Plumes of smoke rise after a strike in Tehran on March 5. Israel hit Tehran with fresh strikes and Iran targeted Kurdish guerilla groups in Iraq as a spiralling war in the Middle East engulfed the region.ATTA KENARE/AFP/Getty Images
Dennis Horak was Canada’s ambassador to Saudi Arabia and Yemen from 2015 to 2018 and chargé d’affaires in Iran from 2009 to 2012.
These are still very early days in the Iran war, and the uncertainties about where this is all heading are too numerous to list. But one thing, at least, is clear: The dynamics in the Middle East and the Gulf region, dominated for so long by fears about Iran, will be quite different from what they were just a week ago.
Since its inception in 1979, the Islamic Republic has been perceived as a threat to the established order in the region. Its overthrow of Iran’s ancient monarchy, and the regime’s pledge to export the revolution, was seen as an existential challenge by royals across the Gulf. Most of the Gulf states are home to sizable Shia Muslim communities, and their leaders worried that they might be drawn to the notion of Shia supremacy, or that disenchanted populations could become open to the idea of revolutionary change.
Over the decades, Iran also became a malevolent force, spending billions of dollars to establish a network of proxies – collectively known as the Axis of Resistance – to bolster its forward defence and to advance Tehran’s anti-Western, anti-Israel and anti-imperialist agenda in the region and beyond.
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Israel was its principal nemesis, and the target of the Islamic Republic’s unrelenting hostility, but meddling in the internal affairs of the Gulf Arab states and launching rhetorical challenges to their sovereignty and integrity became standard fare for the regime as well. At one point, senior Iranian officials even boasted that the regime effectively controlled four Arab capitals, Beirut, Baghdad, Damascus and Sanaa – a reflection of its confidence in those years.
The spread of Iran’s influence seemed unstoppable, and countries in the region, especially in the Gulf, centred their foreign, security and defence policies almost exclusively on the threat from Tehran. Regional leaders began voicing their concerns about the emergence of a “Shia crescent” led by Iran. When I was ambassador to Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, I quickly learned that it didn’t take much prompting to nudge senior officials to bring forward their concerns about the Islamic Republic.
For some in the region, the depth of their concern about Iran was enough to prompt a rethink of long-standing taboos around Israel. The establishment of the Abraham Accords in 2020, which saw a number of Arab countries establish diplomatic relations with Israel, emerged in part because of a shared sense of the Iranian threat.
While Saudi Arabia has not signed on – the high-profile holdout has demanded a viable path toward a Palestinian state as a prerequisite – the Saudis and Israelis have established a range of informal and quiet contacts. The fact that Bahrain, which normally defers to Saudi leadership in the Gulf, did sign on to the Abraham Accords is evidence of Riyadh’s support for the initiative.
The way the war has evolved over this first week has only reaffirmed the worst fears of Iran’s neighbours, as the cornered regime lashes out across the region. While U.S. President Donald Trump has claimed that he was surprised that Iranian retaliation had targeted civilian infrastructure in the “neutral” Gulf states, he would be the only one who didn’t see this as a likely outcome. The Gulf states have spent hundreds of billions of dollars on sophisticated weapons systems to prepare for precisely this kind of scenario.
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Iran’s goal is to spread the pain of the war beyond its own borders so that Washington’s principal allies will press the Trump administration to end the conflict while the regime still survives. It is a desperate, high-risk strategy, as it could bring the Gulf states and their considerable advanced arsenals into the fray; indeed, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have threatened to enter the war, after drones and missiles struck both countries. But the Iranians clearly feel they have no choice but to pursue this option at this stage.
After all, even before this war began, Iran’s levers of power had already been severely degraded. In the two-and-half years since Hamas’s deadly attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, Iran’s proxies and allies – relationships that Tehran had so carefully cultivated over the decades to aid Iran and bring Israel to heel – failed at the moment they were most needed.
Hezbollah, Hamas and the Iraqi-based militias were largely decimated in relatively short order by Israel. Tehran’s main regional ally, Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, now sits in Moscow rather than Damascus. Iran’s own defences proved inadequate during the 12-day war last June, and its nuclear program is in tatters. Really, the only major threat Iran continues to pose is to its own people, who have paid the heaviest price.
Speaking to reporters at a joint news conference with Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in Canberra, Prime Minister Mark Carney said the question around Canada's potential future involvement in the escalating conflict in the Middle East is a "fundamental hypothetical," adding the conflict can spread very broadly.
The Canadian Press
No one can say for certain whether the country is headed for anarchy, full regime change or merely an “old wine in new bottles” shift, where the names and perhaps some of the structures change, but the broader system remains largely intact. Still, it will remain a major regional power. It will be weaker than it was – its aura of invincibility has been punctured – but if some semblance of the Islamic Republic survives, the “new” leadership would likely look to reconstitute its influence and power, and it won’t have to start from scratch.
Despite the many setbacks it has faced, Iran retains a network of influence across the region, comprised of agents, ideological bedfellows and true believers who can be activated to continue to pursue the regime’s objectives and interests. They will remain a threat even if Iran’s conventional power is degraded.
The big question for Iran’s neighbours going forward is how Iran will exercise its power and influence once the dust settles. Ideally, Iran becomes a more constructive and positive influence, focused on peace, shared security and prosperity. The détente era in Cold War Europe is often cited as a model, but few in the Gulf believe that is a realistic prospect without true regime change in Tehran, and as of right now, that seems unlikely.
A map of U.S. and Israeli attacks in the Middle East and Tehran’s retaliatory strikes so far
More realistically, countries across the region will be holding out hope that a chastened Iran, preoccupied with rebuilding and constraining or placating its increasingly restive population, might not be capable of the kind of malevolent influence it has exercised in the region for the past several decades.
Even if this is truly the end of the Islamic Republic, it won’t be a panacea. Iran wasn’t the cause of all the region’s problems, though they were very quick to exploit them when they could.
Yemen, for example, will still be a mess; Hamas and Hezbollah will still be obstacles to peace in the Middle East; sectarianism will still be a challenge to Lebanese stability. Peace and tranquillity are not on the cusp of breaking out all over the region. There are too many local challenges and grievances to sort out even if the best-case scenario emerges in Tehran (and far more challenges, if things go badly).
But taking Iran’s own agenda – always the priority for Tehran – out of these complex regional challenges could make the search for viable local solutions much less intractable. However things work out in Iran over the next weeks or months, that now seems like a more realistic possibility for the first time in decades.