U.S.Strikes Iran, Joining War

THE CONFLICT WILL AFFECT GREAT-POWER RIVALRIES, GLOBAL ENERGY MARKETS, AND THE SPREAD OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS

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The end of an era

BY KARL VICK

IT MIGHT BE DIFFICULT TO DISCERN THROUGH the black clouds billowing from bomb craters in Tehran, but Iran has spent most of the 21st century as the region's rising power.

Until recently, things had really been going its way. In Iraq, the U.S. toppled Saddam Hussein, then departed, having turned Iran's largest and most dangerous neighbor from an enemy to a vassal even before Tehran's militias rescued Baghdad from ISIS, and then stayed. The forces Iran sent to Syria did double duty, rescuing the Assad regime while opening an arms pipeline to Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militia fighting beside them. Based in Lebanon, Hezbollah was the crown jewel of the “Axis of Resistance” that Iran had arrayed against Israel.

And for more than 80 years, opposition to Israel had defined the Middle East.

For the Islamic Republic of Iran, it still does. Removal of the Jewish state from “Islamic lands” is core to the ideology of the 1979 Islamic Revolution, which cast Iran in the unlikely role of leader of the Muslim world. America was the Great Satan, but for Iran's proxies in Baghdad, Lebanon, and Yemen, Israel was the nearer target. So on the eve of Oct. 7, 2023, the leaders of Hamas, the only prominent Palestinian node in the axis, had reason to assume that after breaching Israeli defenses on the Gaza Strip and pouring into Israel by the thousands, they would not be fighting alone for long.