development, modernity, pluralism.
For all these reasons, Israel has been singled out for destruction by the regime in Tehran since the earliest days of the Islamic Republic. The Israeli embassy building in Tehran was among the first to be sacked by the mob during the revolution. A Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) office was later opened in its place.
The particular brand of Shia Islamism espoused by the late Ayatollah Khomeini had a special contempt for the Jews and their state. Khomeini referred to Israel in 1979 as the ‘cancerous Zionist tumour in the body of Islamic countries’.
Tehran has conducted a long war intended to result in the demise of the Jewish state since the early 1980s. This effort has been based on three components. The creation and sponsorship of Islamist political-military organisations was one element. The skills of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) in this area, combined with actions by rival powers and lucky circumstances, have delivered dividends for Tehran.
On the eve of the current war, they had brought Iran effective control of Lebanon and a dominant stake in Iraq, Yemen and the Palestinian movement. All this, combined with an alliance with Assad’s Syria, gave Iran effective control of the entire landmass between the Iraq-Iran border and the Mediterranean Sea on the eve of the conflict, as well as a major stake in the Palestinian struggle against Israel (via Hamas) and the ability to strike directly at Saudi Arabia, the UAE and the Gulf of Aden/Red Sea shipping route (through the Houthis). It was a commanding position in the region, and Iran intended to use it as a springboard for further advances.
The two other components of Tehran’s power projection are its ballistic missile array, the largest in the region, and, most importantly, its clandestine nuclear program.
As a result of Hamas’s premature firing of the starting gun for conventional war with Israel, Iran’s emergent regional empire now lies in ruins. Iran chose in a partial and piecemeal fashion to mobilise its proxies and launch them against Jerusalem. Hezbollah is now weakened, Assad is gone, and Hamas’s Gaza fiefdom is reduced to a pile of rubble.
These circumstances created a chance for Israel to cripple the Iranian nuclear programme and its missile array, and to strike at Iran’s structures of governance. This chance was limited in time. With the exception of Assad in Syria, all of Iran’s losses are reversible. The opportunity needed to be used or lost.
The statement by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that Iran is in violation of its commitments vis a vis the nuclear non-proliferation treaty added greater urgency to the moment. The running down of the clock on the 60 days of negotiations to which the US administration had committed itself made action feasible.
In the early hours of the morning on 13 June, Israel chose to act. Until now, the results have been encouraging. Nuclear facilities at Natanz, Isfahan, Tabriz, and Arak have been targeted and severely damaged. A wide range of individuals and targets associated with regime governance have also been eliminated, including two military chiefs of staff, a series of senior IRGC commanders and a number of nuclear scientists. The regime has been set back years in the nuclear arena and elsewhere.
None of this, however, yet resembles anything like victory. The Fordow uranium enrichment facility, embedded in the mountains near the Shia holy city of Qom, remains intact. It is immune, according to a recent article by former Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, to the IDF’s current capacities.
The US appears poised to intervene to address the matter of Fordow. It remains to be seen if President Donald Trump will give the order. But if he does, and the US action is limited to this one strike, or indeed if he does not, there is a possible negative outcome of which Israel should be aware. If Israel just keeps pounding away at Iranian targets, damaging but not destroying them, it risks being drawn into a war of attrition which will play to Tehran’s benefit, not Jerusalem’s. Potential shortages in Israel’s Arrow 3 interceptors render this issue more acute.
If, following such a slogging match, Israel at a certain point declares victory and leaves, what will remain will be a damaged but not destroyed regime with an obvious incentive to race towards the bomb. This would be the worst possible outcome. It’s therefore imperative that Israel, the US, or some combination thereof commit to the intensification of the pace and scale of current operations, and the expansion of the target list to include the regime’s most senior figures. The objective needs to be the decapitation of the regime.
Iran’s folly in sending its proxies against Israel in 2023, and then initiating direct attacks in April 2024 has created an opportunity. The Islamic Republic of Iran has cast a shadow over the Middle East for nearly half a century. It’s time that this shadow be lifted.
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