The U.S. strikes on Iran hit their targets. The region won’t be so contained.
The shock may crack the Arab order.
By Brian O’Neill
The air strikes against three Iranian nuclear sites, including the fuel enrichment plant at Fordo, might have marked the tactical peak of U.S.–Iran confrontation. But for much of the region, it’s only the beginning. American and Israeli officials are now calibrating next steps with the assumption that Tehran has been deterred. Yet in Iraq, Egypt, Jordan, and beyond, the deeper question isn’t whether Iran retaliates directly, it’s what new forces could awaken in the vacuum.
This was not a coalition strike. It was a unilateral decision, executed by the United States with Israeli partnership but without allied consensus or Arab endorsement. That fact alone reshapes how the region will absorb what comes next. Iran might be the one reeling, but it is America—visibly and solely—that will be held responsible for the consequences, both intended and unanticipated.
Iraq as Pressure Point
In Iraq, the calculus has already begun to change. Iran’s political and militia proxies—long integrated into the Iraqi state but never fully subordinate to it—now face an uncertain mandate. With Tehran momentarily on the defensive, the groups that once took direction from Quds Force handlers could begin freelancing: testing red lines, launching low-cost provocations, or splintering into factions with diverging loyalties. The central government in Baghdad, already fragile, risks becoming a pressure point between American expectations and Iranian demands. And though U.S. officials probably hope to avoid escalation on Iraqi soil, the presence of American troops—high-profile, static, and legally ambiguous—gives Tehran and its affiliates leverage without needing to fire a shot.
The Fragile Calm Beneath Allied Capitals
The initial official response from Arab capitals has been muted—deliberate, measured, and, for many, revealing. Statements from Riyadh, Baghdad, Doha, and Beirut struck a familiar chord: calls for restraint, appeals to international law, vague references to stability. But the absence of clarity is not neutrality. It is hedging.
For the Gulf monarchies, a weakened Iran reduces one threat but risks inviting another—ungoverned spaces, collapsing command structures, or asymmetric blowback from networks Tehran no longer controls. For Egypt and Jordan, both reliant on U.S. assistance and bound by peace accords with Israel, the political calculus is tighter still: No government wants to be seen as endorsing military action that could set off a broader regional spiral, but none dares condemn a strike they privately welcomed. The silence is not indecision. It is insulation.
Beneath the surface calm in allied capitals lies a deeper vulnerability: popular sentiment that is increasingly alienated from state policy. In Cairo, Amman, and even Riyadh, publics are watching the unfolding conflict not through the lens of U.S.–Iranian rivalry but through a more personal one—perceived humiliation, Israeli impunity, and the apparent impotence of Arab leadership. These are the ingredients of political rupture, not just unrest.
The region has lived with this fragility before. The Arab Spring didn’t erupt because of ideology—it exploded because the foundations were brittle. Corrupt governance, economic despair, and the unbearable weight of political exclusion turned small sparks into systemic collapse. Those conditions never went away. Egypt remains financially dependent, politically repressive, and demographically volatile. Jordan’s monarchy walks a narrowing tightrope between public frustration and foreign dependency. What has prevented another wave is not reform but exhaustion—combined with the absence of a galvanizing moment.
That moment did not arrive during the Gaza war, in part because Gaza’s suffering, however appalling, is geographically and psychologically contained. It is seen—horrifyingly—as tragic but familiar. What the Fordo strike represents is something different: the sudden reassertion of American military primacy in a region where many feel stripped of agency. The Arab street has not forgotten Iraq. And it has not forgotten that regional regimes responded to Gaza with statements, not sacrifices. The fear is not that this moment sparks revolt tomorrow. It’s that it begins to restore the emotional fuel that made revolt possible in the first place.
A New Radicalism Might Emerge, Shaped by Betrayal
If a new wave of radicalism emerges from this moment, it will not mirror what followed the Iraq invasion or the Arab Spring. It might not cloak itself in the language of Islamism or martyrdom. It might not call for the expulsion of the West. What’s taking shape is something more diffuse and potentially more destabilizing: a regional ideology of betrayal.
The targets of this anger are not necessarily American troops or embassies. They are Arab governments seen as silent partners in humiliation—states that normalized relations with Israel, kept quiet through Gaza, and now are saying nothing as an Iranian nuclear site is reduced to rubble by U.S. bombers.
This isn’t sympathy for Iran’s regime. It’s about what the silence implies: that there is no longer a unified Arab response to anything—no red line, no bottom, no act that provokes consequence. That vacuum becomes ideological fuel. Not for a single movement, but for scattered acts of defiance—lone attacks, regional protests, small-cell sabotage, and a slow erosion of the legitimacy Arab leaders still claim but no longer reinforce. The ideology here is not religious. It is anti-political. And that makes it harder to confront.
Iran’s Post-Khamenei Future: The Rise of a Liberal Democracy Is Not Imminent
The strike might not destroy the Iranian regime, but it could define what comes next—and who controls it. With Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei aging and increasingly absent from public life, a leadership vacuum is inevitable, and perhaps already unfolding. In that vacuum, the most cohesive and prepared institution is not the clerical establishment. It is the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The IRGC already dominates Iran’s intelligence services, regional operations, and much of its economic infrastructure. The strike on Fordo, rather than weakening that hold, could cement it—justified in the name of national survival and regime preservation. What follows then might not be anarchy or reform but a sharper form of authoritarian consolidation.
A post-Khamenei Iran led by the Guards would likely operate with fewer restraints and fewer intermediaries. Governance would be more explicitly coercive, less concerned with public legitimacy, and far more insulated from religious or civilian influence. International engagement—if it happens at all—would be tactical, not strategic. Regional operations could become more fragmented as IRGC commanders act with greater autonomy in Iraq, Lebanon, and Yemen.
In effect, Iran would become less predictable not because it is collapsing but because its command structure is hardening in ways no outside actor fully understands. The United States and its allies might soon be dealing with a military syndicate—one that doesn’t bluff, doesn’t bend, and doesn’t always coordinate.
Fragmented Escalation, Improvised Danger
Iran’s proxies are weakened—but not gone. Hamas, degraded and sidelined, no longer sets the tempo. Hezbollah, battered by Israeli campaigns in Lebanon and constrained by the loss of Syrian supply routes, has seen its deterrent power shrink. Iraqi militias, fractured ahead of national elections, remain reluctant to escalate unless directly provoked. The Houthis continue long-range strikes, but with limited success and diminishing strategic value.
Yet erosion does not mean absence. Stability now is threatened by a decentralized response, not a centrally coordinated one. Militias operating with reduced oversight might act on perceived imperatives: to signal relevance, preserve credibility, or exploit Israel’s perceived distraction. These actions could be sporadic, locally driven, and tactically ineffective—but in aggregate, they would increase the likelihood of unintended escalation.
Deterrence in this landscape becomes harder to calibrate. Tehran might not order a response, but it might be able to prevent one. The danger is no longer just escalation by design. It is escalation by default.
The Strike Was the Easy Part
None of these dangers—regime consolidation, regional unrest, unpredictable reprisals—are foregone conclusions. What determines their course is not the strike itself but what Trump does with it. The power of the moment lies in its aftermath. Used wisely, it could be the beginning of a recalibrated U.S. role in the region—leveraged for diplomacy, pressure, and renewed alliances. Mishandled, it becomes just another eruption that accelerates decline. The region has seen American strength before. It remembers just as clearly the recklessness that often came with it.
Trump has a choice. But history suggests it is not one he is wired to make. If past behavior holds, the coming days will be spent not clarifying intent or shaping outcomes but celebrating his own image—projecting dominance, mocking adversaries, ignoring nuance. He has already started this: In the hours after the strike, Trump returned to Truth Social to boast of “monumental” damage, welcome home the B-2s, and float the prospect of regime change—publicly contradicting his own administration’s insistence that this was not the goal.
That impulse might gratify the base. But it undermines the very leverage he just created. Message discipline isn’t his strength. Restraint isn’t his habit. And the cost of indulging ego at a moment of geopolitical consequence might end up rivaling the impact of the bunker busters dropped over Fordo on Saturday night.
Brian O’Neill, a retired senior executive from the CIA and National Counterterrorism Center, is an instructor on strategic intelligence at Georgia Tech.