Iran, Israel, Intelligence & the New World Order: An Expert Analysis

In conversation with Johan Obdola, Geopolitical Risk & Security Advisor
Interviewed by Danish Shaikh, Editor, The International Wire

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The Middle East is burning — and this time, the fire has reached the foundations.

In a matter of weeks, the geopolitical architecture that has defined the region for over four decades has been shaken to its core. The elimination of Iran’s Supreme Leader, precision strikes that have stunned even the most experienced military analysts, aproxy networks showing signs of hesitation, fragmentation, and uneven responsiveness— the world is confronting a cascade of events that few anticipated in both their speed and their audacity.

Governments are scrambling. Intelligence agencies are reassessing. Markets are watching. And the rest of the world is asking the same urgent, unavoidable question: What exactly is happening — and where does it end?

To make sense of a crisis that is simultaneously a military conflict, an intelligence operation, a geopolitical realignment, and a test of the post-Cold War international order, The International Wire sat down with one of the most distinctive and analytically rigorous voices in global security today.

Johan Obdola is a Geopolitical Risk and Security Advisor with nearly three decades of experience supporting governments and corporations operating in the world’s most volatile and complex environments. He is the Founder and Chairman of IOSI — the Global Organization for Security and Intelligence — an institution he has built over nearly twelve years into a globally respected body dedicated to developing practical, intelligence-led solutions to current and emerging security threats. He serves on the Advisory Board of the Global Diplomatic Forum in London, positioning him at the intersection of high-level diplomacy, strategic intelligence, and international affairs.

His core areas of expertise — counterterrorism, transnational criminal networks, and strategic intelligence-led risk advisory — are precisely the disciplines that this singular moment demands. Johan Obdola does not deal in conjecture. He deals in what the intelligence tells you, what the operational patterns reveal, and what the downstream consequences of strategic decisions look like before they become tomorrow’s headlines.

In this exclusive interview with Danish Shaikh, Editor of The International Wire, Obdola takes us inside the decisions, the intelligence architecture, the proxy dynamics, the succession crisis, and the endgame scenarios that the world’s newsrooms and governments are only beginning to fully reckon with.

What follows is a frank, unsparing, and deeply informed conversation about power, war, intelligence, and the future of a region — and a world order — in the middle of being fundamentally rewritten.

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STRATEGY, DECISION-MAKING & ESCALATION

Q1. Negotiations were reportedly ongoing — Iran appeared to be following a calculated script. What triggered the sudden escalation? Was this a strategic masterstroke, a deliberate diversion, or a catastrophic miscalculation?

I would not describe this as a sudden escalation in the literal sense. What we are seeing is the execution of a military option that appears to have been prepared well in advance and activated when Washington and Jerusalem concluded that diplomacy was no longer producing strategic movement. Public reporting indicates the operation had been planned for months and that the launch date was decided weeks earlier, even while negotiations were still ongoing. That tells us this was not a spontaneous reaction, but a decision maturing in parallel with the talks.

If I had to characterize it, I would say it was neither a pure masterstroke nor a mere diversion. It was the culmination of failed coercive diplomacy under conditions of rising strategic impatience. The United States and Israel appear to have assessed that Iran was continuing to preserve the core components of its deterrent and nuclear leverage while using negotiations to manage time and pressure. U.S. officials said after the Geneva talks that they believed Iran was engaging in delay tactics and remained unwilling to give up the building blocks that could preserve a path to weaponization.

So the trigger was not one single event. It was the convergence of three things: incompatible red lines, deep distrust of Iranian intentions, and a preexisting decision structure in which military action had remained very much alive behind the diplomatic track. In that sense, the negotiations were real, but they were also a final test. Once that test failed, escalation became far more likely.

From a strategic standpoint, the more serious miscalculation may have been on the Iranian side if Tehran believed it could continue playing for time while preserving enrichment leverage, missile capacity, and regional coercive assets without eventually crossing a threshold that Washington and Israel had already decided was unacceptable. That is why I see this not as an impulsive break from diplomacy, but as the moment when diplomacy ceased to serve as a sufficient substitute for force.

Q2. Was the timing of the attack designed to coincide with a specific domestic, regional, or international pressure point — or does the intelligence suggest otherwise?

The intelligence available so far suggests that the timing was driven primarily by operational opportunity rather than by a single political pressure point. Public reporting indicates that the U.S. and Israel timed the opening strike to coincide with a meeting involving Iran’s supreme leader and key senior aides, and that when intelligence detected the meeting earlier than expected, the operation was moved forward. That points to a high-value targeting window as the decisive factor.

That said, the strike did not occur in a strategic vacuum. It came at a moment when negotiations were still formally alive but already losing credibility, after repeated U.S.-Israeli warnings, and amid continuing international concern over Iran’s nuclear posture. The latest IAEA reporting underscored unresolved inspection issues and the significance of Iran’s stockpile of uranium enriched up to 60%, which would have reinforced the sense in Washington and Jerusalem that time was not a neutral variable.

So my assessment is that the attack was not primarily timed for domestic optics, nor was it simply designed around a media or diplomatic headline. It was timed to exploit an intelligence-derived moment of exceptional vulnerability, within a broader strategic environment in which diplomatic patience had already been badly eroded. Domestic and international pressures formed part of the background, but they do not appear to have been the main trigger for the exact moment of execution.

Q3. Is what we are witnessing a fundamental failure of back-channel diplomacy, or was military action always the intended destination, regardless of the talks?

What we are witnessing is not a symmetrical failure of diplomacy. It is the collapse of the assumption that the Iranian regime was negotiating in good faith. Back-channel diplomacy did exist, and Switzerland has confirmed that the U.S.-Iran channel remained open even after the war began. But the existence of a channel is not the same as the existence of a credible path to resolution.

The deeper problem was that Tehran appears to have treated diplomacy as a tool for delay, pressure management, and strategic preservation, while continuing to protect the core elements of its leverage. Before the war, Iranian officials were publicly saying that a deal was possible and presenting the talks in optimistic terms, but the underlying disputes over enrichment, missile capability, and the regime’s broader coercive posture were never truly resolved.

So I would not say that military action was automatically predetermined from the first day of talks. I would say something more precise: military action remained a legitimate and increasingly likely option because the regime never generated the level of strategic confidence required to make diplomacy sufficient. Once Washington and Israel concluded that negotiations were not producing real restraint, the military track moved from contingency to execution. That is not a repudiation of diplomacy as a principle. It is a recognition that diplomacy cannot succeed when one side uses it to buy time without changing the underlying threat.

From that perspective, the decisive failure was not on the side of Washington or Israel. The decisive failure was the Iranian regime’s long-standing pattern of ambiguity, delay, and destabilizing conduct, which steadily eroded the credibility of any negotiated off-ramp. Even now, the signals remain contradictory: Iran’s U.N. envoy said Tehran had not contacted Washington about peace talks, while separate reporting pointed to alleged feelers through intelligence channels that Iranian officials themselves denied. That inconsistency only reinforces the core problem: there was never enough trust, coherence, or verifiable seriousness to rely on diplomacy alone.

And the current U.S. posture makes the strategic reality even clearer. President Trump has now said there will be no deal short of Iran’s unconditional surrender, which shows that the objective has moved well beyond ordinary negotiation. In practical terms, that means diplomacy was exhausted not because it was unfairly abandoned, but because the regime pushed the crisis to a point where force came to be seen as the more credible instrument for degrading the threat.

POWER VACUUM, SUCCESSION & NEGOTIATION

Q1. If the United States or any Western government now wants to negotiate with Iran — eliminating the Supreme Leader has created a profound power vacuum. Who do they call? Who has the authority and the legitimacy to sit across the table?

I would be careful with the phrase “power vacuum” if it suggests total institutional collapse. What Iran is facing is not the disappearance of all authority, but the sudden fragmentation of supreme authority under wartime conditions. A temporary leadership council composed of President Masoud Pezeshkian, Judiciary Chief Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei, and Guardian Council cleric Alireza Arafi has formally assumed the duties of the Supreme Leader until the Assembly of Experts selects a successor. So there is still a constitutional shell of continuity, even if the system’s center of gravity has been badly shaken.

If the United States or a Western government wants to negotiate with Iran now, the answer is that they do not call one man. They call a layered and fractured power structure. On the diplomatic front, Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi remains the most recognizable and technically credible channel. Reuters has reported that he indicated openness to de-escalation in the immediate aftermath of the strikes, and before Khamenei’s death he was widely seen as one of the regime’s most empowered foreign ministers and a central figure in nuclear diplomacy.

But diplomacy alone does not settle the question of authority. In practical terms, any serious negotiation would require the consent of the interim leadership arrangement and, more importantly, the acquiescence of the security establishment that now matters even more than before. This is where Ali Larijani becomes highly relevant. Reuters describes him as an emerging power broker, notes that he heads the Supreme National Security Council, and reports that he had been overseeing Iran’s efforts to reach a nuclear understanding with Washington. That makes him one of the most plausible connective figures between formal state diplomacy and the regime’s deeper security decision-making.

So the real answer is this: the West can still find people to talk to, but legitimacy and authority are now divided. Araqchi may be the diplomatic voice. Pezeshkian may provide institutional cover. Larijani may represent the security-political hinge. And behind all of them stands the unresolved question of who truly commands the post-Khamenei order. That is why negotiations, if they happen, will be possible in procedural terms but far more uncertain in strategic terms.

Q2. If the architects of this strategy understood the vacuum it would create, why proceed? Is the power vacuum itself the strategic objective — a deliberate act of destabilisation?

the power vacuum was not the end in itself; it was the accepted and likely intended consequence of a broader strategy to break the regime’s capacity to coordinate, deter, and negotiate from a position of strength. Reuters has reported that the U.S.-Israeli campaign was planned in advance and has now moved into an openly coercive phase, with Trump demanding Iran’s “unconditional surrender” and even signaling that Washington wants a say in what leadership follows. That does not read like mere crisis management. It reads like a strategy aimed at altering the political and security architecture of the Iranian state.

So I would not frame this primarily as “deliberate destabilisation” in the abstract, as if instability were the objective for its own sake. A more serious reading is that the architects of the operation appear to have concluded that the regime’s centralised command structure was itself part of the threat. In that logic, degrading leadership cohesion, disrupting succession, and forcing fragmentation inside the system are not side effects to be avoided at all costs; they are operationally useful outcomes if the strategic goal is to reduce Iran’s ability to project force, preserve nuclear leverage, and coordinate its regional networks.

There is also a second layer here: once supreme authority is fractured, latent internal fault lines become more exploitable. That is where the Kurdish dimension matters. Reuters reports that Iranian Kurdish groups have held talks with the United States about whether they could attack Iran’s security forces in the west, and that Israel is backing plans by Iranian Kurdish militias to seize border towns, with Kurdish groups expecting that any serious push would depend heavily on U.S. and Israeli air support. That does not prove a full CIA-directed ground campaign, and I would be careful not to overstate it. But it does show that the post-strike environment is already being viewed by outside actors as an opportunity to widen pressure on the regime from within its own periphery.

So why proceed if they understood a vacuum would follow? Because from Washington’s and Israel’s perspective, the greater danger was allowing the regime to retain enough centralized authority to recover, reconstitute, and continue bargaining through intimidation. In that framework, a fractured Iran is not necessarily seen as a clean or stable outcome, but it may be seen as a more manageable one than an intact revolutionary state that preserves strategic coherence, nuclear latency, and regional coercive reach.

My assessment, therefore, is this: the vacuum is best understood not as the sole objective, but as a calculated battlespace condition. It creates uncertainty, yes, but it also creates openings—inside the elite, across the security apparatus, and along the ethnic and regional margins of the state. For the architects of the campaign, that may well be the point: not chaos for its own sake, but controlled fragmentation that weakens the regime faster than diplomacy ever could.

Q3. Who are the credible successors within Iran’s current power structure, and are any of them pragmatic enough to engage meaningfully with the West?

The credible successors are not all the same kind of actor. In Iran, the person best positioned to inherit the system is not necessarily the person best positioned to negotiate with the West. Under the Islamic Republic’s structure, the next Supreme Leader is expected to be a senior cleric, so the formal field is narrower than many assume. Reuters identifies Mojtaba Khamenei, Alireza Arafi, Mohseni-Ejei, and other senior clerics as plausible names, while figures like Ali Larijani appear more important as power brokers than as straightforward candidates for the top clerical office.

Mojtaba Khamenei remains one of the most serious contenders. He has long-standing influence behind the scenes, close ties to the Revolutionary Guards, and deep embeddedness within the hardline core of the regime. But that does not make him a pragmatic option from a Western standpoint. Reuters reports that he is aligned with conservative clerics and the IRGC and opposes reformist and pro-engagement currents. If he rises, the message would be continuity with a more security-dominated edge.

Alireza Arafi is another credible name because he now sits on the interim leadership council and has the clerical standing and Khamenei-backed institutional credentials that matter in a succession fight. But he, too, appears to represent ideological continuity rather than meaningful moderation. Reuters describes him as firmly aligned with Khamenei’s vision and rooted in the religious-security architecture of the state.

If one asks whether there are figures more capable of engaging the West in a serious way, the answer is yes—but they are not necessarily the favorites to inherit supreme authority. Hassan Khomeini and Hassan Rouhani are more associated with diplomacy and moderation, and Reuters notes that Hassan Khomeini may be seen as better able to ease Western enmity. But the succession is unfolding under wartime conditions, and that favors cohesion, control, and ideological reliability over reformist credibility.

So my assessment is this: the most credible successors are not the most pragmatic, and the most pragmatic are not the strongest successors. The one figure who may matter most in bridging those worlds is Ali Larijani—not necessarily as the next Supreme Leader, but as the system’s most plausible hinge between security power, elite consensus, and any future negotiation channel.

Q4. Could the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps — the IRGC — now consolidate power and become the de facto state? What does that mean for the nuclear file, for sanctions, and for regional security?

Yes — the IRGC could very well emerge as the de facto center of the Iranian state, at least in practical terms. Reuters reports that the Guards have already tightened their grip over wartime decision-making, and U.S. intelligence had assessed before the strikes that hardline IRGC figures could fill the power space if Khamenei were killed. That does not necessarily mean an immediate formal military coup. It means that under the pressure of war, succession uncertainty, and regime survival, the balance of real authority shifts further toward the armed-security apparatus, even if clerical institutions remain in place as the constitutional wrapper.

For the nuclear file, that would almost certainly mean a harder and more securitized posture. Before the war, there were still signs that parts of the Iranian system were willing to discuss dilution of highly enriched uranium in exchange for full sanctions relief, and Ali Larijani was reported to be overseeing efforts to reach a deal with Washington. But Reuters also reported that Iran insisted enrichment remain its right, and that its missile capabilities were explicitly non-negotiable. If the IRGC becomes the decisive actor, the chances of a broad, trust-based diplomatic settlement fall sharply, because the file would be handled even more as an instrument of deterrence and regime survival rather than as a negotiable policy issue.

That matters even more because the nuclear problem is not abstract. Reuters reports that the IAEA estimated Iran had 440.9 kilograms of uranium enriched up to 60% before the prior U.S.-Israeli attacks — enough, if enriched further, for 10 nuclear weapons by the agency’s yardstick — and that the IAEA has not been able to verify how much of that stock remains or fully inspect the damaged sites. If the Guards dominate the post-Khamenei order, transparency is likely to deteriorate, not improve. So the nuclear file would become less a matter of negotiated reassurance and more a question of containment, intelligence penetration, and coercive monitoring.

On sanctions, an IRGC-dominated Iran would almost certainly face deeper isolation, not relief. Reuters reported before the war that Tehran was demanding sweeping financial sanctions relief and linking nuclear concessions to economic rollback, while Washington was simultaneously seeking to cut Iran’s oil exports to China. A system more directly shaped by the Guards would make Western sanctions relief politically and strategically harder, because the IRGC is already viewed in Washington and allied capitals as the backbone of Iran’s regional militancy, missile posture, and repression architecture. In practical terms, that would likely mean sustained or intensified pressure rather than normalization.

For regional security, the picture is mixed but dangerous. On one hand, Reuters reports that Iran’s proxy network — especially in Iraq — has been weakened by years of targeted attrition, leadership losses, the fall of Assad’s Syria as a supply route, and the growing self-interest of militia elites. That means an IRGC-centered state may have fewer reliable external instruments than before. On the other hand, that same weakening can push Tehran toward more direct, less deniable, and potentially more desperate forms of action. Reuters says most recent serious missile and drone attacks have come directly from Iran, not from proxies, and Iraqi groups could become more active if they believe Shi’ite interests are under attack or if U.S.-backed Kurdish groups move against Iran.

So my assessment is this: an IRGC-dominated Iran would not necessarily be a stronger Iran, but it would almost certainly be a harder, less transparent, less negotiable, and more dangerous Iran. It would mean a state more centered on coercion than legitimacy, more oriented toward survival than reform, and more likely to treat the nuclear file, sanctions confrontation, and regional retaliation as parts of the same strategic battlespace. That is why the question is not only whether the Guards can become the de facto state. It is whether the world is prepared for what a more fully militarized Iranian order would look like if they do.

INTELLIGENCE, MOSSAD, CIA & COVERT OPERATIONS

Q1. Can the precision with which this attack was executed be explained by signals intelligence alone — or does this level of operational accuracy point to deep, long-running Human Intelligence penetration at the highest levels of the Iranian state?

No, I do not believe signals intelligence alone adequately explains this level of operational precision. What the publicly available reporting suggests is a fused intelligence picture: long-duration tracking, real-time surveillance, close U.S.-Israeli intelligence coordination, and very likely deep human penetration somewhere within or adjacent to Iran’s senior security ecosystem. Reuters reported that the strike was timed to a leadership meeting and moved forward when that meeting was detected earlier than expected. AP reported that U.S. and Israeli authorities had spent weeks tracking senior Iranian figures, that the CIA had monitored them for months, and that real-time intelligence helped shape the timing of the attack.

At that level, precision is rarely the product of one collection discipline. Signals intelligence can tell you a great deal, but it does not usually give you the full confidence needed for a strike against protected leadership targets unless it is reinforced by other streams. What appears more likely is a mature targeting architecture in which SIGINT, surveillance, pattern-of-life analysis, and HUMINT all worked together. That is also consistent with AP’s earlier reporting that Israeli operations against Iran had relied on spies, AI-assisted target development, smuggled drones, and prepositioned weapons inside the country.

So yes, this level of accuracy points strongly to long-running human penetration — but not necessarily in the crude sense of a single mole at the very top. It may instead reflect a networked penetration of routines, movements, access channels, and command-adjacent circles. In intelligence terms, that is often more dangerous than one insider, because it means the adversary is not just hearing secrets — it is understanding the operating environment from within.

Q2. As the founder of IOSI — a global intelligence and security organisation — how do you assess the tradecraft here? What does the execution tell us about the months, perhaps years, of groundwork that preceded it?

From a tradecraft standpoint, this does not look like an improvised success or a single-source intelligence breakthrough. It looks like the culmination of a layered, patiently built targeting architecture in which intelligence collection, surveillance, deception, operational security, and strike execution were integrated over time. Reuters reported before the war that Israel was already preparing for possible joint military action with the United States as talks with Tehran appeared to be reaching an impasse, which strongly suggests that the military and intelligence tracks had been developing in parallel well before execution.

The execution itself points to high-quality groundwork. AP reported that U.S. and Israeli authorities spent weeks tracking the movements of senior Iranian leaders and shared information that enabled nearly simultaneous strikes at multiple locations within a single minute. Reuters likewise reported that the attack was timed to a leadership meeting and accelerated when intelligence detected that the meeting was happening earlier than expected. That is the signature of mature target development: not just knowing where a target may be, but being able to act inside a narrow and dynamic decision window with confidence.

What impresses me most is the likely depth of preparation behind that moment. AP’s earlier reporting on Israeli operations against Iran described a years-long effort involving spies, AI-assisted target development, drones and precision systems smuggled into Iran, and prepositioned capabilities designed to suppress air defenses and missile response at the opening of the strike package. Whether every element of that earlier model was replicated here or not, the broader lesson is clear: this kind of operational accuracy is usually built through long-duration pattern-of-life mapping, human access, disciplined compartmentation, and the patient fusion of technical and human intelligence.

So my assessment is that the tradecraft reflects strategic patience more than tactical brilliance alone. Tactical brilliance matters, of course, but it only becomes possible when months or years of groundwork have already reduced uncertainty. This operation appears to have benefited from exactly that kind of preparation: penetrated routines, refined targeting, preplanned sequencing, and a level of intelligence confidence that allowed decision-makers to move decisively when the window opened. Even the White House’s own description of Operation Epic Fury as a “precise” campaign executed with allies points to an operation that was built around synchronization, not improvisation.

In professional terms, I would describe the tradecraft here as the product of four disciplines working together: persistent collection, covert preparation, real-time exploitation, and command-level trust in the intelligence picture. That combination is rare. And when you see it executed at this level, it usually means the visible strike is only the final expression of a much longer clandestine campaign that began well before the world realized how far it had advanced.

Q3. How do you see the role of Mossad and the CIA in this conflict? Are the intelligence agencies driving political decisions, or are political leaders directing them?

I do not see Mossad and the CIA as autonomous actors driving policy on their own. I see them as highly influential instruments within a political decision structure. Political leaders define the strategic objective, the acceptable level of risk, and the threshold for action. Intelligence agencies then shape the menu of what becomes possible by reducing uncertainty, refining timing, and identifying opportunities that decision-makers can exploit. In this case, the public reporting points to exactly that kind of interaction. AP reported that the CIA tracked senior Iranian leaders for months, that intelligence was shared with Israel, and that U.S. and Israeli war rooms were synchronized in real time during the strikes. The White House has also made clear that President Trump authorized Operation Epic Fury as part of a broader campaign carried out with allies.

So my answer is: political leaders are directing the campaign, but intelligence agencies are heavily shaping its tempo, precision, and confidence level. That is an important distinction. Agencies do not replace political authority, but when their penetration is deep and their picture is clear, they can strongly influence when leaders decide to move and how ambitious those decisions become. In a conflict like this, intelligence is not the policy itself, but it becomes the architecture that makes policy executable.

I would also distinguish between the two services. The CIA appears to have been central to long-range tracking, intelligence fusion, liaison with Israel, and possibly indirect crisis signaling. Reuters reported that Iranian intelligence operatives had signalled openness to talks with the CIA through a third-country service, even though that was later denied by Iranian-linked sources. That suggests the CIA is operating on both the intelligence and the political-strategic interface. Mossad, by contrast, appears more tightly linked to covert preparation, target development, and operational penetration inside Iran, consistent with AP’s reporting on years of Israeli groundwork involving spies, smuggled systems, and prepositioned capabilities.

So no, I would not say the agencies are driving the politicians. But I would say that in this campaign, the quality of the intelligence picture has almost certainly narrowed the political leader’s room for hesitation. When intelligence reaches that level of maturity, leaders are still the ones making the decision — but they are doing so inside a battlespace already shaped by intelligence success.

Q4. Is there a realistic possibility that Iran’s catastrophic intelligence failure points to a mole — someone with direct access to the Supreme Leader’s inner circle?

Yes, there is a realistic possibility that insider access played a role — but I would be very careful about reducing this to the simplistic image of a single mole sitting next to the Supreme Leader. The public reporting points to something more serious: not just one betrayal, but a deep and possibly layered penetration of Iran’s security environment. Reuters reported that the strike was timed to a meeting involving Khamenei and key aides, and that the operation was moved forward when intelligence detected the meeting earlier than expected. AP has reported that the CIA tracked senior Iranian leaders for months, shared intelligence with Israel, and helped refine the timing of the strikes. That level of precision is difficult to explain without some combination of persistent surveillance, pattern-of-life mapping, and human access somewhere close to the command ecosystem.

So my assessment is that a direct-access insider is possible, but the more important conclusion is broader: Iran appears to have suffered a systemic counterintelligence failure. When an adversary can understand leadership routines, identify high-value windows, and strike with this degree of confidence, it usually means the penetration is networked rather than singular. It may involve insiders, facilitators, compromised logistics, surveillance support, and access to adjacent protective structures rather than one dramatic defector at the very top.

AP’s earlier reporting on Israeli operations inside Iran is especially relevant here. It described years of groundwork involving spies, smuggled drones, and prepositioned systems inside Iranian territory. That suggests this conflict did not begin with one sudden intelligence breakthrough. It reflects a long campaign of access-building. In that context, the question is not only whether there was a mole, but how many layers of the Iranian state and security system had already been compromised before the final strike was executed.

So yes, a mole is realistic. But the larger and more troubling possibility for Tehran is that this was not the work of one mole at all. It was the product of a mature intelligence architecture that had penetrated the regime’s routines deeply enough to turn secrecy itself into an illusion.

KEY ELIMINATIONS & TARGETED OPERATIONS

Q1 Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had been politically marginalized for years, yet he remained a recognizable and potentially disruptive figure. If he was in fact targeted, was that because of a quiet political role or network that still mattered behind the scenes?

I would be cautious about overstating both parts of the premise. First, the public record remains too murky to build confidently on the assumption of a confirmed elimination. Second, Ahmadinejad had not disappeared entirely from Iranian political life. He had tried to re-enter the presidential arena in 2024, even if the system was still structured to keep him from returning to formal power. That matters, because it suggests he was no longer central — but neither was he irrelevant.

So no, I do not think the strongest explanation is that he was necessarily working on some secret grand agenda that outside observers completely missed. Open-source reporting does not support that conclusion. A more disciplined assessment is that figures like Ahmadinejad can retain residual value even after political marginalization: they carry institutional memory, symbolic capital, populist recognition, and the ability to become rallying points in moments of crisis. Reuters noted that his relationship with Khamenei had deteriorated over time, and AP’s 2024 reporting showed that he still had enough profile to seek a comeback after Raisi’s death. That combination makes him less a hidden strategist than an unpredictable node inside a stressed political system.

If he was seen as relevant by those designing the campaign, the reason may have been less about a clandestine project and more about contingency politics. In a succession crisis, even sidelined former presidents can matter if they possess name recognition, factional ties, or the potential to channel discontent from hardline-populist constituencies that no longer fully trust the clerical core. In that sense, the issue is not whether Ahmadinejad was secretly running Iran from the shadows. The issue is whether he still represented an alternative pole of symbolic legitimacy or elite unpredictability at a time when the regime was entering its most dangerous phase in decades. That is a much more plausible explanation.

In crises like this, politically diminished figures are not dangerous because they are invisible. They are dangerous because they remain available — available as symbols, as fallback options, or as vehicles for factions that may need a name, a memory, or a narrative when the center starts to fracture.

Q2. Looking at the sequencing of eliminations — is there a strategic logic to the order? Are they systematically removing institutional memory, operational capability, or symbolic legitimacy?

Yes, there does appear to be a strategic logic to the sequencing. I would not claim that outside observers can reconstruct the full targeting matrix from open sources alone, but the visible pattern strongly suggests this was not random. Reuters reported before the war that U.S. planning had advanced to the point of considering strikes on specific individuals, particularly those involved in command and control of IRGC forces. That already indicates a deliberate campaign design rather than opportunistic targeting.

The first layer of that logic is likely command disruption. In the opening phase of a high-end campaign, the most urgent targets are the people who can preserve coherence, authorize retaliation, and keep the regime functioning under attack. AP’s reporting on the early strikes identified senior Iranian military and intelligence figures among those Israel said were killed, while Reuters reported that Khamenei was struck in connection with a meeting of key aides. That points to an effort to break the regime’s decision rhythm at the center.

The second layer is capability degradation. The White House has explicitly defined the campaign’s goals as eliminating the nuclear threat, destroying Iran’s ballistic missile arsenal, and degrading proxy networks. In practical terms, that means not only hitting infrastructure but also removing the people who carry operational memory, technical expertise, and the authority to reconstitute those systems. So yes, institutional memory and operational capability are both part of the logic.

The third layer is symbolic and political. Once you begin removing figures who embody continuity, protection, and ideological control, the message extends beyond the battlefield. It tells the elite that the regime is penetrated, tells the public that the system is vulnerable, and tells regional proxies that Tehran may not be able to protect even its own top tier. In that sense, the sequencing appears designed to weaken the regime simultaneously as a command structure, as a war-fighting system, and as a symbol of unshakable authority.

Q3. Could these targeted eliminations also serve as a direct message to proxy commanders — Hezbollah leadership, Houthi senior figures, Iraqi PMF — about the limits of Iranian protection and the reach of Israeli and Western intelligence?

Yes, absolutely — these targeted eliminations can also be read as a direct message to proxy commanders across the region. But the message is more sophisticated than “we can reach you.” It is also: “Iran cannot protect you the way it once claimed it could.” When top-tier figures are removed in a coordinated way, the effect is not only operational. It is psychological, political, and organizational. It forces every proxy leader to reassess whether Tehran still has the coherence, deterrent credibility, and intelligence security needed to shield its wider network.

Iraq is the clearest example of that effect. Reuters reports that many Iranian-backed militias there have not entered the war in force, and that years of targeted assassinations, weakened logistics, the loss of Syria, and the deaths of key leaders such as Soleimani and Nasrallah have left the network more cautious, more fragmented, and less willing to risk direct confrontation. That suggests the signaling value of these eliminations is very real. They are shaping behavior, not just headlines.

Hezbollah shows the other side of the picture. AP reported that it did respond after Khamenei’s death by firing missiles into Israel, which means the message has not eliminated proxy action altogether. But even that supports the deeper point: proxies may still retaliate, yet they are now doing so in an environment where the costs, vulnerabilities, and limits of Iranian protection are much more exposed than before.

The Houthis are somewhat different because they have shown a greater degree of operational autonomy. Reuters previously reported that they would not simply scale back because Iran wanted them to. But that does not cancel the signaling effect. It means only that different proxies will absorb the message differently. Some will be deterred, some will become more deniable, and some may escalate selectively. What unites them is that they now have far less reason to believe they are protected by an untouchable Iranian center.

So yes — these eliminations are a message to Hezbollah, the Houthis, Iraqi PMF factions, and others. The message is that the reach of Israeli and Western intelligence is deeper than many of them assumed, and the protective umbrella of Tehran is narrower than it used to be. That realization alone can alter proxy behavior across the region.

TRANSNATIONAL CRIMINAL NETWORKS & PROXY WARFARE

Q1. Your specialisation includes transnational criminal networks. How deeply are those networks entangled with the IRGC’s Quds Force — and what happens to those networks when state sponsorship is destabilised or severed?

They are deeply entangled, but the entanglement is not uniform. The Quds Force does not relate to criminal networks in only one way. In some theatres, it uses them for sanctions evasion, shipping, procurement, smuggling, and covert finance. In others, it leverages them more indirectly through proxy ecosystems, facilitators, front companies, and outsourced operational support. The U.S. National Counterterrorism Center states plainly that IRGC elements conspire with criminals in pursuit of some of their activities, while AP notes that the Guards and the Quds Force have been linked not only to regional proxy warfare but also to global smuggling networks. Reuters has also reported that Iran has used criminal networks in Sweden, and that U.S. sanctions have targeted trade and finance facilitators tied simultaneously to the Houthis, Hezbollah, and the Quds Force.

What that tells us is that these are not cleanly separated worlds of “terrorism,” “statecraft,” and “organized crime.” They overlap. The Quds Force sits inside that overlap as a manager of hybrid influence: ideology where ideology is useful, coercion where coercion is needed, and criminal enablement where deniability, money movement, or illicit logistics are required. Treasury’s recent sanctions on Iran’s shadow fleet and procurement networks are especially revealing, because they describe illicit petroleum sales and covert supply chains as major revenue streams for financing terrorist proxies, repression, and weapons production. The Justice Department’s latest forfeiture actions against the Shamkhani network point in the same direction: Iranian-linked financial and commercial structures are being used in ways that benefit international terrorist organizations while masking the state connection behind ostensibly commercial channels.

So what happens when that sponsorship is destabilised? Usually, the networks do not simply disappear. They mutate. Some lose discipline and fragment. Some become more autonomous and more profit-driven. Some look for alternative state protection, political cover, or commercial partnerships. Others become less effective in strategic terms but more dangerous in criminal terms, because they are no longer constrained by a coherent political command. Reuters’ reporting from Iraq is useful here: many Iran-backed militias have not surged into the current war, and part of the reason is that years of attrition, leadership losses, weakened logistics, and shifting incentives have already pushed some of them toward self-preservation, business interests, and local political survival. That is exactly what we often see when the central sponsor weakens: discipline declines, opportunism rises.

In other words, destabilising state sponsorship can degrade coordinated proxy warfare, but it can also produce a messier threat environment. A network that is no longer tightly managed from Tehran may become less strategically coherent, yet more unpredictable, harder to attribute, and more willing to diversify into illicit trade, local coercion, corruption, extortion, or contract violence. That is why severing state sponsorship is necessary, but not sufficient. If the state-proxy-criminal ecosystem is broken at the top and not contained below, what emerges is not order. What emerges is a more fragmented battlespace in which criminalized actors retain capability but lose restraint.

Q2. Do criminal networks simply find new state patrons, or does the destabilisation of Iran create ungoverned spaces that accelerate their autonomy and make them more dangerous and less predictable?

Criminal networks do not usually disappear when state sponsorship is destabilized. They adapt. Some do try to find new patrons, new intelligence relationships, or new jurisdictions that can offer protection. But in the short term, the more dangerous pattern is often fragmentation rather than orderly reassignment. When a sponsor like Iran weakens, the network can lose discipline without losing capability. That is when criminalized actors become less predictable, more entrepreneurial, and harder to attribute.

In the Iranian case, that risk is especially serious because the IRGC-Qods Force has long operated in the overlap between covert statecraft, proxy warfare, illicit finance, and criminal facilitation. U.S. official sources explicitly note that IRGC elements conspire with criminals in support of some of their activities, and Treasury has repeatedly exposed shadow-fleet and procurement networks that generate revenue for the IRGC-QF and allied armed groups. Once that kind of ecosystem is disrupted at the top, it does not automatically become harmless. It often becomes more deniable and more decentralized.

Reuters’ recent reporting on Iraqi militias shows why. Many Iran-backed groups have not surged into the war in a disciplined way. Instead, years of leadership losses, broken logistics, and the pull of local political and economic interests have made parts of the network more cautious, fragmented, and self-interested. That does not make them safe. It means they may evolve from strategically coordinated proxies into semi-autonomous armed-criminal actors with fewer restraints and more room for opportunism.

So my assessment is that destabilizing Iran can reduce the coherence of its proxy architecture, but it can also create more ungoverned space inside that architecture. Some networks will look for new state backing. Others will become more autonomous. In many cases, the most immediate danger is not a clean transfer of loyalty, but the emergence of looser, hybrid actors — part militia, part smuggling system, part political machine, part criminal enterprise — and those actors are often more volatile and less predictable than the sponsor that once managed them.

Q3. With Hezbollah, the Houthis, and Iraqi PMF now operating with a disrupted central command structure — how do Iran’s proxies recalibrate? Do they become more controllable or significantly more dangerous?

hey do not become more controllable in any uniform sense; they become more differentiated. A disrupted Iranian command structure weakens top-down coordination, but it does not produce the same behavioral outcome across all proxies. AP reports that over time Iran’s “Axis” had already become less driven by top-down orders from Tehran and more autonomous, with survival calculations not always tied directly to Iran’s survival. That means the right analytic question is not whether proxies become simply weaker or stronger, but which ones become more constrained, which ones become more independent, and which ones become more opportunistic.

Hezbollah looks more constrained, but not neutralized. Reuters reports that Hezbollah’s decision to enter the war in support of Iran deepened its isolation inside Lebanon and opened a rift with a main political ally, while AP reported that Hezbollah did retaliate after Khamenei’s death by firing missiles into Israel. So Hezbollah is not fully deterred, but it is operating under heavier Israeli pressure, higher domestic political costs, and a narrower margin for escalation than in earlier years. In practical terms, that makes it less freely maneuverable, even if still dangerous.

The Iraqi PMF space looks more fragmented and self-preserving. Reuters reports that many Iran-backed militias in Iraq have so far not entered the war in force, with no mass mobilization, and attributes that in part to years of attrition across Iran’s network as well as the pull of politics, money, and local interests. That suggests some Iraqi groups are becoming less responsive to centralized Iranian direction and more focused on preserving their own position. In one sense, that makes them more controllable by local incentives; in another, it makes them more unpredictable because fragmented armed actors often calibrate around self-interest rather than alliance discipline.

The Houthis are the clearest case of dangerous autonomy. Reuters reported last year that the Houthis would not “dial down” under Iranian appeals and that they explicitly said Iran could mediate but could not dictate their decisions. Reuters also reported in June 2025 that a senior U.S. military official expected the Houthis to remain a persistent problem even after a U.S. air campaign. That makes them different from Hezbollah and parts of the Iraqi PMF ecosystem: less dependent on real-time Iranian command, more ideologically and operationally self-directed, and therefore potentially more dangerous in maritime disruption and asymmetric escalation.

So my assessment is this: Iran’s proxies become less centrally coordinated, not necessarily less dangerous.The immediate effect of a disrupted Iranian command structure is reduced coherence for synchronized regional action. But over time, the risk is a looser and more volatile proxy environment: Hezbollah constrained but still lethal, Iraqi militias fragmented and calculating, and the Houthis highly autonomous and persistent. That is why a weakened Tehran can degrade the architecture of proxy warfare while still leaving behind actors who are, in some theaters, harder to predict and therefore harder to manage.

ENDGAME, GRAND STRATEGY & GREATER ISRAEL

Q1. Is all of this ultimately in service of a ‘Greater Israel’ agenda — or is that framing too reductive for what is genuinely a complex, multi-actor conflict with competing and contradictory interests?

I think that framing is too reductive. “Greater Israel” is a politically charged slogan, but it does not adequately explain the full strategic logic of what we are seeing. This war is better understood as the intersection of several overlapping objectives: preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear-armed power, degrading its missile and proxy capabilities, restoring deterrence, and reshaping the regional balance in a way that leaves the Iranian regime far weaker than before. Reuters has reported that U.S. and Israeli objectives are not identical, and AP has reported that President Trump publicly defined the American goals as destroying Iran’s naval and missile capabilities and preventing it from obtaining a nuclear weapon. The White House has framed Operation Epic Fury in similar terms, emphasizing the destruction of Iran’s nuclear threat, ballistic arsenal, and proxy networks.

That said, it would also be naïve to pretend that Israel is acting only in narrow tactical terms. Netanyahu has clearly signaled a broader ambition: not just to punish Iran, but to alter the strategic environment so profoundly that the regime cannot recover its previous deterrent posture. Reuters reports that he has openly spoken of creating conditions in which the Iranian people could take back control of their destiny. So yes, there is an Israeli interest in a radically transformed regional order. But that is still not the same thing as saying the war can be fully explained by a single ideological blueprint.

My assessment is that this is a complex, multi-actor conflict in which interests overlap without fully merging. Israel wants the Iranian threat broken at its core. The United States wants to neutralize a regime it sees as threatening its forces, allies, and regional stability. Iran wants survival, retaliation, and strategic relevance. Those objectives collide, intersect, and sometimes reinforce each other, but they are not reducible to one slogan. So analytically, I would reject the “Greater Israel” frame as too simplistic. Strategically, I would say this is about power, deterrence, regime vulnerability, and the future balance of the Middle East.

Q2. What is the realistic end game for the United States? For Israel? For Iran? Has any party entered a situation they did not fully anticipate — or is there a deeper architecture to this that the public is not yet seeing?

The realistic end game is not the same for all three actors. For the United States, the most plausible objective is not open-ended occupation or nation-building. It is the destruction of Iran’s nuclear breakout potential, the degradation of its ballistic and naval strike capacity, the weakening of its proxy architecture, and the emergence of a postwar Iranian order that is less able to threaten U.S. forces, allies, and regional energy security. That is also broadly how the White House is framing Operation Epic Fury: as a campaign to eliminate Iran’s nuclear threat, destroy its ballistic missile arsenal, degrade its proxy networks, and cripple its naval forces. At the same time, President Trump has gone beyond a narrow military formula by demanding Iran’s “unconditional surrender” and saying Washington wants a role in shaping the post-Khamenei leadership outcome. That suggests the U.S. objective now blends hard security goals with political reordering.

For Israel, the end game is even more ambitious. It is not only about surviving the current war. It is about ensuring that Iran cannot reconstitute the strategic posture it built over decades: nuclear latency, missile depth, proxy reach, and deterrent mythology. In practical terms, Israel’s end state is a far weaker Iran, a broken chain of command, damaged prestige inside the regime, and a regional environment in which Tehran no longer looks like the untouchable center of anti-Israeli escalation. Reuters has reported that Israeli and U.S. objectives are not identical, and that while Washington’s public case centers on nuclear and missile threats, Israeli goals extend more openly into the realm of regime weakness and broader strategic transformation.

For Iran, the end game is much narrower and more defensive: regime survival, strategic continuity, and the preservation of enough retaliatory capacity to claim that it was not broken by force. Tehran does not need to “win” in a conventional sense to sustain its narrative. It needs to survive, impose costs, and preserve enough command coherence to tell its own population and the wider region that it remained standing under the heaviest assault in decades. That is why even as President Masoud Pezeshkian has apologized to Gulf neighbors and mentioned mediation efforts, Iran has rejected unconditional surrender and continued retaliatory strikes.

Has any party entered a situation it did not fully anticipate? Yes, but not equally. My assessment is that Iran made the deepest miscalculation. It appears to have underestimated both the depth of Western-Israeli intelligence penetration and the willingness of Washington and Jerusalem to move from coercive pressure to decapitation and structural disruption. That is the biggest strategic surprise in this war. But Washington also seems to be entering a more complex battlespace than some of its rhetoric suggested. Reuters reports growing concern about mixed U.S. messaging on regime change, rising regional dangers, renewed Hezbollah activity, and the possibility that American casualties could quickly transform the political environment at home. AP also reports that the Senate and House both rejected war-powers measures to halt the campaign, which shows Trump still has institutional backing, but those votes came amid a real debate over authority and exit strategy rather than total consensus.

The international community is also signaling something important: there is no single global alignment behind one end state. The U.N. Secretary-General has called for de-escalation and an immediate ceasefire. Britain, France and Germany have called for the U.S. and Iran to resume talks and said they favor a negotiated settlement, even while being prepared to help defend against further Iranian missile and drone attacks. The EU and GCC jointly condemned Iran’s attacks on Gulf states, reaffirmed the right of GCC states to defend themselves, and still emphasized diplomacy as the way out. AP also reported that Canada and Australia openly supported the U.S. strikes, while Russia, China and Spain were sharply critical. In other words, the world is not uniting around one clean strategic conclusion. It is trying to contain the fallout while different capitals back very different routes to stability.

So yes, I do think there is a deeper architecture here that the public does not fully see yet. This is not only a war of retaliation. It is a war to redesign the strategic map of the Middle East. The deeper architecture appears to include five overlapping aims: destroy Iran’s most dangerous hard-power capabilities, fracture its central command structure, reduce the credibility of its proxy umbrella, pressure the succession process, and force the emergence of a new regional balance in which Tehran is weaker, more penetrated, and less able to dominate through coercion. The public sees the strikes. What it may not yet fully see is that this is also a contest over who gets to shape the postwar order.

My bottom line is this: the most realistic end game is not a neat victory parade for anyone. It is a hierarchy of outcomes. The United States and Israel want durable strategic degradation of the Iranian threat. Iran wants survival with enough retained capacity to claim resistance. And the international community wants the war stopped before regional breakdown, civil war inside Iran, or a prolonged energy shock make everybody’s position worse. Whether those three trajectories can be reconciled is the central question now.

Q3. Is there a scenario in which all three principal actors emerge claiming some form of victory — and is a face-saving off-ramp actually the most stable long-term outcome?

Yes — that is not only possible, it may be the most realistic political outcome. In wars like this, especially when the objectives are partly military and partly psychological, “victory” is rarely symmetrical or absolute. It is often narrative-based. The United States can claim victory if it significantly degrades Iran’s nuclear, missile, naval, and proxy capabilities, which is exactly how the White House has framed Operation Epic Fury. Israel can claim victory if Iran’s deterrent posture, command structure, and regional aura of invulnerability are visibly broken. Iran, meanwhile, can still claim victory if the regime survives, preserves enough retaliatory capacity to avoid humiliation, and tells its domestic and regional audiences that it withstood the combined pressure of the United States and Israel without capitulating politically.

That is why a face-saving off-ramp may actually be the most stable long-term outcome. Not because it is morally satisfying to all sides, but because total victory is unlikely and total collapse is dangerous. Reuters reports that one week into the war, the risks for Washington are multiplying: proxy retaliation, higher oil prices, a widening regional battlefield, and the danger of a prolonged U.S. entanglement. Reuters also reports that Gulf states are deeply worried about the possibility of a broader regional breakdown, including the risk of civil war inside Iran, while the United Nations has called for de-escalation and an immediate ceasefire. In other words, the strategic environment is already punishing escalation without a clear political end state.

From Washington’s perspective, the current public posture remains extremely hard. Trump has demanded Iran’s “unconditional surrender” and signaled that further strikes are possible, while Congress has so far backed the campaign rather than blocked it. But even under those conditions, Reuters’ reporting shows the administration still faces mounting political, economic, and regional risks if the war lengthens. That is why a negotiated or tacit off-ramp should not be confused with weakness. In strategic terms, it may be the mechanism that converts military gains into a sustainable outcome before the costs begin to outweigh the gains.

For Israel, a face-saving off-ramp can also work — provided it comes after visible strategic gains. If Israel can credibly argue that Iran’s leadership chain has been shattered, that its missile and proxy systems have been badly degraded, and that Tehran’s sense of immunity has been broken, then it does not need a ceremonial surrender to claim success. It needs a new regional reality that is materially better than the one that existed before the war. Reuters has reported that Israeli and U.S. goals are not identical and that Israel’s ambitions are broader in terms of weakening the regime and reshaping the balance of power. That makes a controlled exit after major degradation more plausible than an endless campaign for total transformation.

For Iran, the bar is different. Tehran does not need battlefield superiority to claim victory. It needs survival, continuity, and an argument that it did not submit. AP reports that Iran has continued retaliatory missile fire despite heavy damage, while Reuters reports contradictory Iranian signals — apology and de-escalatory language toward Gulf states on one side, continued military threats on the other. That is exactly the kind of posture a regime adopts when it is trying to preserve room for a political exit without admitting defeat. A face-saving off-ramp gives Iran a way to stop the bleeding while still claiming resistance.

So yes, I do think there is a scenario in which all three principal actors claim some form of victory. The United States claims threat reduction. Israel claims strategic transformation. Iran claims survival and defiance. The international community, meanwhile, would likely accept that outcome if it stops the war before energy shock, state fragmentation, or a wider regional conflagration become irreversible. Reuters and AP both show that those risks are no longer theoretical. They are already materializing in oil markets, shipping, and the wider regional security environment.

My bottom line is this: the most stable long-term outcome may not be a clean victory for any side, but a controlled ambiguity in which each side claims enough success to step back. In a conflict this complex, face-saving is not cosmetic. It is often the bridge between military escalation and strategic closure.

REGIME COLLAPSE SCENARIOS

Q1. Let us say the Iranian regime topples in the next few months. Walk us through what happens in the first 72 hours, the first 30 days, and the first year. Who moves first — internally and externally?

First, I would add one important caveat: a full regime collapse is still not the baseline outcome. Reuters has reported that Iran still has continuity mechanisms in place — an interim leadership council, an Assembly of Experts empowered to choose a new supreme leader, and a security apparatus that has tightened its grip under wartime pressure. So if the regime actually topples in the coming months, that would mean not simply leadership decapitation, but the failure of the continuity system itself.

In the first 72 hours, the first movers inside Iran would be the security organs, not the civilian state. The IRGC, intelligence services, and surviving hardline clerical-security figures would move first to secure Tehran, leadership compounds, communications, strategic military infrastructure, and the nuclear-missile chain of custody. The formal institutions — the interim council and the Assembly of Experts — would try to project continuity, but if we are talking about genuine regime collapse, that would mean competing authority centers emerging almost immediately. In that scenario, the most important internal question would not be who gives the first speech. It would be who controls the armed men, the command networks, and the decision channels in the capital. Figures such as Ali Larijani could become pivotal as brokers between fragments of the old state and any emergent order.

Externally, in those same first 72 hours, the United States and Israel would move first in the intelligence and containment domain, not necessarily with occupation forces. Their immediate priorities would be surveillance, battle-damage assessment, tracking of remaining missile and proxy command nodes, and above all control over the nuclear risk — meaning physical sites, material, scientists, and command access. That is consistent with the White House framing of Operation Epic Fury as a campaign to crush Iran’s nuclear threat, ballistic arsenal, naval capacity, and proxy infrastructure. At the same time, the UN, EU and Gulf states would push urgently for de-escalation and crisis management, because the war has already produced regional strikes, maritime disruption and energy shocks.

The wild card in that first phase would be the periphery, especially the Kurdish belt. Reuters has reported that Iranian Kurdish militias have held talks with the United States about attacking Iranian security forces in the west, and separately that Israel is backing plans by Iranian Kurdish groups to seize border areas. So if the center truly begins to collapse, the first territorial opportunists are unlikely to be liberal reformers in Tehran; they are more likely to be armed actors on the margins testing whether the state can still coerce them.

In the first 30 days, the struggle becomes political as much as military. Three contests would define that month. First, a contest for command inside the capital: whether the IRGC can impose a wartime order, whether clerical institutions can still confer legitimacy, and whether pragmatic establishment figures can assemble a transitional center. Second, a contest on the margins: whether Kurdish and possibly other local actors conclude that the state’s coercive reach has truly broken. Third, a contest for international recognition: who the outside world treats as the authority capable of speaking for Iran, controlling its territory, and taking responsibility for the nuclear file. If no leader is chosen quickly and the IRGC remains the only coherent force, month one could look less like democratic transition and more like a heavily securitized emergency state.

Externally, those first 30 days would be dominated by containment diplomacy. Gulf governments and the EU are already signaling deep concern about regional spillover and the risk of broader disorder, while the UN has called for de-escalation and an immediate ceasefire. Energy security would remain central: Reuters reported today that Kuwait declared force majeure and cut production, with the Strait of Hormuz effectively impassable for days. So even if the regime fell, the first month would not feel like closure. It would feel like a race to prevent state fracture, nuclear insecurity, and a regional economic shock from compounding one another.

The first year is where the real strategic verdict would be delivered. If the IRGC stays cohesive, year one likely produces not a liberal post-revolutionary Iran, but a harder, more securitized post-clerical or semi-clerical order. If the IRGC fragments and peripheral actors push inward, year one could instead resemble a hybrid conflict: part succession struggle, part regional proxy contest, part internal fragmentation crisis. And if a pragmatic transitional bloc somehow coalesces around establishment figures with enough institutional memory and enough outside acceptance, then year one could become a negotiated restructuring rather than a civil war. But that is the least automatic outcome. The more realistic point is that regime collapse would not end the Iran problem. It would transform it from a centralized adversary into a contested strategic space.

So my answer, in plain terms, is this: inside Iran, the IRGC and the hard security state move first; outside Iran, the United States, Israel, and the Gulf move first to contain nuclear, military, and spillover risks; and only after that does politics catch up. The first 72 hours would be about coercive control, the first 30 days about contested authority, and the first year about whether Iran reconstitutes as a new order, a military-security shell, or a fragmented arena of prolonged instability.

Q2. Could regime collapse in Iran trigger a domino effect across Shia-majority political structures — in Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria? Are those structures resilient enough to survive the loss of their primary sponsor?

A collapse of the Iranian regime could absolutely send shockwaves across Shi’a-majority or Iran-aligned political structures in Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria — but I would be careful with the word “domino.” These structures are not equally dependent on Tehran, and they would not all respond the same way. The more accurate picture is not automatic collapse, but differentiated stress: fragmentation in some places, opportunistic autonomy in others, and accelerated erosion where Iranian influence was already weakening. Reuters and AP reporting both suggest that Iran’s wider proxy architecture was already under strain before the current war reached this level.

In Iraq, I do not see a simple domino collapse. Reuters reports that many Iran-backed militias have not rushed into the war, and that years of attrition, leadership losses, broken logistics, and the pull of politics, money, and local survival have made parts of the network more cautious and self-interested. That tells us Iraqi Shi’a political-military structures have developed a degree of local resilience. But it also means that if Tehran weakens dramatically, those structures may become less coherent and more transactional rather than simply disappearing.

In Lebanon, Hezbollah is more resilient than many of Iran’s other regional clients because it has its own organizational depth, weapons production, and domestic base. Reuters reports that it spent months rearming with Iranian support and its own factories. But Reuters also reports that Hezbollah’s decision to enter the war has deepened its domestic isolation, widened political rifts, and exposed Lebanon to severe retaliation. So Hezbollah could survive the loss of its principal sponsor in institutional terms, but in a much more isolated, constrained, and vulnerable form.

Syria is different again. Syria is not a Shi’a-majority political structure, but it has been central to Iran’s regional corridor. Reuters has already reported that the fall of Assad was a major blow to Iran’s ambitions and to the logistical depth of its proxy system, while recent Reuters reporting shows the new Syrian authorities reinforcing the Lebanon border as the war spreads. So in Syria, the issue is less whether collapse in Tehran triggers a first shock, and more whether it accelerates an Iranian retreat that was already underway.

So my assessment is this: yes, the loss of Iran as primary sponsor would destabilize these structures, but not all of them would fall apart. Some would survive by localizing. Some would fragment. Some would become more criminalized or more deniable. The real danger is not a neat domino effect. It is the emergence of weaker but less controllable networks that retain weapons, influence, and coercive habits while losing the strategic discipline that Tehran once imposed.

Q3. Is a post-regime Iran, in the short term, more dangerous or less dangerous for regional and global security — and what should governments and corporations be preparing for right now?

In the short term, a post-regime Iran would likely be more dangerous, not because it would be stronger, but because it would be less coherent. A centralized adversary can sometimes be deterred, monitored, and pressured with relative clarity. A fractured post-regime environment is different. It creates uncertainty over command authority, control of armed units, custody of strategic assets, and the behavior of proxy and criminalized networks that may no longer be tightly managed from the center. Reuters has already reported that the IRGC has tightened its wartime role inside Iran, while pro-Iranian militias in Iraq are behaving in a more fragmented, self-protective, and less centrally directed way. That is exactly the kind of pattern that can make a weakened system more volatile in the short term.

The immediate danger would come from five areas. First, nuclear and missile insecurity: not necessarily a functioning national program advancing smoothly, but uncertainty over sites, material, personnel, and command access. Second, proxy and militia freelancing: Hezbollah, Iraqi armed factions, or other aligned actors recalibrating on their own timelines. Third, terrorist, criminal, and covert retaliation by actors no longer constrained by a stable political center. Fourth, cyber disruption and intimidation operations. Europol warned this week that the Iran crisis raises the risk of terrorism, violent extremism, organized crime, and cyberattacks in Europe, while Reuters reported that U.S. banks are already on high alert for Iran-linked cyber activity. Fifth, energy, shipping, and supply-chain shock. Reuters and AP both report severe disruption to energy markets, damage to regional infrastructure, halted tanker movement through Hormuz, and wider effects on pharmaceuticals, semiconductors, fertilizers, and other supply chains.

That said, the long-term picture is different. If the Iranian regime truly loses its ability to coordinate nuclear leverage, missile coercion, and proxy warfare from a central command structure, then the region could eventually become safer than it has been under a regime that spent decades weaponizing instability. The White House has framed its campaign in exactly those terms: eliminating Iran’s nuclear threat, degrading its ballistic arsenal, weakening its proxy networks, and reducing its capacity to destabilize the region. So strategically, the objective can still be valid even if the transition period is dangerous.

What should governments be preparing for right now? They should be preparing for containment, not celebration. That means tighter intelligence fusion on nuclear and missile assets; stronger protection of bases, embassies, ports, and energy infrastructure; expanded cyber defense; close monitoring of proxy and diaspora-linked intimidation activity; and coordinated crisis planning with Gulf partners, Europe, and multilateral institutions. The United Nations is already warning of a wider regional conflict and calling for de-escalation and an immediate ceasefire, which reflects how serious the spillover risk has become.

And what should corporations be doing? They should be acting as if the risk environment has already changed. That means reviewing personnel movement, travel, evacuation, and duty-of-care plans; stress-testing energy, shipping, and supplier dependencies; hardening cybersecurity and business-continuity posture; reassessing insurance, treasury, liquidity, and sanctions exposure; and building scenarios for prolonged volatility in fuel, logistics, and financial markets. Reuters has reported that major energy companies face exposure in the region, that euro zone banks are being warned about macro-financial spillovers from the war, and that Middle East air travel has been heavily disrupted, stranding travelers and closing airspace.

So my bottom line is this: a post-regime Iran may be a better strategic end state than the continuation of the current regime, but the transition period could be highly dangerous. In the short term, governments and corporations should prepare not for peace, but for a more fragmented threat environment — one defined by cyber risk, proxy improvisation, energy disruption, transport instability, and uncertain control over strategic assets. In the long term, however, if that fragmentation is contained and followed by a more responsible order in Tehran, the region could emerge safer than it was under a revolutionary state built on coercion, proxy warfare, and permanent destabilization.

MILITARY ESCALATION & BOOTS ON THE GROUND

Q1. Do you believe there will be boots on the ground — whether American, Israeli, or coalition forces? And if so, what is the likely trigger point that forces that decision?

I do not believe a large-scale Iraq-style ground invasion is the most likely course at this stage. The campaign still points primarily to airpower, intelligence penetration, naval pressure, and precision strikes. Reuters reported that U.S. lawmakers who received classified briefings said ground forces were not being emphasized, and the Pentagon has publicly stressed that this is not intended to become another Iraq or Afghanistan. At the same time, Washington has not ruled the option out entirely.

So the more realistic possibility is not a massive occupation force, but limited boots on the ground later if the strategic situation demands it. The most plausible trigger would be the need to secure nuclear material, key sites, or sensitive personnel if air strikes alone cannot guarantee control. A second trigger would be a major escalation that dramatically increases U.S. casualties or threatens regional infrastructure at a level that pushes Washington beyond its current threshold.

There is also a third possibility: indirect ground action through local partners. Reuters has reported that Iranian Kurdish militias have consulted with the United States about operations against Iranian security forces and that Israel is backing Kurdish plans to seize border areas. That suggests a hybrid scenario may be more plausible than a classic invasion: local anti-regime forces providing the ground pressure, while the United States, Israel, and possibly partners provide intelligence, air support, and operational enablement.

My bottom line is this: yes, boots on the ground remain possible — but if they come, they are more likely to be limited, mission-specific, and tied to nuclear security, regime fragmentation, or a major escalation event, rather than a full-scale occupation campaign

Q2. We have witnessed the scale of devastation Israel inflicted on Gaza following October 7th. Given Iran’s geography, population, military depth, and dispersed nuclear infrastructure — could we see a campaign of comparable scale, and what would the international response look like?

The comparison to Gaza is imperfect, because Iran is a much larger, deeper, and more complex battlespace. So I would not expect a Gaza-style campaign in the literal sense of one densely compressed theatre being pounded continuously within a small geographic envelope. But if the question is whether we could see a campaign of comparable strategic intensity and very severe cumulative destruction, then yes — that is entirely possible. Reuters has already described the current operation as the most ambitious U.S.-Israeli campaign against Iran in decades, and satellite imagery shows extensive damage to key government and military sites.

The reason it would look different is precisely the one built into your question: Iran’s critical assets are geographically dispersed, militarily layered, and in some cases underground. Reuters’ reporting on Iran’s nuclear facilities notes that the status of part of the enriched uranium stock remains uncertain, that much of it may still be there pending verification, and that a key underground storage installation at Isfahan appears not to have suffered major damage beyond strikes on the tunnel entrance. That means any campaign intended to produce durable strategic denial would likely be broader, longer, and more iterative than Gaza — less a single enclosed devastation model, more a rolling, multi-wave campaign across multiple provinces and target sets.

So my assessment is this: yes, the cumulative scale could become enormous, but the operational form would be different. It would be shaped less by territorial compression and more by persistence — repeated strikes on command nodes, missile infrastructure, underground facilities, logistics corridors, air defense remnants, and possibly internal security architecture if the political objective expands. In other words, not Gaza replicated, but a distinct Iran campaign that could still generate very high civilian and infrastructural costs if it continues to widen.

The international response would also be different and more fractured. AP reports that some countries, including Canada and Australia, expressed open support for the U.S. strikes, while others, including Russia and China, reacted sharply against them. At the same time, Britain, France, and Germany have pushed for a return to negotiations and emphasized civilian protection, even while being prepared to help defend against further Iranian missile and drone attacks. Reuters separately reports that Australia has ruled out taking part in military operations in Iran. That tells us there is no broad international appetite for an open-ended, large-scale war, even among states that are not defending the Iranian regime.

As destruction and civilian harm rise, the pressure would harden quickly. The U.N. Secretary-General has called for an immediate cessation of hostilities and warned of grave consequences for civilians and regional stability, while U.N. human rights experts have called for de-escalation and accountability and cited reported attacks on schools, hospitals, and densely populated areas. Reuters also reports that Gulf states and the EU are already worried about wider spillover, including the risk of civil war inside Iran. So if the campaign were to approach Gaza-level humanitarian visibility in public perception, the international response would likely shift from uneasy division to much louder demands for a ceasefire, tighter scrutiny of targeting, and stronger diplomatic pressure on all parties.

My bottom line is this: a campaign against Iran could become comparable in strategic magnitude, but not in the same physical pattern. And the more it moves from a counterforce operation into visibly broad social and civilian destruction, the more the international environment will turn against a prolonged war — even among governments that currently support the objective of reducing the Iranian threat.

Q3. Iran has fundamentally shaken its neighbours. Do you see regional states maintaining contained, calibrated responses — or is there a credible threshold beyond which the conflict becomes genuinely uncontrollable?

My assessment is that most regional states still prefer contained, calibrated responses — not because they are comfortable with Iran, but because they understand better than anyone how quickly an open regional war could become economically and militarily catastrophic. The official GCC-EU statement is revealing on that point: it strongly condemns Iran’s attacks on Gulf states, notes damage to civilian and energy infrastructure, recalls that GCC territories were not to be used to launch attacks on Iran, and still reaffirms dialogue and diplomacy as the preferred path. That is not the language of states eager to widen the war. It is the language of states trying to contain it while defending themselves.

At the same time, containment is not the same as passivity. AP reports that Gulf governments are angry that they were not adequately prepared for Iranian retaliation, that interceptor stocks are being depleted, and that some feel Washington focused more on defending Israel and U.S. forces than Gulf partners. Reuters separately reports that Saudi Arabia warned Iran not to strike it again and signaled that further attacks could trigger retaliation or even military cooperation with the United States. So the region is still trying to stay calibrated — but the tolerance margin is narrowing.

The credible threshold for an uncontrollable conflict is not theoretical. I see at least three real trigger points. The first is sustained or mass-casualty attacks on Gulf sovereign territory, especially energy infrastructure, ports, airports, desalination facilities, or population centers. The second is a prolonged shutdown of Hormuz or wider maritime paralysis, because once regional governments conclude that Iran is no longer just retaliating but systematically strangling the economic lifeline of the Gulf, pressure for a harder collective response rises sharply. Kuwait’s declaration of force majeure and output cuts because shipping through Hormuz had become effectively impossible show that this threshold is already being tested. The third is a larger wave of casualties involving U.S. forces or Gulf civilians that pushes Washington and regional capitals from defensive interception to retaliatory alignment.

So yes, I still believe the baseline behavior of regional states is controlled, defensive, and highly calibrated. But I would not mistake that restraint for unlimited patience. If Iran continues striking Gulf territory, if shipping disruption hardens into sustained economic warfare, or if civilian and military casualties climb further, the conflict could stop being a managed escalation and become a genuinely regional war. The U.N. Secretary-General has already warned that the current trajectory risks a wider regional conflict with grave consequences for civilians and stability. That warning is not rhetorical anymore. It reflects the fact that the containment model is under real strain.

My bottom line is this: the neighbours do not want an uncontrollable war, and for now they are acting accordingly. But the threshold exists, and it is closer than many people think. The moment defensive self-protection turns into coordinated retaliation by Gulf states, the conflict enters a much more dangerous phase.

ASYMMETRIC THREATS, LONE WOLF ATTACKS & GLOBAL SECURITY

Q1. What is the realistic probability of isolated revenge attacks across different parts of the world — by individual regime loyalists, inspired actors, or decentralised proxies operating without direct command authority?

The realistic probability is not negligible. I would describe it as meaningful and elevated, but not as a certainty of immediate mass-casualty attacks everywhere. The more credible danger is a dispersed pattern of isolated or semi-isolated revenge actions carried out by regime loyalists, ideologically inspired sympathizers, deniable facilitators, or decentralised proxy-linked actors operating with little or no direct command authority.

That distinction matters. When a state-centered threat architecture is placed under extreme pressure, two things often happen at once: its ability to conduct large, centrally coordinated operations may degrade, but the incentive for lower-level actors to act symbolically, emotionally, or opportunistically can increase. Some will want revenge. Some will want relevance. Some will want to prove that the movement is still alive even if the command structure is damaged. In that sense, fragmentation does not automatically reduce threat; it can redistribute it.

So yes, I do think isolated retaliation becomes more plausible under these conditions. But I would expect the most likely manifestations to be lower-complexity, higher-deniability attacks rather than highly sophisticated strategic operations. That could mean knife attacks, shootings, vehicle attacks, arson, sabotage, attacks on diplomatic or symbolic targets, intimidation of dissidents, threats to Jewish or Israeli-linked institutions, or attempts to strike softer nodes of Western public life. The danger is not only terrorism in the classic sense. It is also the broader ecosystem of coercive violence, harassment, and deniable disruption.

From an intelligence standpoint, the most difficult category is not the centrally tasked operative. It is the actor who is ideologically aligned, emotionally activated, and operationally loose. That kind of individual may not need much money, much planning, or much communication. And because they may not be plugged into a formal command chain, they can be harder to detect in time.

I would also add that decentralised proxies and criminal facilitators create an additional layer of risk. In moments like this, the boundary between ideological violence, covert retaliation, and criminal outsourcing can become blurred. A fragmented threat environment may produce actors who are not fully controlled by Tehran, but who still see advantage in acting in Tehran’s name, or in acting in ways that serve the broader anti-Western or anti-Israeli cause.

So my bottom line is this: the probability of isolated revenge attacks is real, and it rises when command structures are disrupted but ideological motivation remains intact. I would not forecast a uniform global wave. I would forecast a more uneven, deniable, opportunistic pattern of threat — and that can be just as dangerous in practical terms because it is harder to map, harder to attribute, and harder to stop early.

Q2. Is there a genuine risk of what we might term ‘leaderless jihad’ — actors who are ideologically inspired but operationally unconnected, and therefore significantly harder for intelligence agencies to detect and disrupt?

Yes, there is a genuine risk — but I would refine the terminology. In this context, “leaderless jihad” is understandable as a headline phrase, but analytically I would use a broader term: self-initiated ideological violence or leaderless violent extremism. The reason is simple: the threat is not limited to one doctrinal current, one organizational brand, or one command chain. In a crisis like this, the more realistic danger is that emotionally activated, ideologically aligned, or grievance-driven individuals act without waiting for formal tasking. Europol has already warned that the Iran crisis raises the risks of terrorism, violent extremism, organized crime, and cyberattacks in Europe, including the possibility of lone actors or small radicalized cells acting independently.

What makes this especially dangerous is not scale, but detectability. Intelligence services are often better at mapping networks than at stopping individuals who radicalize quickly, communicate little, and mobilize around a personalized narrative. Canada’s Public Safety materials explicitly state that lone actors, including youth, continue to pose a significant terrorism and violent-extremism threat and are especially difficult to detect before they act. CSIS goes further and says that, in 2024, the most likely terrorism scenario for Canada was a lone actor driven by a personalized worldview, and that this trend was expected to continue in 2025 as global crises aggravated extremist narratives.

In the Iranian case, there is an additional layer. This is not only about classic online radicalization. It is also about a regime and a wider ecosystem with a record of coercion, intimidation, and proxy-linked hostile activity beyond the region. The British prime minister said on February 28 that, over the previous year alone, the Iranian regime had backed more than 20 potentially lethal attacks on UK soil and posed a direct threat to dissidents and the Jewish community. That does not prove an imminent wave of attacks everywhere, but it does show that Iran-linked hostile activity is not a theoretical issue confined to the Middle East.

So my assessment is this: yes, the risk is real, and it rises when centralized command is disrupted but ideological motivation remains intact. The threat may come from actors who are inspired rather than directed, loosely enabled rather than fully controlled, and therefore much harder to identify in time. That is why the most dangerous post-escalation environment is often not the one dominated by large, centrally planned plots, but the one filled with smaller, faster, more ambiguous acts of violence carried out by people who see themselves as avengers, defenders, or symbolic extensions of a larger cause.

Q3. From a counterterrorism standpoint — how should major Western cities, including London, Paris, New York, and Toronto, be recalibrating their threat postures and protective security architectures right now?

Major Western cities should not move into panic mode, but they should move into a higher-friction defensive posture. The current risk is not only a centrally directed spectacular attack. It is also a more ambiguous threat mix: lone actors, small inspired cells, hostile surveillance, intimidation of dissidents, antisemitic violence, cyber disruption, and attacks on symbolic or lightly protected targets. Europol has already warned that the Iran crisis raises the threat of terrorism, violent extremism, organized crime, and cyberattacks in Europe, while the U.S. Department of Homeland Security previously warned that Iran-related escalation can increase the risk of cyberattacks, antisemitic hate crimes, and independently mobilized violence in the United States. Canada’s Public Safety materials likewise stress that lone actors and self-radicalizing individuals remain especially difficult to detect before they act.

So the right recalibration for cities such as London, Paris, New York, and Toronto is not “lockdown.” It is a tighter, intelligence-led urban security posture built around five priorities. First, harder protection for predictable symbolic targets: Jewish institutions, Israeli-linked sites, diplomatic facilities, major transit hubs, public gatherings, and known dissident communities. That emphasis is grounded in the current threat picture. The UK Prime Minister said on February 28 that Iran-backed activity had included more than 20 potentially lethal attacks on UK soil over the previous year, specifically highlighting dissidents and the Jewish community. Toronto, meanwhile, has already been funding hostile-vehicle mitigation for at-risk community organizations, which is exactly the kind of targeted urban hardening cities should be expanding now.

Second, cities should strengthen fusion between counterterrorism, hate-crime, and protective-security functions. In this environment, those are no longer separable lanes. The same crisis can generate ideologically motivated violence, foreign-state-linked intimidation, online incitement, and opportunistic criminal facilitation. London and Paris should think in terms of integrated metropolitan monitoring of hostile surveillance, protest escalation, faith-site security, and Iranian-linked intimidation risks. New York and Toronto should do the same with strong joint workflows across police, intelligence liaison, critical-infrastructure partners, and community-protection programs. Canada’s federal terrorism response model and Public Safety guidance both emphasize coordinated multi-jurisdiction response and adaptation to evolving lone-actor and violent-extremist threats.

Third, cities need to raise the bar on cyber and continuity protection, not just physical security. Europol has explicitly tied the current crisis to elevated cyber risk in Europe, and DHS warned that both pro-Iranian hacktivists and Iranian government-affiliated cyber actors may target U.S. networks. For cities like London, Paris, New York, and Toronto, that means treating transport, hospitals, emergency communications, utilities, and municipal IT as part of the same threat picture as terrorism. The question is no longer only whether someone attacks a building; it is whether they can disrupt the functioning of the city while fear is already elevated.

Fourth, major cities should increase visible reassurance and low-profile protective coverage around vulnerable communities and events. That is not cosmetic. It reduces fear, deters lower-complexity attacks, and helps surface suspicious activity earlier. London already has a model for this in its continued extra protection for places of worship after prior terror shocks, and New York’s current security-services structure emphasizes property security surveys, crime-prevention outreach, and direct police-community contact. In the current environment, that kind of visible-but-disciplined posture matters.

Fifth, cities should assume the hardest problem is the self-initiated actor. That means better digital monitoring within legal bounds, faster public reporting pathways, tighter intervention around rapid online radicalization, and closer engagement with schools, families, community leaders, and private-platform referral mechanisms. London has invested in easier public reporting of terrorist content, and Canada’s most recent Public Safety briefing is explicit that online self-radicalization, youth vulnerability, and private-group communication are making lone actors harder to spot and faster to mobilize. That is where protective architecture has to evolve.

My bottom line is this: London, Paris, New York, and Toronto should be recalibrating for a more hybrid threat environment. Not just classic terrorism. Not just hate crime. Not just state hostility. A blended environment in which foreign-crisis spillover can express itself through lone actors, cyber disruption, symbolic violence, community intimidation, and attacks on softer urban nodes. The cities that respond best will be the ones that harden likely targets, tighten intelligence-policing fusion, protect vulnerable communities, and treat cyber and physical resilience as one integrated security problem.

THE SHIA DIMENSION: UPRISING, COMMUNITY INTELLIGENCE & LAW ENFORCEMENT

Q1. What is the realistic probability of a Shia political uprising or civil mobilisation outside Iran — in Bahrain, Eastern Saudi Arabia, southern Iraq, or Lebanon? What are the early warning indicators to watch?

I would be careful with the phrase “Shia uprising,” because it can be analytically misleading. Shia communities across Bahrain, Eastern Saudi Arabia, southern Iraq, and Lebanon do not behave as a single political organism, and they should not be read as automatic extensions of Tehran. The more realistic question is whether this war could trigger localized political mobilisation, protest activity, militia-linked activation, or identity-based agitation in specific theatres. My assessment is that the risk is real, but uneven.

The highest probability of meaningful mobilisation is in southern Iraq, because that is where religious legitimacy, militia infrastructure, political competition, and anti-American sentiment can intersect most quickly. But even there, I would not assume a unified uprising. The more likely pattern is fragmented mobilisation: some actors calling for resistance, some trying to protect local power, some responding to clerical messaging, and others avoiding escalation unless directly triggered.

Lebanon is the second most plausible theatre for mobilisation, but again not in the form of a spontaneous communal uprising. There, the mobilising infrastructure already exists through Hezbollah’s political, social, and security networks. The issue is less whether mobilisation is possible, and more whether Hezbollah decides that its constituency must absorb a new phase of confrontation despite war fatigue, domestic pressure, and the costs already imposed on Lebanon.

Bahrain and Eastern Saudi Arabia are different. In both places, the probability of broad, sustained uprising is lower than many outside observers assume. These are environments with strong security monitoring, significant historical memory of past unrest, and communities that understand the cost of being seen as instruments of an external agenda. That does not remove the risk of protest, symbolic mobilisation, or sudden unrest. But it does mean that a major uprising is less likely than controlled or localized reactions—especially if events are perceived as crossing a sacred, communal, or dignity-related red line.

So my overall assessment would be this: the probability of broad sectarian uprising is low to moderate, but the probability of localized political mobilisation, emotionally charged protest, and militia-linked activation is significantly higher. The danger is not a single regional wave moving in unison. The danger is multiple local surges, each driven by its own trigger, but all feeding a wider atmosphere of sectarian tension and strategic instability.

The early warning indicators I would watch are very concrete:

First, clerical rhetoric. If senior clerics, influential preachers, or shrine-linked networks begin shifting from caution and communal protection toward language of obligation, betrayal, martyrdom, or defense of the sect, the temperature is rising.

Second, funerals and mourning rituals. In this region, funerals, Ashura-style symbolism, and commemorative gatherings can become political accelerants very quickly. When mourning becomes organized grievance, mobilisation often follows.

Third, militia and social-service activation. If armed factions, local “protection committees,” welfare networks, or neighborhood religious structures begin mobilizing transport, logistics, recruitment, or messaging, that is a far more serious signal than rhetoric alone.

Fourth, digital agitation. Coordinated messaging on encrypted platforms, sudden narrative discipline across influencers, or the spread of calls for “self-defense,” “defense of holy places,” or revenge are often early indicators of escalation.

Fifth, state overreaction. Heavy-handed arrests, indiscriminate raids, or public humiliation of clerics or communities can transform contained tension into broader mobilisation. In many cases, the trigger is not ideology alone but the perception of collective punishment.

Sixth, attacks on symbolic sites or persons. Any strike, incident, or rumor involving shrines, major clerics, or visibly vulnerable Shia populations could act as a catalytic event far beyond its immediate location.

So if I had to summarize it in one line, I would say this: the most realistic risk is not a single Shia uprising across the region, but a patchwork of localized mobilisations shaped by clerical signaling, militia readiness, emotional triggers, and state response. And in crises like this, those patchwork mobilisations can still produce strategic consequences far larger than their local origins-

Q2. You have spent years working at the intersection of security and human rights. All Shia Muslims cannot and must not be treated as suspects — how do intelligence agencies and law enforcement thread that needle effectively without alienating the very communities whose cooperation is essential to national security?

The starting point is very simple: intelligence and law enforcement must be threat-focused, not identity-focused. The moment a religious community is treated as a suspect population, the state not only violates basic principles of non-discrimination, it also degrades its own operational effectiveness. UNODC’s counter-terrorism guidance is explicit on this point: profiling people for enhanced scrutiny simply because they belong to a particular ethnic or religious community risks violating human rights and can seriously damage prevention and investigation by stigmatizing an entire group as suspect.

So the correct model is behavior-based, intelligence-led, and legally disciplined. Agencies should focus on indicators such as incitement, facilitation, hostile surveillance, violence advocacy, procurement behavior, travel patterns, covert finance, or direct links to extremist or proxy ecosystems — not on sectarian identity. That is also consistent with OSCE guidance, which stresses that community policing and human rights standards are not in tension with counterterrorism requirements; they are complementary when done properly.

The second principle is that agencies need structured trust architecture, not occasional outreach after a crisis. Communities cooperate when they see that the state is protecting them, not exploiting them. That means regular liaison with respected community figures, protection for vulnerable institutions, serious response to hate crimes and sectarian intimidation, and channels through which concerns can be raised without people fearing they are walking into a dragnet. Public Safety Canada’s prevention framework reflects this broader approach by funding community-based prevention, intervention, and resilience-building rather than relying only on enforcement after radicalization has matured.

Third, there has to be a clear firewall between community engagement and indiscriminate intelligence harvesting. If every youth worker, imam, community leader, or local association comes to believe that ordinary engagement is really covert collection by another name, trust collapses very quickly. That does not mean intelligence services must stay blind. It means they need thresholds, warrants, proportionality, and disciplined escalation rules. Community engagement should be about prevention, awareness, and protection; intrusive collection should be triggered by specific indicators, not by religious belonging. UNODC’s guidance on non-discrimination and OSCE’s work on human-rights-compliant policing both support that logic.

Fourth, agencies and police need to measure success differently. If success is defined by volume of stops, informal questioning, or broad surveillance around a community, they will alienate precisely the people whose cooperation they need. If success is defined by better information quality, earlier intervention, stronger protective partnerships, and credible disruption of real threats, the incentives improve. OSCE’s community-policing model emphasizes building trust, contacts, and networks inside communities precisely because that improves prevention and early warning.

Finally, governments should be very careful with public language. In moments of regional war, loose rhetoric can turn a foreign-policy crisis into domestic sectarian suspicion. Senior officials should distinguish clearly between the Iranian regime, violent proxies, extremists, and ordinary Shia citizens who may themselves be vulnerable to backlash, intimidation, or manipulation. That distinction is not political correctness. It is strategic discipline.

So my bottom line is this: the needle is threaded by combining precision and restraint. Precision means targeting behavior, networks, and concrete risk indicators. Restraint means refusing the lazy shortcut of treating an entire faith community as a security category. The agencies that get this right are the ones that protect the public while preserving legitimacy. And in counterterrorism, legitimacy is not a public-relations issue. It is part of the security architecture itself.

Q3. What role should senior Shia religious authorities — particularly the Marja’iyya based in Najaf — play in providing a credible counter-narrative and containing the spread of radicalisation at this critical juncture?

the Marja’iyya of Najaf should act as a moral firewall, not as a parallel war command. Its value at this moment is precisely that it can speak with religious legitimacy while still discouraging sectarian escalation, freelance violence, and communal paranoia. The official statement issued this week from Grand Ayatollah Sistani’s office condemned the war, called for an immediate halt to escalation, and urged a just and peaceful resolution under international law. That already signals the kind of role Najaf is best placed to play: not operational mobilization, but authoritative de-escalation.

What makes Najaf especially important is that its authority is not the same as the Iranian model of clerical rule. Analysts have long described Sistani and the Najaf school as exercising a more restrained, indirect, and supervisory form of influence rather than claiming day-to-day state power, and recent analysis suggests the Marja’iyya still retains strong legitimizing and veto power in Iraqi public life even when it avoids formal political ownership. That makes it uniquely credible as a source of containment language rather than revolutionary language.

So what should Najaf actually do? First, it should make unmistakably clear that solidarity with Iranian civilians does not equal religious permission for sectarian revenge or decentralized militancy. Second, it should deny theological cover to attacks on civilians, embassies, dissidents, or minority communities. Third, it should insist that any defense of communal dignity must remain within law, public order, and legitimate state structures rather than self-appointed armed activism. In practical counter-radicalization terms, that is the decisive message: grief is not a license for vigilantism.

Najaf’s voice matters because it has proven before that it can shape behavior at scale. Research on Iraq’s post-2014 crisis shows that Sistani’s intervention had real mobilizing power when ISIS threatened the country. That historical precedent cuts both ways: if the Marja’iyya can mobilize when it sees an existential threat, it can also restrain when the greater danger is sectarian overflow, militia freelancing, and emotional radicalization. At this moment, the more valuable function is restraint, not escalation.

I would therefore frame Najaf’s ideal role in four words: legitimize calm, delegitimize chaos. It should provide a credible counter-narrative that says: do not confuse the fate of a regime with the fate of the faith; do not turn communal anger into sectarian war; do not let outside actors weaponize Shia identity; and do not surrender religious authority to the most emotional or militant voices in the room. If Najaf does that clearly and early, it can help contain radicalization more effectively than most state messaging ever could.

Q4. What is the concrete risk that heavy-handed domestic security responses in Western countries will fuel the very radicalisation that intelligence services are trying to prevent — and how do governments avoid that trap?

The risk is real and concrete. When governments respond to an external crisis by treating a religious or ethnic community as a suspect population, they do not just create a civil-liberties problem — they create a security problem. UNODC’s counter-terrorism guidance is explicit that profiling people for “enhanced” law-enforcement attention simply because they belong to a particular ethnic or religious community risks violating human rights, stigmatizing the entire group, and producing alienation and mistrust. UNODC warns that this mistrust can be especially damaging in counterterrorism because intelligence gathering depends on cooperation and trust between communities and the police.

So the trap is this: a state under pressure reaches for broad surveillance, indiscriminate questioning, symbolic raids, or rhetoric that blurs the line between a hostile regime and a whole faith community. In the short term, that can look “strong.” In reality, it often weakens prevention. Canada’s own public-safety material stresses that lone actors and self-radicalizing individuals are already difficult to detect, and that prevention works best when communities, frontline workers, and early-intervention programs are part of the response rather than bystanders to it. The U.N. Security Council’s Counter-Terrorism Committee has also emphasized that effective counterterrorism requires a multidimensional approach, not a purely security-heavy one, and that addressing grievances and strengthening community resilience are central to prevention.

The way governments avoid that trap is by staying threat-focused, behavior-based, and legally disciplined. That means targeting hostile surveillance, incitement, facilitation, procurement, covert finance, violence advocacy, and direct links to extremist or proxy ecosystems — not sectarian identity. UNODC’s guidance says counterterrorism powers such as surveillance, search, seizure, and arrest must be exercised in a non-discriminatory manner, and warns that broad group-based profiling is counterproductive as well as rights-infringing.

Second, governments need proactive, sustained engagement, not reactive outreach only when a war breaks out or an attack occurs. A Canadian government review on how security and intelligence institutions engage racialized communities warns specifically against reaching out only in times of crisis, saying that reactive engagement can be counterproductive, reinforce negative perceptions, and damage trust, whereas sustained engagement better supports mutual trust and accountability. That same logic is built into Canada’s prevention model, which funds community resilience, intervention, and early prevention rather than relying only on arrests after radicalization has matured.

Third, governments need a visible separation between community protection and indiscriminate intelligence harvesting. If imams, youth workers, community leaders, or ordinary families come to believe that every contact with the state is really covert suspicion in another form, then cooperation collapses. The better model is narrow investigative escalation based on specific indicators, combined with overt protection for communities at risk of backlash, hate crimes, intimidation, or foreign-state pressure. Canada’s counter-radicalization framework and broader counter-terrorism strategy both emphasize partnerships, resilience, prevention, proportionality, and respect for human rights and the rule of law as core operating principles.

So my bottom line is this: heavy-handed responses can absolutely generate the alienation, humiliation, and mistrust that make radicalization harder to prevent and harder to detect. Governments avoid that trap by being precise instead of broad, sustained instead of reactive, protective instead of performative, and evidence-based instead of identity-based. In counterterrorism, legitimacy is not a soft issue. It is part of the security architecture itself.

GEOPOLITICS, GLOBAL ORDER & THE PATH TO DE-ESCALATION

Q1. Where do Russia and China genuinely sit in this conflict — are they passive observers, silent beneficiaries, or quiet enablers? And does either capital have an interest in seeing this escalate further?

Russia and China are not sitting in the same strategic posture. My assessment is that Russia is closer to being a selective enabler and a silent beneficiary, while China is closer to being a politically aligned critic of the war, but not an active military enabler. Those are not identical roles, and it is important not to collapse them into one anti-Western category. Publicly, both capitals are calling for de-escalation and diplomacy. Putin has called for an immediate halt to the conflict, and China’s Foreign Ministry has repeatedly condemned the U.S.-Israeli strikes, called for an immediate stop to military operations, and said it supports Iran’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.

But Russia is the more troubling actor in operational terms. There are now credible reports from both AP and The Washington Post, each citing U.S. officials familiar with intelligence reporting, that Moscow has provided Iran with information that could help it target U.S. military assets in the region, including warships and aircraft. That does not mean Russia is directing Iran’s warfighting, and the available reporting says U.S. intelligence has not established that. But if Moscow is passing targeting information while publicly calling for diplomacy, then Russia is not a passive observer. It is participating indirectly while keeping deniability.

Strategically, Russia also has reasons to benefit from a controlled escalation. AP reports that Moscow may gain from higher oil prices, from Western attention shifting away from Ukraine, and from the faster depletion of U.S. and NATO military stockpiles. That does not mean the Kremlin wants a totally uncontrollable regional explosion. It means Russia can profit from a conflict that weakens the United States, strains Western resources, and drives up energy revenue without forcing Moscow into direct military commitment. In that sense, Russia’s preferred scenario is probably prolonged pressure, not total regional collapse.

China is different. Beijing’s public line has been legally and diplomatically hostile to the U.S.-Israeli campaign, but much more cautious in material terms. China has condemned the strikes, warned against regime change, called for immediate de-escalation, and said it is engaging multiple regional capitals to stop the conflict. At the same time, China officially denied reports that it was transferring anti-ship missiles to Iran, and AP/Washington Post reporting tied to U.S. intelligence indicates that China did not appear to be aiding Iran’s defense in the way Russia reportedly was. So China does not look like a quiet military enabler at this stage. It looks more like a state trying to preserve its regional equities, oppose U.S.-led coercive change, and avoid being pulled into the operational side of the war.

Does either capital want this to escalate further? Not in an unlimited sense. Russia may see advantage in a war that drains the West and boosts oil prices, but it still has reasons to avoid a full regional meltdown that could destabilize partners, disrupt too many channels at once, or force choices it would rather postpone. China has even less interest in open-ended escalation because it depends heavily on Gulf energy flows and has explicitly said the Strait of Hormuz and regional stability are vital to the wider global economy. So both capitals may benefit from Western difficulty, but neither appears to want an uncontrolled war that destroys the regional system.

So my bottom line is this: Russia is not neutral; it is closer to a deniable supporting actor that may also be profiting strategically from the conflict. China is not neutral either, but its role is more political and diplomatic than operational. Moscow may tolerate escalation if it hurts the West. Beijing wants the crisis stopped, but on terms that reject U.S.-Israeli regime-change logic and preserve regional stability. Those are two very different kinds of involvement.

Q2. Through your advisory work with the Global Diplomatic Forum in London — do you see any credible diplomatic architecture remaining that could contain this crisis, or have the back channels effectively broken down?

Through my advisory work with the Global Diplomatic Forum in London, where I serve on the Advisory Board, I have learned that crises of this magnitude rarely lose diplomacy altogether. What they lose is the illusion of diplomacy as a clean, linear process. So my answer is this: the back channels are badly degraded, but they are not fully broken. What remains is not a comfortable negotiating framework. What remains is a thinner, more fragile, more compartmented architecture of crisis management.

In practical terms, that matters a great deal. There is a difference between saying diplomacy has failed and saying diplomacy has changed form. At this stage, I do not see a robust political peace process in place. I see something narrower: containment diplomacy. That means emergency communication, indirect signaling, third-party message transmission, deconfliction, hostage and prisoner issues, energy-security conversations, and exploratory contacts about what an eventual off-ramp might look like if the military pressure reaches a certain point.

So no, I would not say the channels have disappeared. I would say they have moved from the front room to the side corridors.

That distinction is critical because in wars like this, formal diplomacy often becomes politically impossible before informal diplomacy becomes strategically unnecessary. Public rhetoric hardens. Leaders escalate. Narratives become absolutist. But beneath that, states still need mechanisms to prevent miscalculation, to communicate red lines, to test seriousness, and to explore whether an adversary is looking for a way out or preparing for the next phase. If those mechanisms vanish completely, the risk of strategic overrun becomes much higher.

What is left today, in my view, is a layered diplomatic architecture rather than a single channel. One layer is the traditional quiet mediators and message carriers. Another is the intelligence and security layer, where deconfliction and indirect signaling can still occur even when public diplomacy is frozen. Another is the Gulf layer, where regional states are trying to prevent the war from crossing into a broader systemic collapse. And then there is the multilateral layer — not strong enough to solve the crisis by itself, but still relevant for legitimacy, pressure, and eventual ceasefire mechanics.

From a geopolitical standpoint, that means the crisis is still containable — but only if key actors stop confusing public maximalism with strategic closure. Military pressure may continue. Hard rhetoric may continue. But at some point, if there is to be any controlled end state at all, someone has to preserve the bridge between coercion and negotiation.

That is why I do not see diplomacy here as dead. I see it as compressed, indirect, and operating under duress.

And frankly, that is often when diplomacy matters most.

My bottom line would be this: the back channels have not collapsed beyond repair, but they are no longer functioning as instruments of settlement; they are functioning as instruments of prevention, signaling, and eventual transition. The states and institutions that understand that distinction will be the ones most able to help contain the crisis when the moment for de-escalation finally becomes real.

Q3. Which states — Qatar, Turkey, Oman, India, perhaps China — currently have the credibility, the access, and the political will to serve as genuine mediators in any eventual de-escalation?

If I had to rank the serious mediation candidates today, Oman remains the strongest, Qatar remains important but more constrained than before, Turkey is active but politically less neutral, India is credible but not yet central, and China has leverage but not universal trust. In other words, there is no single perfect mediator. There is a possible mediation architecture — but it is likely to be layered, not monopolized by one capital.

Oman is still the best-positioned genuine mediator. The reason is not rhetorical; it is structural. Muscat hosted the U.S.-Iran consultations as recently as February 6, with Omani Foreign Minister Badr Albusaidi holding separate consultations with both delegations and explicitly reaffirming Oman’s readiness to keep bringing the sides closer together. Even after the war began, Oman continued publicly calling for an immediate halt to attacks and for diplomacy as the only path forward. That combination — recent access to both sides, an established mediation tradition, and a consistent de-escalatory posture — makes Oman the most credible primary channel.

Qatar is still relevant, but no longer the cleanest lead mediator. Doha absolutely has diplomatic capacity, access, and experience. It publicly welcomed the U.S.-Iran talks in Oman in February and has repeatedly framed itself as a supporter of negotiation. But your instinct is correct: Qatar’s room has narrowed because Iran has attacked Qatari territory repeatedly, and Qatar has formally condemned those attacks as violations of its sovereignty while reserving its right to respond. Reuters also reported that Araqchi told Qatar the strikes were aimed at U.S. interests, not Qatar — an explanation Doha flatly rejected. That means Qatar still has channels, but it is no longer standing outside the crisis in the way a lead mediator ideally would. My reading is that Qatar is now more useful as a supporting diplomatic node than as the single central broker.

Turkey has access and political will, but less neutrality. Reuters reports that Ankara is engaging all sides and explicitly pushing to resume diplomacy. That matters. Turkey is a serious regional power with intelligence reach, high-level channels, and the ability to speak to multiple camps. But it is also a NATO member, and Reuters reports that an Iranian ballistic missile entered Turkish airspace and was intercepted by NATO defenses. That does not remove Turkey from the diplomatic game, but it does mean Ankara is not an untouched intermediary. My assessment is that Turkey is a strong pressure-and-communication channel, but a more complicated choice for sole mediator than Oman.

India is credible, but more as a stabilizing interlocutor than as the principal negotiator. Reuters reports that New Delhi views the Gulf crisis with “great anxiety,” given its energy dependence, trade exposure, and the presence of around 10 million Indians in the region. India has also consistently called for dialogue and peace. That gives India seriousness and broad acceptability across many capitals. But based on the public record, India is not currently the state most visibly running the active mediation track. So I would describe India as a potentially valuable secondary facilitator or confidence-supporting actor, especially if the diplomacy broadens beyond immediate war management into economic stabilization or wider regional dialogue.

China has access and leverage, but not enough trust from all parties to be the clean mediator everyone could rally behind. Beijing has clearly positioned itself for ceasefire and an end to hostilities. Wang Yi has spoken directly with Iran’s foreign minister, said China supports Iran’s sovereignty, and called for the U.S. and Israel to stop military action. That gives China access to Tehran and weight in the broader international system. But China is not seen in Washington or Jerusalem as a neutral broker in the same way Oman can be. So China can be useful as a strategic pressure actor — especially in relation to Iran’s calculations and the economic consequences of escalation — but it is less convincing as the one state that all sides would trust to run the final de-escalation channel.

So my bottom line is this: if there is to be a serious de-escalation architecture, Oman should probably sit at the center of it; Qatar can still help, but more from the side; Turkey can push and communicate, but with less neutrality; India can support and stabilize; and China can influence, but not necessarily arbitrate. The most realistic diplomatic model is therefore not one mediator, but a tiered mediation structure in which Oman leads the core channel, others reinforce it, and outside powers quietly test what kind of off-ramp each side could actually accept.

Q4. Is the global oil market and the prospect of severe economic pain for all parties a realistic circuit breaker — could financial pressure move any party back to the negotiating table faster than military pressure?

Yes, it is a realistic circuit breaker — but only once the economic pain becomes politically consequential for the principal actors. Oil markets do not stop wars by themselves. What they do is alter the cost curve of escalation. Once shipping disruption, insurance spikes, energy inflation, fiscal pressure, and broader market instability begin to hit governments in ways that affect domestic legitimacy, coalition cohesion, and strategic endurance, the pressure for an off-ramp rises very quickly.

In this crisis, that mechanism is especially powerful because the Gulf is not a marginal energy space. It is one of the central pressure valves of the global economy. If this conflict begins to produce sustained disruption in the Strait of Hormuz, repeated attacks on energy infrastructure, prolonged airspace closures, or wider maritime insecurity, then the issue stops being a regional war and becomes a systemic economic shock. At that point, financial pressure can move faster than battlefield logic because it affects actors who are not even in the war directly — importers, insurers, shipping lines, central banks, political coalitions, and populations already sensitive to inflation.

That said, the effect is not symmetrical.

For Iran, economic pain matters a great deal because regime survival is inseparable from access to revenue, sanctions evasion, and the ability to maintain internal patronage, coercion, and strategic relevance. If the war threatens to turn remaining economic channels into a choke point, then financial pressure becomes a direct threat to state endurance, not just national prosperity.

For the Gulf states, the incentive to restore stability is even sharper. Their governments may support strong action against the Iranian threat, but they do not want a prolonged conflict that turns energy flows, desalination systems, ports, aviation, and investor confidence into permanent vulnerabilities. Their threshold for tolerating disruption is real, but not unlimited.

For the United States, the picture is more political than existential. Washington can absorb higher oil prices more easily than regional actors can absorb direct instability, but no American administration is immune to inflationary shock, shipping disruption, financial volatility, and the political consequences of a war that begins to look open-ended. If economic costs start feeding domestic political pressure, allied discomfort, and strategic overstretch at the same time, then the White House has a strong incentive to convert military gains into a negotiated outcome.

For Israel, economic pain is relevant, but not usually decisive by itself. Israel’s calculus is first and foremost strategic and security-based. As long as leaders believe the campaign is degrading an existential or long-term threat, they may be willing to carry significant economic burden. But even Israel does not operate outside the laws of endurance. If war costs begin to outpace strategic gains, financial pressure becomes part of the equation there too.

So would financial pressure move parties back to the table faster than military pressure? In some cases, yes — but more accurately, it is the interaction of the two that matters. Military pressure creates the vulnerability. Financial pressure compresses the timeline. One changes the battlefield; the other changes the political willingness to keep paying for it.

My bottom line is this: oil and economic pain are not a substitute for strategy, but they are one of the few forces capable of disciplining all sides at once. If this war begins to produce sustained energy-market shock and broad economic consequences, then financial pressure could become the most realistic bridge back to negotiation — not because any side suddenly becomes conciliatory, but because the cost of continuing begins to exceed the political value of escalation.

CLOSING: INSTITUTIONS, INTELLIGENCE & WHAT COMES NEXT

Q1. You have built IOSI over nearly twelve years to develop practical solutions to emerging security threats. Does what we are witnessing today represent a failure of the international security architecture — or is it functioning precisely as powerful states designed it to?

What we are witnessing is not a simple binary between “failure” and “success.” It is something more disturbing: a system that is failing in its declared mission, while still functioning exactly as many powerful states have structurally allowed it to function.

Over nearly twelve years of building IOSI, I have observed the same pattern across Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, Europe, and parts of Asia: institutions adapt tactically, but too often fail strategically. They improve procedures, hold conferences, produce assessments, refine doctrines, and speak constantly about emerging threats — yet they remain politically and bureaucratically slow when the threat is transnational, convergent, and uncomfortable to confront early. They react once the fire is visible. They do not move with enough seriousness when the smoke first appears.

That is exactly what this crisis exposes.

So yes, this is a failure of the international security architecture — but not because there were no warnings, no capabilities, or no professionals paying attention. It is a failure of strategic imagination, political will, and institutional courage. The architecture has been far better at managing symptoms than preventing convergence. It has tolerated too much grey-zone aggression, too much proxy warfare, too much state-enabled terrorism, too much illicit finance, too much criminal-state fusion, and too much hesitation in the face of threats that were clearly becoming multidimensional.

And that is where my own reading becomes very direct: we are paying the price of years of underreaction to threat convergence. Iran, Hezbollah, proxy warfare, terrorism, narcoterrorism, illicit networks, cyber disruption, deniable actors, radicalisation pipelines — these are not separate files anymore. They are part of a single battlespace. What I have described elsewhere as the wider logic of Narcoterrorism 3.0 is precisely this phenomenon: the globalization of hybrid coercion through the merger of ideology, criminality, logistics, corruption, and state tolerance or sponsorship.

The tragedy is that many institutions still think in boxes while the threat has already become a web.

Today, the evidence of systemic failure is visible. The UN Secretary-General has warned that the war and retaliatory strikes are a “grave threat to international peace and security” and could ignite a chain of events that no one can control. The IAEA has said it cannot currently verify the size, composition, or whereabouts of Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile because continuity of knowledge has been lost. Europol has warned that the crisis is already increasing the risks of terrorism, violent extremism, organized crime, cyberattacks, and lone-actor mobilization in Europe. Those are not signs of a security architecture getting ahead of the curve. They are signs of institutions scrambling after the curve has already broken.

So is the system functioning as powerful states designed it to? In one sense, yes. Much of the international security architecture was designed less to eliminate emerging threats early than to preserve strategic flexibility, sovereign discretion, and political room for major powers until the crisis becomes undeniable. It is better at crisis management than threat prevention. Better at procedural response than anticipatory disruption. Better at legality after the fact than courage before the fact.

That is why bureaucracy has become one of the quiet enemies of real security. Not because institutions are useless, but because too many of them are conditioned to move only when political discomfort becomes impossible to avoid.

My conclusion is therefore blunt: this is both a failure of the current architecture and a revelation of its real design limits. It was never built strongly enough to confront the full convergence of terrorism, proxy warfare, criminal-state fusion, and transnational destabilization before those threats reached systemic scale. And unless states become more honest, more aggressive, and more strategically proactive against multidimensional threats, we will keep repeating this cycle — assessment, delay, escalation, emergency, and then regret.

That, in my view, is the real lesson of this war.

Q2. If you were briefing a head of government today, what is the single most important dimension of this crisis that policymakers are almost certainly not paying sufficient attention to?

The single most important dimension they are underestimating is this: the real danger is not only what this war destroys, but what it disperses. Too many policymakers are still thinking in conventional terms — strikes, retaliation, deterrence, regime survival, oil, diplomacy. All of that matters. But the deeper strategic issue is what happens when a hostile system is degraded faster than the international system is prepared to control the aftermath. In plain language: policymakers are still overfocused on the exchange of force and underfocused on the fragmentation of threat.

That fragmentation has three layers. First, nuclear uncertainty. The IAEA has said it cannot verify the size, composition, or whereabouts of Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile because continuity of knowledge has been lost and access remains restricted; AP reported the same, including that the stockpile of 60%-enriched uranium remains large enough in principle for up to 10 nuclear weapons if further enriched. That means the problem is no longer just whether facilities were hit. It is whether the world can still track, secure, and contain the most dangerous material if state authority weakens further.

Second, threat diffusion beyond the battlefield. Europol has already warned that this crisis is increasing the risks of terrorism, violent extremism, organized crime, cyberattacks, terrorist financing, intimidation campaigns, and lone-actor or small-cell mobilization inside Europe. That is a major signal. It means the conflict is no longer only a Middle East war; it is becoming a distributed security problem that can spill into cities, critical infrastructure, diaspora environments, and digital systems far from the front.

Third, loss of control in the transition space. The UN Secretary-General warned that the current trajectory could ignite a chain of events that no one can control. That, in my judgment, is the core policy blind spot. Governments are debating whether Iran will be weakened, whether deterrence is being restored, and whether diplomacy can resume. The more urgent question is: who controls the dangerous residue if the old command structure cracks — nuclear material, missile assets, proxy networks, cyber capability, coercive finance channels, and radicalized actors looking for relevance?

So if I were briefing a head of government today, I would say this very bluntly: do not measure this crisis only by what happens to the regime; measure it by what happens to control. Because a weakened adversary is not automatically a safer adversary. If the threat fractures faster than it is contained, you can end up with something even harder to deter: a hybrid battlespace of missing knowledge, semi-autonomous proxies, ideological lone actors, cyber retaliation, criminal facilitators, and strategic assets whose chain of custody is no longer clear. That is the dimension policymakers are not taking seriously enough — and it may prove more consequential than the war’s visible military results.

Q3. Finally — what, if anything, gives you reason for cautious optimism about how this resolves? Is there an exit ramp, and who has the authority and the credibility to take it?

would not describe my outlook as optimistic in any conventional sense. At best, I would call it cautious realism. The Iranian regime has spent years building the very conditions that made this confrontation increasingly likely — through proxy warfare, strategic coercion, support for terrorism, and the persistent pursuit of military and nuclear leverage. So this is not a crisis that invites sentimental optimism. It invites hard strategic clarity.

What gives me limited reason to believe this may still be containable is not trust between the parties. It is the fact that the basic architecture for an eventual off-ramp still exists, even if it is weak and politically burdened. The United Nations is calling for an immediate cessation of hostilities and a return to negotiations. Oman has said publicly that off-ramps remain available. Switzerland has confirmed that its diplomatic channel between the United States and Iran is still active in both directions. That means the door is not closed. But it is only barely open.

The problem is that an exit ramp exists structurally, but not yet politically. Washington’s public posture has hardened dramatically, including the demand for Iran’s unconditional surrender, while Tehran has rejected that demand outright. That tells us the current phase is still dominated by coercion, not settlement. So if there is a path out, it is not likely to emerge from goodwill. It is more likely to emerge when all sides conclude that the risks of continued escalation are beginning to exceed the strategic value of pressing further.

So yes, I believe there is an exit ramp — but I do not believe it is wide, generous, or politically comfortable. It is narrow, conditional, and likely to open only after further pressure has clarified the costs of continuing. On the side of authority, the decisive power still lies primarily in Washington and Jerusalem, because they are shaping the tempo and scale of the campaign. On the side of credibility, Oman remains the most serious diplomatic channel, with Switzerland still relevant as a quiet intermediary. On the Iranian side, the problem is deeper: authority is more fragmented, and that makes any durable off-ramp harder to validate internally.

My bottom line is this: I am not optimistic in the soft sense. I am only realistic enough to say that wars like this sometimes stop not because justice has been achieved or trust has been restored, but because the cost of continuation becomes too dangerous for all involved. That is the narrow space where an exit ramp may still exist.

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Also Read: Iran–US–Israel War: Dr. Cyril Widdershoven on Gulf Escalation, Maritime Risk and the Energy Shockwave

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