In the powder keg of the Middle East, three primary actors influence strategic developments at present. U.S. President Donald Trump commands with his tweet diplomacy, blurring the line between farce and signal after he ordered sweeping strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Iran gnaws at the region’s fragile equilibrium through calibrated chaos and proxy puppetry. And Israel, balancing between security rhetoric and political necessity, continues to prioritize firepower.
Since June 13, ballistic missiles have streaked across the sky while Iranian and Israeli targets kept burning. The Iranian regime continues to bleed but has not fallen. Its long-time proxy, Hezbollah, only threatens to intervene in the conflict for now.[i] Meanwhile, Israel strikes with surgical precision, having decapitated Iran’s military leadership as it has with every Iranian proxy since October 7, 2023. There, one by one, generals fall. Scientists vanish, though not entirely. Israel and the US’s complementary operations, Midnight Hammer and Rising Lion, have eliminated many but not all of Iran’s generals, nuclear scientists, and uranium enrichment facilities.
Behind the operations, important questions emerge: Is the goal to topple a regime, delay the making of a nuclear bomb, or completely redraw the strategic map of the Middle East?
Trump and twiplomacy
Donald Trump did not just alter the tone of global politics; he rewrote its syntax. Under his hands, tweets—or posts on social media in general—became diplomatic dispatches, replacing press conferences, bypassing advisors, and, at times, turning foreign policy into provocation.
One tweet could signal war, peace, or both in the span of hours. Allies are left guessing, adversaries recalibrating, while the rest of the world scrambles to decode whether his dozen characters meant bluff, intent, or prelude to action. In this climate, unpredictability becomes the doctrine, and ambiguity is a weapon.
This doctrine reached its climax with Operation Midnight Hammer. After all, Clausewitz reminds us that in war, ‘surprise is the mother of victory’.[ii] One moment, Trump trumpeted peace[iii]; the next, the U.S. unleashed its most extensive aerial assault on Iran in decades. In 25 minutes, 120 aircraft, 7 B-2 stealth bombers, and over 75 precision-guided munitions rained down on Iran’s three main uranium enrichment sites. [iv]Fourteen GBU-57 “bunker busters,” each weighing the equivalent of 15 cars, plunged with the impact force and full speed of a Boeing 747 into a few square meters.
The underlying logic was never strictly military. What Trump sought was a theatrical display of dominance potent enough to reset diplomatic terms. For him, Midnight Hammer was less about Natanz or Fordow than a grand performance meant to accomplish, through spectacle, what sixty days of negotiations and four diplomatic rounds had failed to yield: Iranian capitulation, or at least the illusion of it. His strategy rests on the conviction that theatrics can supplant process and that power when choreographed cinematically, resonates louder than slow diplomacy. In this narrative, Trump casts himself as the lone architect of peace, authoring a self-congratulatory sequel to his “The Art of the Deal“, perhaps retitled “Peace Through Strength“.
When taking office, Trump vowed to “stop wars” and “bring peace to the Middle East.”[v] Today, the region is burning fiercely. Can one bomb their way to peace? Increasingly, the answer is clear: when performance replaces policy, peace is not the prize; it is the price.
The idea that one-time strikes could “obliterate” Iran’s nuclear matrix or force unconditional surrender is fiction, and Tehran knows it. Decades of accumulated know-how, dispersed enrichment capabilities, and safeguarded centrifuge components ensure that the programme remains resilient. Trump’s narrative may dominate headlines, but it does dictate Tehran’s survival instincts. Iran plays the long game.
Iran adapts
In the wake of Midnight Hammer and Rising Lion, the Islamic Republic did not collapse as many hastily predicted. Bruised but far from broken, Tehran will grow more paranoid, more calculating, and above all, more focused than ever on its cardinal mission: regime survival at all costs.
Despite high-profile assassinations of generals and nuclear scientists, the nation seventy-five times the size of Israel retains deep strategic reserves. Even with the death of top nuclear engineers, estimates suggests that a large number of nuclear scientists remain active.[vi] Ayatollah Khamenei, now 86 and openly named a target[vii], has already designated three potential heirs to his theocratic throne.[viii] And while senior Revolutionary Guard commanders may have been eliminated, their younger protégés, shaped by both the trauma of sanctions and steeped in martyrdom, are likely ready to take command with a fiercer ideological zeal and loyalty.
Much like the mythical Hydra, the Iranian system is designed to regenerate under attack: cut one head, and others emerge – often sharper, more ruthless. Rumours of internal dissent, spying for the “enemy”, and speculation about a comeback led by the Shah’s son have triggered even harsher repression from the regime. Detentions have turned into permanent silencing. Tehran will not crumble but dig in, doubling down on coercion and control.
Tehran’s response to Midnight Hammer was emblematic of its doctrine. Within 24 hours, it fired missiles at U.S. Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar[ix], a carefully chosen soft target emblematic of dual loyalties: friendly to both the West and Iran. No casualties reported. The strike was pre-announced to Doha[x], emulating the calibrated retaliation following the killing of Qassem Soleimani in 2020. Its purpose was not escalation but demonstration: a message that Iran remains defiant, operational, and far from neutralised.
Trump’s declaration of a ceasefire after the so-called “12-day war” was rendered meaningless by Tehran’s follow-up strike. The next morning, Iran fired again, symbolically breaching the peace. This is what scholars Kydd and Walter define as strategic spoiling[xi], a tactic intended to thwart peace efforts by portraying one of the adversaries, here Trump, as naive or manipulable, while on the other side, demonstrating that Iran is untamed and unpredictable.
Satellite images taken prior to the strikes revealed convoys of trucks near Fordow, likely relocating uranium and sensitive equipment.[xii] Tehran appeared to anticipate the attack. Trump may have claimed obliteration, but the reality may be less conclusive. Iran’s program was, at best, delayed, perhaps only by months, some say by years.
Moving forward, Iran is likely to accelerate enrichment yet under strategic opacity, possibly suspending clauses of the NPT but avoiding direct provocation. This is nuclear brinkmanship in calibrated form: aggressive enough to retain leverage, cautious enough to prevent all-out war.
And as Trump turned diplomacy into a game of geopolitical Russian roulette, he may have unwittingly handed Moscow a strategic opening that it will not hesitate to seize. Officially, the Kremlin condemned the escalation, but its alliance with Tehran runs deeper. Iran’s drone support in Ukraine earned it Moscow’s favour.[xiii] Moscow is already rumoured to be facilitating nuclear “civilian” partnerships in the region, mirroring moves in Africa, where Russian technicians assist uranium enrichment projects from Burkina Faso to Sudan.
Tehran is not suicidal. It will play on the U.S.-Israel divide, flatter Trump’s ego if needed, and re-enter negotiations on its own terms. The cat-and-mouse diplomacy of Tehran is back, sharper than ever. And while Iran may rebuild its network of proxies, albeit damaged by assassinations and battlefield losses, it will do so in new forms, shaped by two years of tactical losses and strategic reflection.
The question is no longer “will Iran fall?” but “how resilient can Iran be?” Tehran is playing for survival, not chasing victory, with cold and tenacious patience.
Israel: Distraction from Gaza or a mission half-finished?
Israel entered the fray with maximalist aims: the annihilation of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, the decapitation of its military intelligence elite, and the internal destabilisation of the regime itself. The results were partial at best. Main enrichment sites were hit and senior commanders eliminated. But Iran’s core capacities and regime remain in place. Operation Rising Lion may have roared[xiv], but it did not break Iran.
What comes next? Israel will likely revert back to its mastered tactics of covert sabotage, selective assassinations, and shadow warfare. For Netanyahu, this was never a standalone battle. It is one link in a chain of existential campaigns spanning the Gaza Strip, Lebanon, Syria, and now facing the final adversary in Iran. Each has been closely tied Israel’s state security as well as Netanyahu’s own political survival.
Yet Washington’s overwhelming intervention may have undercut Netanyahu’s principal pretext: the urgency of Iran’s nuclear threat. If that rationale collapses, what remains is the potentially longer-planned strategic goal of regime change.
There is another potential subtext: distraction from the Gaza Strip. Israel’s offensive on Iran effectively drew all eyes away from Rafah—despite the slogans of protestors worldwide to achieve the opposite—diverting attention from the still-pressing humanitarian catastrophe on the ground in the wake of Israel’s war on Hamas. Israel’s precision strikes in Iran[xv], however, raise the question of how the IDF could eliminate Iranian generals in their beds, hitting single apartments in high-rise buildings without affecting nearby floors while in Gaza, entire residential blocks have been reduced to rubble. If drawing attention away from Gaza was part of Netanyahu’s strategic calculus, it may prove short-lived. As the world emerges from the initial shock of the Israel-Iran confrontation, the stark asymmetry between the two campaigns risks reigniting scrutiny and international condemnation.
Still, has Israel miscalculated its long game? If Hezbollah, weakened but not fully defeated yet, reactivates, even if modestly, from the north, or if Iran’s proxies from Iraq to Yemen synchronise their responses, Israel could be overwhelmed from multiple fronts. The Iron Dome is effective but not impenetrable. It has limits and saturation remains its Achilles’ heel. Coordinated launches across multiple sides could overwhelm Israel’s defences, sparking a regional conflagration on an unprecedented scale.
The Middle East burns
The Middle East is not on the verge of collapsing, but rather, its strategic map is being redrawn violently and perhaps irreversibly. Two men, possibly three, shape this map: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from Jerusalem (backed unconditionally by Trump in Washington), and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei from Tehran.
This is not the end of a war but the opening of a new phase where red lines no longer deter; they tempt. Diplomacy gave way to spectacle. Missiles speak louder and faster than summits.
But what happens when the flames spread beyond their borders? When proxy wars become principal ones? And most of all, who controls the fire?
Are we back to the status quo before Thursday, 12 June? In appearance, largely yes, but with deeper scars, and lessons none will ignore. The war is not over – it is merely changing shape.
[i] Salhani, J. (2025). ‘Hezbollah watches on as Ira and Israel battle, for now’, Al Jazeera, 17 June 2025, retrieved from: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/6/17/hezbollah-watches-on-as-iran-and-israel-battle-for-now.
[ii] Von Clausewitz, C. (1997). On War, England: Wordsworth Editions.
[iii] Hernandez, M. (2025). ‘Trump says Iran “Iran is not winning this war”, should return to talks “immediately” ‘, Anadolu Ajansi, 16 June 2025, retrieved from: https://www.aa.com.tr/en/americas/trump-says-iran-is-not-winning-this-war-should-return-to-talks-immediately/3600757/.
[iv] Roque, A. (2025). ‘Operation Midnight Hammer: How the US conducted surprise strikes on Iran’, Breaking Defense, 22 June 2025, retrieved from: https://breakingdefense.com/2025/06/operation-midnight-hammer-how-the-us-conducted-surprise-strikes-on-iran/.
[v] Wolf, Z.B. (2025). ‘Trump promised a peacemaker presidency. What happened?’, CNN, 18 June 2025, retrieved from: https://edition.cnn.com/2025/06/18/politics/trump-peacemaker-iran-israel-conflict-analysis.
[vi] Norman, L. and Lieber, D. (2025). ‘How Israel Killed Iran’s Top Nuclear Scientists’, The Wall Street Journal, 29 June 2025, retrieved from: https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/israel-iran-nuclear-scientists-program-22453fec.
[vii] Reyes, R. (2025). ‘Israel wanted to assassinate Ayatollah Khamenei, but never got the chance, defense minister said’, New York Post, 26 June 2025, retrieved from: https://nypost.com/2025/06/26/world-news/israel-wanted-to-assassinate-ayatollah-khamenei-but-never-got-the-chance-defense-minister-said/.
[viii] Fassihi, F. (2025). ‘Sheltering in a Bunker, Iran’s Supreme Leader Prepares for the Worst’, The New York Times, 21 June 2025, retrieved from: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/21/world/middleeast/iran-ayatollah-israel-war.html.
[ix] Seddon, S. and Pomeroy, G. (2025). ‘What we know about Iran’s attack on US base in Qatar’, BBC, 24 June 2025, retrieved from: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdjxdgjpd48o.
[x] Babassa, N. (2025). ‘Why did Iran give prior warning before attacking the U.S. air base in Qatar?’, Doha News, 27 June 2025, retrieved from: https://dohanews.co/why-did-iran-give-prior-warning-before-attacking-the-u-s-air-base-in-qatar/.
[xi] Kydd, A. and Walter, B. (2006). ‘The Strategies of Terrorism’, International Security.
[xii] Landlay, J. (2025). ‘Satellite images indicate severe damage to Fordow, but doubts remain’, Reuters, 23 June 2025, retrieved from: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/satellite-images-indicate-severe-damage-fordow-doubts-remain-2025-06-22/.
[xiii] Ilyushina, M. (2025). ‘Russia’s deadly drone industry upgraded with Iran’s help, report says’, The Washington Post, 29 May 2025, retrieved from: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/05/29/russia-iran-drone-cooperation-industry/.
[xiv] Jensen, B. (2025). ‘Ungentlemanly Robots: Israel’s Operation Rising Lion and the New Way of War’, Center for Strategic and International Studies, 13 June 2025, retrieved from: https://www.csis.org/analysis/ungentlemanly-robots-israels-operation-rising-lion-and-new-way-war.
[xv] Gambrell J., Lidman, M. and Frankel, J. (2025). ‘Israel strikes Iran’s nuclear sites and kills top generals. Iran retaliates with missile barrages’, AP, 18 June 2025, retrieved from: https://apnews.com/article/iran-explosions-israel-tehran-00234a06e5128a8aceb406b140297299.
