Israel’s recent war with Iran is likely to impact the Middle East for many years, according to analysts at an online conference held by the London-based Royal United Services Institute (RUSI).
“All the participants at the end of the day agreed that what we see now is merely a snapshot,” and that “the ripple effects of what has happened are going to be with us for a very long time,” Dr. Jonathan Eyal, RUSI’s International Director, said in a June 30 RUSI webinar. “They all agreed that it is a transformative event for the Middle East and perhaps for Iran itself.”
The online conference, titled “RUSI experts examine the Israel-Iran conflict and its geopolitical Implications,” looked at the contradictory information and perceptions about the war, the impact of the conflict on the Middle East, and whether the Iranian regime had been weakened as a result of the attack which was named Operation Rising Lion by Israel.
The conference was moderated by Eyal. Speakers included:
- Professor Ali Ansari, a RUSI senior associate fellow, and professor of Iranian history and the Director of the Institute for Iranian Studies at the University of St. Andrews
- Nicholas Hopton, a RUSI distinguished fellow and former UK ambassador to Iran
- Dr. Burcu Ozcelik, a senior research fellow for Middle East security at RUSI
- Michael Stephens, a senior associate fellow for Middle East security at RUSI
“There are elements within the regime that are arguing very forcefully that the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) need to step aside, that this is all getting out of hand, that the country risks slip-sliding again into a much more expensive conflict, particularly with the United States,” Ansari said in the webinar.
“There will be those who will support the regime, but I think once the dust settles, a lot more people will go back and it will be service as normal and they will say, what is going on? Why can’t you deliver?” Ansari added. “And I did hear someone say the one thing we thought the Islamic Republic could do was defend us, and they clearly can’t. There will be a wider questioning of it, and a reckoning for the regime will happen in the months to follow.”
The conflict, which began on June 13 and lasted for 12 days, was launched by Israel over concerns that the Islamic Republic of Iran had been accelerating its uranium enrichment and could produce a nuclear weapon in weeks.
Israel attacked several military, nuclear and government sites and assassinated more than 30 security officials and 11 senior nuclear scientists. It also deployed several operatives from its intelligence agency Mossad into Iran months before the operation to disable Iran’s defense systems and gather intelligence about its nuclear activities.
“The level of infiltration that the Israelis were able to manage through the Iranian security and defense establishment is in some ways more shocking and more profound than the actual bombing,” Ansari said. “That is something that the Iranian establishment, but also the wider Iranian population, are beginning to digest.”
Iranian officials responded to Mossad’s infiltration by arresting more than 700 individuals they accused of belonging to an Israeli spy network. Several men have been shown on television in Iran making confessions and holding weapons they were allegedly planning to use. Experts said the confessions may be coerced.
The U.S. also bombed three Iranian nuclear facilities – Natanz, Isfahan and Fordow – in an effort to stop Iran’s nuclear activities. The extent of the damage to the nuclear sites remains unclear, with some reports suggesting that the attacks destroyed Iran’s nuclear program and other reports claiming the military assaults had only set back the program by a few months.
The Islamic Republic launched several hundred missiles at Israel in retaliation.
The war was halted following an Iranian attack on a U.S. air base in Qatar in response to the U.S. striking the nuclear sites, and which was thwarted by Qatar’s air defenses. The panelists suggested that the attack on the base was a diplomatic effort orchestrated by the US, Iran and Qatar to deescalate the conflict.
The experts went on to discuss what the war meant for the Islamic Republic’s status in the region.
“Are we talking about regime change, or are we talking about regime failure? Are we talking about state failure?” Ansari said. “If you look at Iran in the lead-up to this struggle, the state was already failing. It wasn’t delivering on basic utilities, it wasn’t delivering on fundamentals of the population.”
“That doesn’t mean that you’re going to see some sort of regime change,” Ansari added. “But it’s quite clear to me that the Islamic Republic that went into this conflict will not be the Islamic Republic that comes out of it.”
ANALYSIS – U.S. Strikes on Iran’s Nuclear Sites Set up ‘Cat-and-Mouse’ Hunt for Missing Uranium
Hopton then spoke about the impact of the war on Gulf countries who were looking to stabilize their economies and found the Islamic Republic’s destabilizing activities in the Middle East problematic. Discussing the involvement of Iran’s axis of resistance, Hopton said the role the armed groups such as Yemen’s Houthis played in the war was limited.
“There’s been lots of bombastic rhetoric, but it’s all been pretty toothless so far,” Hopton said. “I don’t think the proxies at this point have been significant players in this conflict, and nor will they be, perhaps, as it goes forward.”
Stephens offered attendees an overview of the role that the E3 – the UK, France and Germany – could play in relation to Iran, moving forward. He described the group’s limited engagement during the war, which could broaden after the conflict if nuclear talks between Iran and other states resumed, and deescalation in the form of sanctions relief was considered.
The panelists invited questions from attendees, including whether the regime would ever give up on its nuclear ambitions and whether Israel’s view of the war and its perceived success was realistic.
“I don’t see a world in which Iran is constrained from building a bomb because we’ve taken some kind of multilateral action against them,” Stephens said. “There will always be a way for them to sell oil. They are relatively productive in terms of their economy for the stage that they’re at. So this is all about if Khamenei and the surviving Security Council around him decide that this is the way to secure the regime.”
Responding to a question sent in by Ambassador Jonathan Cohen, a distinguished fellow at RUSI and former US diplomat who held held posts in several countries in the Middle East, about the justification for Israel’s military operation, Hopton said: “The justification was that Iran was moving rapidly towards a bomb, so Israel was justified in self-defense, and others have supported Israel’s right to self-defense. But whether there’s any evidence that suggests that Iran was actually rushing to a bomb three weeks ago is less clear.”
“I don’t think Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli government achieved their clearcut objective of removing any potential capability of Iran to have a nuclear power, they still have missiles. They’ve lost a lot of them, clearly and and then on the third implicit objective about regime change we’ve already talked about that and that’s not quite happened yet,” Hopton said. “I hope Ambassador Cohen accepts my quiet qualification of that point. I don’t disagree though, with him fundamentally that huge damage has been done to the Islamic regime by the Israeli offensive.”
