Trump’s war on Iran is spreading. Where does it stop?
US allies in the Arab world have been plunged into a conflict they neither wanted nor consented to. Historian Eugene Rogan on what it means for the Middle East
Eugene Rogan
The Middle East has witnessed exceptional violence in the 21st century: the “war on terror”, the 2003 invasion of Iraq, civil wars in Libya, Syria, Yemen and Sudan, the emergence of Isis in Iraq and Syria.
The Hamas attack on Israel on October 7 2023 and Israel’s wars in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Iran set off seismic shocks across the entire region.
By 2026, the last thing the Middle East needed was another war.
Yet on February 28, the US and Israel triggered a region-wide crisis when they launched a surprise attack on Iran codenamed “Operation Epic Fury”.
Within hours, eight states in the Middle East and Gulf aligned with the US were drawn into the conflict with Iran, and Lebanon drawn into full-scale hostilities with Israel.
However this ends, the Middle East will never be the same.
Given conflicting American aims and justifications for the war, it is difficult to predict just how it will reshape the region.
The Iranian government is sure to undergo significant change at home, with its regional influence much reduced.
Israel is asserting a new dominance over the broader Middle East, which might well alienate Arab Gulf states that hitherto showed openness to engaging with it.
Old allies in the Arab world will have their trust in the US shaken the more they suffer the consequences of a war they neither wanted nor consented to.
The attack was not a total surprise.
The Americans had recently executed a targeted military operation in Caracas to arrest Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro on January 3 this year.
The decision to redeploy the fleet from the Caribbean to the Middle East sent a clear signal.
Yet the two interventions could not have been more different.
The Americans seized Maduro and left the Venezuelan government in place.
In Iran, they initiated hostilities with a surprise attack that killed supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and several of his ruling circle.
And they did so in partnership with Israel, the superpower and its regional proxy combining forces to reorder the Middle East.
Calls from an American president for the people to overthrow their leaders will set off alarm bells for many Iranians
With the assassination of Khamenei, the Americans and Israelis appeared intent on regime change.
In his first announcement after the attack, Donald Trump called on the Iranian people to “take over your government.
It will be yours to take.
This will be, probably, your only chance for generations.”
In subsequent days, Trump has provided different justifications for military action: preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon, destroying Iran’s ballistic missile programme and dismantling Iran’s network of proxy militias in the region, including Lebanese Hizbollah, the Houthis in Yemen and Hamas in Palestine.
He also speaks of destroying the Iranian navy.
The US and Israel are probably capable of achieving those goals.
With air supremacy and their combined intelligence networks, the Americans and Israelis should have the means to destroy Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programmes.
Naval vessels are easy targets for aerial bombardment or, in the case of the frigate IRIS Dena, torpedo attack by submarine.
And Iran’s economy is too weak to re-arm its regional allies in the so-called “Axis of Resistance”.
Regime change has received less emphasis as the campaign has progressed.
The Trump administration has generally avoided this language in the past, having promised no more “forever wars” like America’s campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Such foreign adventures are deeply unpopular with Trump’s voter base.
The experiment in state-building in Iraq failed to produce a stable or pro-US government, and the Afghanistan conflict ran for 20 years, becoming America’s longest war.
Trump’s “America First” agenda all but ruled out taking this road.
But the temptation to install a friendly regime in Iran, one that might open opportunities for American businesses and access to the Iranian oil sector, clearly loomed in the US administration’s thinking in the lead-up to war.
One option, drawing on the recent Venezuelan experience, might have been to find a regime insider, equivalent to Delcy Rodríguez, to take over the Islamic republic in co-operation with the US.
The difficulty for the Americans was to find Iranian insiders willing to work with them after 47 years of antagonism.
Another option widely discussed was the return of the Iranian royal family to power in the form of the late shah’s son, Reza Pahlavi.
Iranian royalists overseas point to the vocal support for Pahlavi inside Iran that many journalists reported during the demonstrations this January.
A street demonstration by Kurds in Erbil, northern Iraq, in April 2003 during the collapse of Saddam Hussein’s regime © PolarisWe can’t know for sure how many Iranians actually would welcome a Pahlavi restoration.
Few in Iran harbour positive views on the monarchy, whose repressive rule inspired the 1979 revolution.
In that sense, Pahlavi probably strikes most Iranians as a relic of a bad past rather than a vision of a brighter future.
His position would be further undermined were he to come to power at the behest of Iran’s greatest enemies, the US and Israel.
Even Trump has his doubts, saying to journalists this week that Pahlavi “seems very nice, but I don’t know how he’d play within his own country”.
Without a more credible contender than Pahlavi, it is unrealistic to believe that the current war might allow the Americans to impose a new leadership in Iran.
But could Iranians take matters into their own hands if the US and Israel are able to weaken their government sufficiently?
Calls from an American president for the people to overthrow their leaders will no doubt set off alarm bells for many Iranians.
They will recall US President George HW Bush’s appeal to the people of Iraq to rise up against their weakened dictator Saddam Hussein in the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf war.
Bush hoped a compliant military commander from Iraq’s Sunni Arab community might answer the call and work with the Americans in a post-Saddam Iraq.
The Shia community in southern Iraq was among the first to respond, but the Americans refused to support them.
They feared a Shia-led uprising might extend Iran’s influence over Iraq.
Saddam’s Republican Guards killed tens of thousands of Shia insurgents while American forces in neighbouring Kuwait stood by and let it happen.
The Kurds were the other Iraqi community to respond to President Bush’s call in 1991.
They too were left to face Saddam’s wrath until America imposed a no-fly zone over northern Iraq.
Once again in 2015, Kurds rallied to American forces in repelling Isis forces from northern Syria.
Yet in 2025 the Americans abandoned their Kurdish allies in their struggle with the new Syrian government of President Ahmed al-Sharaa.
With what mistrust then might Kurdish forces contemplate American overtures for them to enter the current war against Iran?
Recent reports claim the CIA has made contact and that Trump has engaged in direct telephone contacts with Iranian Kurdish leaders based in Iraqi Kurdistan.
While Kurdish grievances with the Islamic republic run deep, their mistrust of American support too has deep historic roots.
For now, the Iranian regime preserves a monopoly of force through the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the paramilitary Basij.
The IRGC is believed to number about 190,000.
The Basij, volunteer militiamen who led in suppressing January’s popular demonstrations, are estimated to number in the hundreds of thousands.
Both groups are ideologically committed to the preservation of the Islamic republic.
The violent suppression of the recent protests has demonstrated the regime’s willingness to use lethal force against its own citizens.
By conservative estimates, the regime killed more than 7,000, with claims that the number might reach the tens of thousands.
Whether through fear of the Basij or resistance to foreign aggression by the US and Israel, there is little prospect of a popular uprising against the Islamic republic any time soon.
It is even possible that the US-Israeli assault on their country might rally Iranians behind their government.
If America’s attack on Iran has piled pressure upon its enemies, it has also strained relations with its friends in the Middle East.
The Arab Gulf states are highly vulnerable, their extravagant wealth based on oil, business and tourism.
Their essential priorities are security and stability, both of which have been thrown to the wind by the current conflict.
The Gulf states vary in their relations with Iran.
Kuwait, Oman and Qatar have traditionally maintained good ties to the Islamic republic, while Bahrain, with a Sunni royal family ruling over a Shia majority population, has a history of antagonism.
The UAE is Iran’s second-largest trade partner and relies heavily on Iran for its food imports.
Saudi Arabia restored diplomatic relations with Iran in 2023 after a seven-year break, marking a new détente with the Islamic republic under Chinese sponsorship.
Whatever their particular relations with Iran, all Arab Gulf states openly pressed the Trump administration to resolve its differences with Tehran through negotiations.
Oman brokered talks between the two sides in Muscat and Geneva.
Most Arab states believed Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programmes sufficiently weakened by the 12-Day war in June 2025 as to obviate the case for renewed conflict, with all the attendant risks.
The Arab states of the Gulf face many risks in this war.
Many of Iran’s Arab neighbours host US military bases, making them a target for reprisal.
Gulf oil infrastructure is practically indefensible against drone and missile attack, as the Saudis learnt in September 2019 when their refineries in Abqaiq and Khurais came under attack.
Aramco was forced to restrict production by 50 per cent for more than 10 days before the damage was repaired.
The Gulf states’ fears have been realised in the days since America and Israel struck Iran on February 28.
In the initial days of the war, Iran deployed thousands of low-tech missiles and drones against its Arab neighbours.
US bases in Bahrain and Erbil, hotels and residential buildings in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, consulates and embassies in Kuwait and Riyadh have all been targeted.
The Saudi oil terminal in Ras Tanura was shut down after two Iranian drones struck the facility.
All parties warn that worse is yet to come, as Israel and the US step up their attacks on Iran.
High interception rates of Iranian drones and missiles in the opening days of the war have rapidly depleted Arab and Israeli supplies of air-defence missiles.
Even American stocks of Patriot missiles are dangerously low following years of support for Ukraine and Israel.
Gulf diplomats report confidentially that their requests for Patriot missiles are being brushed off by their US allies.
Iran’s low-cost drones and missiles risk inflicting ever greater damage as America’s high-tech missile defences start to run out.
Israel’s role in the Iran war has caused some disquiet among America’s Arab allies.
Many in the Gulf expressed concerns that Israel would use Iran’s defeat to extend its own influence over the Gulf.
The Qataris in particular are wary after Israel bombed their capital in September 2025.
Qatar, after all, had been negotiating with Hamas to secure the release of Israeli hostages held in Gaza.
Few in the Gulf feel comfortable partnering with Benjamin Netanyahu’s government in a regional war they long had argued against.
One of the casualties of this war might well be the Abraham Accords.
Undoubtedly Trump’s most celebrated diplomatic accomplishment to date, the accords led to full normalisation between Israel and four Arab states: Morocco, Sudan, Bahrain and the UAE.
Already during the Gaza war, diplomatic relations with Israel had proven a liability to those Arab states that signed up to the accords, given intense public sympathies with the Palestinians.
With the current war in Iran, Arab states are likely to further distance themselves from the hawkish Israeli government.
Both Presidents Joe Biden and Trump have pressed Saudi Arabia to subscribe to the Abraham Accords and normalise relations with Israel.
The Saudis have held back, insisting they would only establish ties with Israel when a clear framework for Palestinian statehood had been agreed.
So long as Netanyahu remains in power, that prospect seems remote.
More Arab states can be expected to follow Saudi Arabia’s example in shunning the Abraham Accords.
Indeed, the war in Iran distracts the US, Israel and the international community from the urgent business of resolving the war in Gaza.
Since the ceasefire of October 10 2025, the IDF has killed more than 600 Palestinians in Gaza.
Supplies of food, water and medicine are precarious.
On the outbreak of the Iran war, Israel closed all access to Gaza, easing restrictions slowly.
The reconstruction of Gaza is on hold.
The 2mn civilians confined to 47 per cent of the Gaza Strip (the remaining 53 per cent outside the “yellow line” is held by the IDF) continue to live in tents, suffering exposure to rain and floods.
No progress has been made towards the establishment of a civil government in Gaza pending the disarmament of Hamas.
So long as Israel is at war with Iran (and Hizbollah in Lebanon) the Gaza dossier remains in abeyance.
The international community risks failing in its responsibilities towards the Palestinians.
The UK government has announced a meeting in London to establish an International Peace Fund for Israel and Palestine, scheduled for March 12.
Foreign secretary Yvette Cooper promised the conference would bring together “representatives of Palestinian and Israeli civil society to build common ground between their communities, challenge entrenched divisions and work towards a future where both states can live side-by-side in peace and security”.
The government has now gone quiet on its Palestine plans, another casualty of the Iran war.
Trump has spoken of a four to five-week campaign that might “go far longer”.
It could, of course, end much earlier as well.
But already, the Iran conflict poses grave risks to the Middle East and the wider world.
Some 300mn people living in a dozen nations have been caught up in Trump and Netanyahu’s war of choice.
And how does it end?
Iran has been battered but is far from beaten.
The killing of Khamenei dealt it a terrible blow, but after 47 years the Islamic republic has institutional depth.
It is not a dictatorship, but a complex government.
Its military and repressive apparatus is in place so that no matter how weak it is to external powers like Israel and America, it still retains the means to suppress dissent among its own people.
And so survive.
Few believe that America and Israel can defeat the Iranian regime from the air.
Although Trump refuses to rule out the deployment of ground forces, a ground campaign would be unpopular at home and raise concerns with many of America’s allies.
The longer the war goes on, the more destabilising its impact on oil prices and the global economy.
And as its military arsenal is depleted, Iran might well turn to terror methods to pressure its enemies where they are vulnerable.
“Epic fury” could cut both ways.
Eugene Rogan is professor of modern Middle Eastern history at the University of Oxford. He is the author of ‘The Arabs: A History’ and most recently ‘The Damascus Events: The 1860 Massacre and the Destruction of the Old Ottoman World’
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