The war launched by Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu on 28 February against the Iranian regime resulted, from its very first day, in the decapitation of the Islamic Republic with the death of Ayatollah Khamenei and a significant number of other senior officials. It now seems very likely that American and Israeli forces will succeed in defeating the Iranian military on a purely military level. But as for the aftermath and consequences of this war on regional and global balances, many more issues remain unresolved. Let us examine a few of them.

A Venezuelan solution for Iran?

The first question that arises is, of course, what might happen to Iran itself after the forces of the Islamic regime have been defeated. It is often pointed out that no air operation has ever been sufficient on its own to bring down an authoritarian regime. And the Iranian mullahs and their henchmen in the Revolutionary Guards demonstrated once again last January how far they are prepared to go to stay in power. Furthermore, it cannot be ruled out at this stage that Donald Trump, whose primary concern has never been democracy and freedom for peoples, may be prepared to accept a Venezuelan-style “solution” for Iran — the maintenance of a dictatorship born of the Islamic regime, which would nevertheless yield to American and Israeli demands on the country’s nuclear and ballistic missile programmes.

However, the situations in Iran and Venezuela differ quite radically, owing to the river of blood that separates the Iranian people from the regime after 50 years of relentlessly deadly repression, and even more so in recent weeks. The legitimacy and support base of the Islamic Republic are now very limited in Iran. They would probably become non-existent if, in addition, the leaders of this criminal regime agreed to bow to American-Israeli demands on matters of core national sovereignty. The mullahs’ ability to remain in power in one form or another, even without ground intervention, therefore seems limited today.

A peaceful transition in favour of Reza Pahlavi?

If we accept this hypothesis, what might happen in Iran? Although powerful in the streets and in people’s hearts, the Iranian opposition remains fragile in terms of organisation. A peaceful transition driven by internal dynamics seems unlikely at this stage. Could Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu succeed in imposing one from outside, particularly in the person of Reza Pahlavi, the son of the last Shah of Iran, who also enjoys a degree of support within the country?

There are many obstacles to such a scenario. First, there would probably be fierce resistance from the surviving elements of the Islamic regime, who know that their lives would be at risk if it were to materialise. The internal legitimacy of an émigré who has spent most of his life abroad would remain very limited at the outset. And even if the vast majority of Iranians are desperately seeking a way to rid themselves of the mullahs, the fraction of the population that truly dreams of a return to the golden age of the imperial regime must be tiny.

Could one nevertheless imagine a Spanish-style transition for Iran? Many regional and global players, as we shall see, have no interest in the establishment of a regime in Tehran beholden to Netanyahu’s Israel and Trump’s United States. They will actively work to prevent such a scenario from coming to fruition.

Civil war and the break-up of the country?

In this context, one of the questions that arises is that of a possible civil war, particularly along ethnic fault lines — in a sense, an Iraqi scenario despite ground intervention, or a Libyan scenario without it. However, the situations in Iran, Iraq, and Libya are, a priori, very different. Iran is an old country, heir to one of the first known empires, and has seldomly been colonised, unlike Iraq and Libya, which are only recent post-colonial creations. Iranian nationalism exists independently of the mullahs’ regime and is deeply rooted in the population.

That said, Iran remains a mosaic of dominated peoples who make up almost half the population alongside the Persians themselves. These include the Kurds and Azeris in the north, the Arabs in the west in Khuzestan on the border with Iraq — which is also Iran’s main oil-producing region — and the Baloch in the east on the border with Pakistan.

Could the weakening of the Iranian central state resulting from the American-Israeli offensive jeopardise Iran’s very survival within its current borders? This will depend to a large extent on the actions of other regional powers, but it cannot be ruled out — particularly on the part of the Kurds and Azeris on the one hand, and the Baloch on the other. The risk seems most immediate on the Baloch side, as there is already a fairly powerful Baloch nationalist movement. Neighbouring Pakistan, currently at war with the Afghan Taliban, may also have an interest in weakening Iran, the strongest ally of its Taliban enemies. The Azeris, for their part, may wish to weaken their neighbour by fuelling Azeri irredentism, because Iran has become the main protector of their hereditary enemy, Armenia, following Russia’s withdrawal from the region. And the Kurds’ Iraqi brothers may see this as an ideal opportunity to help them break free from Iranian domination and expand the territory they already control. The prospect of a peaceful and orderly transition in Iran therefore seems highly uncertain.

What does Saudi Arabia want?

Among the major regional players, there is one that is certain to play a decisive role but whose future intentions remain unclear: Saudi Arabia. This conflict comes at a particularly complicated time for the kingdom. Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) has just had to abandon his grandiose dreams of modernising the country following the fiasco of the Neom project.

He is also engaged in a quasi-war with his enemy-brother Mohammed bin Zayed (MBZ), the leader of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) — a close ally of Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu — who opposes him in Yemen, Sudan, and Somalia and is, in effect, challenging his hegemony in the region. The current conflict, if it lasts long enough and does not quickly find a resolution in line with the wishes of Trump and Netanyahu, could deal a severe blow to the flourishing economy of Dubai and the UAE as an airport hub and haven of peace for the very rich. This would certainly not cause MBS undue grief.

MBS was undoubtedly consulted before the Israeli-American strikes and apparently approved them. But going forward, he would certainly not tolerate the installation in Tehran of a regime that is a vassal of Netanyahu and Trump and allied with MBZ against him. With Qatar and Erdoğan’s Turkey, he will most likely do everything in his power to prevent such an eventuality from materialising.

Netanyahu the big winner? Yes, but…

Benjamin Netanyahu seems, at first glance, to be one of the big winners of the operation, provided that the Iranian strikes do not cause too much damage in Israel. After Hamas and Hezbollah, he is effectively destroying a potential existential threat to his country. He has managed to drag Donald Trump into this adventure, even though Trump humiliated him only a few weeks ago by ignoring his position on Gaza. This military action, long supported by Israeli public opinion, should increase his chances of remaining in power. It also diverts international attention away from what is happening in Gaza, where he has once again blocked all humanitarian aid, and in the West Bank, where Palestinians are confined to their homes while settlers continue their abuses.

However, the final outcome is likely to be less favourable. It will depend first and foremost on what happens in Iran itself. If the region is destabilised in the long term, and in particular if Israel’s close allies, the UAE, emerge weakened without an allied regime managing to establish itself in Tehran, the operation will undoubtedly appear, with hindsight, less positive for Israel. This is especially true given that opposition to Iran’s mullahs had been one of the main drivers encouraging Sunni regimes to align themselves with the United States and Israel. Once that threat has disappeared, the game is likely to become much more difficult for Israel in the region.

Will Donald Trump manage to extricate himself from the Iranian quagmire?

As for Donald Trump’s United States, while the war against Iran runs counter to all his campaign promises to end distant foreign interventions, it does offer the advantage of helping him extricate himself from the miasma of the Epstein affair in domestic politics and put the first serious economic difficulties into perspective by attacking an enemy that no one in the United States would think of defending.

Rallying around the flag may help him consolidate the authoritarian shift he seeks to impose on American democracy ahead of the midterm elections next November. However, the final outcome will also depend on how events unfold.

In the case of Iran, Donald Trump has clearly miscalculated: according to Steve Witkoff, he was genuinely convinced that, given the armada he had assembled around the country, the Iranians would yield to his conditions without him having to attack. That was not the case, and he had to decide to strike if he did not want to lose face.

Until now, he had fared rather well in the series of foreign gambits he had launched — in Venezuela in January and Iran in June — without committing American forces on the ground for the long term. But at this stage, there is no guarantee that he will be able to extricate himself from the Iranian quagmire as swiftly this time around.

Vladimir Putin has less to lose than it might seem at first glance

Beyond the region, there is one player who seems, at first glance, to be one of the big losers in this war: Vladimir Putin. After Venezuela and Cuba, which are in an extremely difficult position, he is now losing another traditional ally, and an important one at that. Will this war significantly weaken him and force him to lower his guard in Ukraine in particular? Paradoxically, this seems unlikely.

Iranian arms deliveries, particularly Shahed suicide drones, certainly provided decisive assistance to Russia as it became mired in the war against Ukraine. But today, those flows have largely dried up. Russia now produces its own Shahed and Geran drones, which it is deploying against Ukraine. Furthermore, the multitude of sophisticated American munitions that Israel and the United States are currently expending against Iran are weapons that cannot be delivered to Ukraine. On the contrary, the Pentagon’s need to replenish its stocks in the coming months is likely to further slow US arms deliveries to Kyiv.

Finally, the tensions over oil and gas prices and supplies resulting from this conflict — and in particular the closure of the Strait of Hormuz — are a real blessing for Putin. They should enable him to replenish his war chest despite reinforced European and American sanctions.

Xi Jinping is taking a big gamble and will have to break his silence

While Russia may not be losing as much as it appears in this war, the same cannot be said for China. After Venezuela, it is losing another privileged source of low-cost oil, which is vital for an economy highly dependent on external supplies. This region of the world is also crucial for the transit of Chinese exports to Europe. Allowing the United States and its allies to control it alone represents a major geopolitical risk.

Beyond the economic dimension, China also risks losing not only face but geopolitical weight if it appears unable to come to the aid of its allies in difficulty — as is now the case, after Venezuela, with the mullahs’ Iran, with whom Beijing had concluded a strategic cooperation pact with great fanfare in 2021.

For the time being, China has chosen to maintain a low diplomatic profile in the face of the American-Israeli offensive. But it will most likely seek to exert all possible influence to prevent a regime aligned with Donald Trump’s United States from establishing a lasting foothold in Iran.

Among the clear losers are the United Nations and international law

The United Nations and multilateralism are clearly among the losers in this affair. Unlike what happened with Iraq in 2002, the United States and Israel have chosen to attack Iran without even pretending to seek any backing from international law or the United Nations. This is despite the fact that Donald Trump himself had still succumbed to this ritual by having his peace plan for Gaza approved by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) last November.

Is this the final nail in the coffin of international law and multilateralism? We have feared as much since Donald Trump’s return to the White House and the proliferation of attacks against the United Nations, its agencies, the World Health Organisation (WHO), the International Criminal Court (ICC), and its judges — but this time the eulogy may well have been delivered in Tehran.

It is true that for many years the United Nations has proved incapable of resolving the most deadly conflicts, whether in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Sudan, Myanmar, Gaza, Ukraine, or elsewhere. But the official recognition, as it were, of this now complete anomie in the context of this war undoubtedly brings the world into an even more dangerous phase.

A disaster for the European Union

Last but not least, among the big losers in this affair are the Europeans and the European Union. The Gulf region is essential for European gas and oil supplies; it plays a major role in the transit of goods between Europe and Asia; its destabilisation is likely to have direct repercussions for Europeans in terms of war, terrorism, and waves of migration. In short, it plays a much more important role for Europe than for the United States. And yet Europeans are completely absent from the current crisis, just as they have been entirely absent from the settlement of the Gaza crisis since 7 October 2023.

The signing of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPoA) in 2015 — the Iranian nuclear agreement that Donald Trump then tore up in 2018 — had been a great success for European diplomacy. It demonstrated that Europeans were credible interlocutors, capable of helping to avert armed confrontation in the region. But since then, by being unable in particular to make Benjamin Netanyahu see reason and force him to respect international law in Gaza and the West Bank, the European Union has lost all credibility in the region as a defender of multilateralism and a potential broker of balanced negotiations.

In a world where only military force now counts, the weakness of European armies forces the continent to content itself with watching the missiles fly by and praying that the war waged by Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu will not have too negative consequences. The worst outcome, however, would be to simply fall in line behind Trump and Netanyahu and join them in this dangerous adventure. That would be another step towards vassalage — and a disastrous one for Europe and Europeans.

This text was originally published by Institut Jacques Delors