The regional environment that sustained Iran's proxy architecture for decades - built on grudging tolerance by Gulf states fearful of Iranian retaliation - is collapsing. Qatar and Bahrain are arresting IRGC operatives. Kuwait and Saudi Arabia are intercepting Iranian drones over their own territory. What critics describe as an expanding regional war is better understood as the disintegration of a system that relied on the Gulf's reluctance to act.
That is the assessment of Muhanad Seloom, a defense analyst who has worked for the US Department of State and has studied how states authorize proxy violence, as "Hvylya" reports, citing his analysis for Al Jazeera.
Seloom identified four layers of control in Iran's proxy system: strategic legitimation, operational coordination, financial-logistical distribution and deniability calibration. The US-Israeli campaign has disrupted all four simultaneously. The assassination of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei removed the apex of the authorization pyramid. The IRGC command structure has been "decapitated at multiple levels," with the acting defense minister among those killed.
The proxy attacks still occurring across the region - Hezbollah striking Israel, Iraqi militias hitting US bases, Houthi threats in the Red Sea - are not signs of network expansion, Seloom argued. They reflect predelegated response authority, activated when a centralized command anticipates its own destruction. "The attacks will continue, but they will become increasingly uncoordinated, strategically incoherent and politically costly for the host states where these groups operate," he wrote.
The shift in Gulf state behavior marks a fundamental break. For years, countries like Qatar and Kuwait maintained complex relationships with Tehran, calibrating their responses to avoid provoking retaliation. The current campaign has changed that calculus. With Iran's ability to project power degraded - its missile arsenal down more than 90 percent, its naval bases at Bandar Abbas and Chahbahar severely damaged - the cost of confronting Tehran's networks has dropped sharply.
Hezbollah is weaker than at any point since 2006, degraded by more than a year of Israeli operations before Operation Epic Fury began. Iraqi militias retain strike capability but face increasing isolation. The Houthis in Yemen possess independent capacity but lack the command integration with Tehran that once transformed militia activity into strategic effect.
Also read: Gulf States and Turkey Refuse to Share the Burden: Friedman Explains Why.