Opinion Ramin Jahanbegloo writes: After Iran-Israel war, a different Middle East

It has now become customary for people around the globe to take sides easily in the war between Israel and Iran and respond to the strategic and political needs of this confrontation rather than to answer to their own conscience. Right now, the correct question to ask is why we got here and, of course, the right answer is that the ideological face-to-face between the state of Israel and the Iranian regime during the past 40 years has been all about hegemony in the Middle East. On the one hand, the Iranian Shiite clerics and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards in Iran lived, until very recently, with the illusion that Iran was so powerful that it could fight back Israel and the US at the same time. For nearly five decades, the Iranian regime made the mistake of being immensely loudmouthed about its rhetoric against the state of Israel and minimising the US power in the Levant. This was intensified after the end of the eight-year war with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, with the starring role played by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, especially the Quds Force. The unexpected killing of Qassem Soleimani by the American military in Iraq during Donald Trump’s first presidency was a decisive step against the mastermind of Iran’s proxy wars in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen. Despite the assassination of Soleimani, the Iranian regime continued to push forward its hegemonic perception of international relations in the Middle East and beyond.

In the past five years, the Iranian regime has tried to attack Israeli and American interests in the Middle East through its proxies, like the Lebanese Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis of Yemen. The Iranian people had to pay the price of the presence of this “syndrome of hegemony” by being isolated economically and politically through Trump’s maximum pressure campaign and the EU sanctions against Iran in response to its human rights abuses, nuclear proliferation activities and military support for Russia’s war in Ukraine. However, despite this, Iran continued to play a diplomatic game with the Biden administration and the EU, leaving Israel out of the equation each time in talks on the nature of Iranian nuclear sites. It also did not get involved in direct clashes with these two countries. However, on October 1, 2024, Iran fired more than 180 ballistic missiles at Israel, and on October 26, Israel responded with three waves of strikes against Iranian military targets. Unlike the recent war between the two countries, though, Iran and Israel did not aim at each other’s citizens, army officers or sensitive installations.

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Things have been different in the present war between Iran and Israel. First and foremost, Israel could count fully on Trump’s political and military support in an attack against Iran’s military and its nuclear installations. On the other hand, Ayatollah Khamenei is said to have been asked by advisers not to escalate the war after the bombing of Iran’s main nuclear sites — Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan. Third, the Iranian regime kept open the option of firing missiles and drones at Israel, as it did hours after the US suggestion of an unconditional ceasefire, knowing perfectly well that the survival of the Islamic Republic of Iran was at stake — as in the case of the 1988 Iran-Iraq war, Iran might run out of missiles and ammunition. Last but not least, though some of the Iranian military commanders might have suggested a crushing response to the US by closing the Strait of Hormuz — through which more than a quarter of the world’s seaborne crude oil passes — even Russia and China, the two key allies of Iran, have not supported such a folly.

The Arab leaders of the Persian Gulf region, notably Saudi Arabia, UAE and Qatar, have tried to calm the tensions between Iran and the US, while not entertaining a Shiite Iran in search of regional hegemony. But they seem to be preoccupied by the sudden isolation of Iran from its weakened proxies and its two political allies, Russia and China, who are deeply embedded in the global economy and have much to lose from the turmoil in the Middle East.

Regime change in Iran is not an easy task. Until now, Israel and the US have been able to set back Iran’s nuclear capacities without permanently removing its nuclear and ballistic missile threats. Many questions remain after the United States joined Israel in the war against Iran. First, what are the immediate consequences of Trump’s “spectacular military success”? Second, would the Iranian authorities still go for a comprehensive nuclear deal with the US and Europe? Third, will the fragile US-brokered ceasefire between Iran and Israel hold? Last, will the Iranian regime turn its guns once again against its civilians who dare to ask about the moral legitimacy of the country’s leadership?

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One way or another, Iran post-June 2025 will lay the groundwork for a new Middle Eastern roadmap.

The writer is director, Mahatma Gandhi Centre for Nonviolence and Peace Studies, OP Jindal Global University