The timing of American intervention on the side of Israel in its preemptive war on Iran is no coincidence. With Hezbollah diminished and the Syrian state weakened, this is the best opportunity Tel Aviv has to effect regime change in Iran. While the American goal seemed initially to be cessation of Iran’s nuclear programme, Israeli operations have been of a much wider scope, implying an attempt to bring about either full regime change or state failure. Such an eventuality would leave them as the unquestionable hegemon in the Middle East for decades to come… or so they think.
Since the strike on Iranian nuclear facilities, Donald Trump has begun publicly toying with the idea of regime change. The idea defies the calamitous and consistent record of failure of the West’s Middle East interventions. And even if the neoconservative fever dreams of remaking Iran into a Jeffersonian democracy somehow come true, such an outcome will not, in the long run, fundamentally correct the fading position of the United States. Nor will it provide increased overall long-term opportunities for the Israeli state to endlessly expand its influence. Any removal of Iran from the regional chessboard will create a power vacuum that is, at best, temporary.
It was only last month that, while addressing a crowd in Riyadh, Trump renounced the missionary non-government organisations and liberal internationalists whose promises — that non-Western societies can be refashioned by the West — have brought so much ruin. Trump’s welcome invocation of realism now seems to have been forgotten — just as realism becomes more necessary than ever.
The unspoken context, one that the White House would do well to heed, is that Middle Eastern countries have become wealthier and more powerful over recent years. Like China and other rivals, these countries have each chipped away at American hegemony. The US economy has grown, but these countries have grown faster. Once dominated in singular fashion by the United States, the world is now becoming polycentric. This is as true in the Middle East as in other parts of the world, such as South and East Asia, where it is increasingly clear that multipolarity reigns.
What this means is that any power vacuum will be filled with local actors before the great powers arrive. An immediate neighbour can be a permanent presence in a way a distant power never could. The local power maintains an advantage both in morale and logistics and therefore can outlast outside forces. In international relations this is often referred to as “escalation dominance”, and it often occurs in places like Ukraine, where Russia will always be more committed to its near-abroad than the United States could be for Eastern Europe. In the Middle East, escalation dominance will be held by those nearer to Iran than the US.
Should the Iranian regime become critically weakened, the true victor would be Turkey. Turkey has much to gain from present tensions. It is strongly committed to pursuing its regional self-interest; it has a large domestic military-industrial complex to satisfy; and its large economy gives it much to gain from trade with neighbours such as Iran. Turkey’s only disadvantage compared with Israel is its lack of nuclear deterrent, but Middle Eastern powers, having just seen the consequences of not having a nuclear deterrent, will now become even more interested in acquiring one. While Iran and Israel damage and discredit each other regionally, Turkey is perfectly positioned to pick up the pieces as both a diplomatic arbiter and as the largest state in immediate proximity to Iran.
A naive faith common among many North American and Europeans today is that alliance networks hold some kind of ideological and cultural power that can turn members into perpetual friends. History decisively disproves this. Take the example of democratic Greek city states warring with each other; or the revolutionary republics of the Enlightenment (France and the United States) cutting their alliance almost immediately over divergent interests; or the British and American role in toppling nascent democratic rule in Iran itself in 1953. Alliances are temporary and ultimately interest based. Neither Turkey’s status in Nato, nor its close partnership with Azerbaijan, a state with a tight military relationship with Israel, would provide meaningful stumbling blocks to a growing security competition between Ankara and Tel Aviv. Iran, after all, won the American-led Iraq War; why shouldn’t Turkey win the Israeli-Iranian one? Israel lacks the capability to occupy all these nations and handle an ever-growing number of proxies that could facilitate endless expansion.
If the Iranian government falls, many Arab states will attempt to maximise their own autonomy against both Turkey and Israel. Some will seek the protection of one against the other, intensifying the rivalry of two powers whose previously buried hostility no longer has a common foe to keep it in check. Long-lasting orders of peace exist elsewhere, in forms such as the “postwar order” of Europe, but this was made possible by overwhelming American (and Soviet) power. Such a dynamic that does not exist in the Middle East today, which lacks the conditions for any order of regional hegemony. Should Iranian society fracture among ethnic or regional lines, this competition will only be heightened. And Israel’s distance from Iran means its strategic operations would most likely be operating at a relative disadvantage in a competition between Turkey, some Arab states, and perhaps Pakistan and Russia. Azerbaijan might even attempt to increase its control over the Azeri-majority northwest of the country. Armenia, likewise, would lose its only reliable foreign backer and have to draw closer to Moscow as a necessity.
It is possible, albeit very improbable, that the unlikely dreams of the regime-change advocates come to pass. Iran, in this scenario, is able to draw upon its internal cultural cohesion and its general populace’s disdain for its theocratic elite, thus making a successful transition to a new and less fanatical state. But this will not change the long-term calculation of multipolar power diffusion. Iranian civilisation and statehood predate the 1979 revolution, the rise of European global power, and even Islam itself. Iran is ultimately a regionally-anchored civilisational power made up of the shared cultural experiences of a proud and influential people. Whether it is governed by a theocracy, monarchy, democracy, or any other form of government, that will not change so long as there exists a state strong enough to keep the Iranian plateau secure. And this new state, eventually, will be a regional power again. The current Iranian government’s monomaniacal Israel fixation may disappear, but its interests will not. Even if many in the populace celebrate the fall of the government, the real and obvious danger of Israeli influence undermining the sovereignty of Iran will be apparent for all to see. Such a state will do its utmost to ensure a similar decapitation strike will not occur again. As a result, this state will seek to project regional power and perhaps even revive its nuclear programme.
“A new Iran will seek to project regional power and perhaps even revive its nuclear programme.”
This prospective Iranian state would be less ideological than its existing incarnation and more national interest-based. This more secular Iran would be freed from ideological commitments such as those to Palestinian liberation or the bringing forth of the “Hidden Imam”, a figure promised in the apocalyptic eschatology of some strains of Shi’ism. If anything, a secular Iran would be more capable of building alliance networks, garnering foreign sympathy, and deftly navigating the waters of diplomacy and development in such a way as to prevent the ever-frustrated US-Israeli quest for hegemony. Without a theocratic Shia Iran to hold as bogeyman, Israel and the US would find that the other regional states would pivot their foreign policy accordingly, adjusting towards a balance of power to counteract Israeli ambition. With less archaic and ideological posturing, the Middle East would be a region of hard-nosed realism.
Trends may come and go, but security competition remains eternal. Iran remains a country that sits at a vital junction in the Eurasian landmass. It arguably holds a balance of power that keeps the region out of singular great power control. It may or may not be unwise in the short term to topple such a government. But Iranian civilisation will surely outlive this regime just as it outlived the others that have ruled it before. And Iran, in any form, will always act to prevent any form of hegemony over its near-abroad.
Tel Aviv and Washington can try all they like to upset this dynamic, but their efforts are unlikely to pay long-term benefits. Israel, in the end, is going to have to take its place as just one of the regional nodes of influence rather than as a singular domineering force. The United States, likewise, must restrain its ambitions in the region. The era of global crusades is over. For the West, the project of the future is to accommodate the new regionalism and the failure of American-imposed globalisation.
