The assumption that military strikes would cause the Islamic Republic to crumble is proving wrong, according to Frederic Wehrey, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Instead of fracturing, Iran is replacing slain leaders, retaliating against Israel and America's Gulf Arab partners, and weaponizing the Strait of Hormuz.
Writing in Time, Wehrey - himself a former U.S. intelligence officer who served in Baghdad - said the conflict is already "feeding instability, deepening fault lines, exhausting economies, and narrowing prospects for reform" across the Middle East, "Hvylya" reports.
The long-term outlook offers little reassurance. Should Iran fracture along ethnic and regional lines - a risk the United States and Israel seem willing to accept - it could repeat the catastrophic unraveling of Iraq after 2003, spilling radicalism and disorder across the region. A weakened but still hostile Iranian regime would resemble Iraq after 1991: diminished but dangerous.
Whatever form of government ultimately emerges in Iran, Wehrey argued, the strikes have almost certainly deepened Tehran's determination to acquire a nuclear deterrent capability. The fall of the Islamic Republic would be celebrated by countless Iranians who suffered under its brutal rule and by many in the region's failing states. But the war is not producing that outcome.
Across every scenario, the Middle East is entering a new era of insecurity and war footing. Ordinary citizens desperate for change, Wehrey wrote, will pay the highest price.
Also read: how closing the Strait of Hormuz became a devastating trap for Iran itself.