The United States and Israel opened their war on Iran with barrages of air strikes across the country aimed at political leaders and military targets. President Donald Trump released a video instructing Iranian citizens to “take over your government” once the violence concludes. Analyses in Middle East Policy explain why negotiations conducted by the past two American administrations failed to avert a new conflict and illuminate the challenges facing American efforts at regime change.
Readers can find more on this conflict in our special issue, The Israel-Iran War. We also marked the third year of the Gaza war in The October 7 Emergencies. And our Winter 2025–26 issue is still available, featuring analyses of Washington’s new model for rebuilding failed states (open access); US-Saudi relations in light of China’s increasing influence; the new order in the Red Sea (open access); and the roiling Israel-Turkey conflict in Syria. Please follow us on the social media platforms X, Bluesky, and LinkedIn.
Israel prepared the ground for this new effort with strikes on Iran in 2024 and the June war of 2025, when on just the first day it struck more than 100 military targets and killed more than 10 senior military commanders and nuclear scientists. Soon after that conflict, Ali Bagheri Dolatabadi examined the Islamic Republic’s reaction to what it saw as a persistent existential threat. The regime immediately restructured its system of security advisers, purged alleged spies, and passed laws to prevent the disclosure of damage to the nuclear program.
Most important, Bagheri Dolatabadi demonstrates that the war did not make a diplomatic breakthrough more likely but instead added further complications—especially, he predicted, Israel’s new demand that Iran give up its missile program. Wyn Rees and Hossein Salimian Rizi had already shown in our pages how Trump’s abrogation of the Obama-negotiated nuclear deal, as well as Tehran’s closer ties to Russia and China, made Iran far less likely to soften its position on reducing or ending enrichment and allowing intrusive Western inspections.
As well, after the June 2025 war Banafsheh Keynoush warned, “the Trump administration’s continued narrative of dominating the outcome of a nuclear deal” is a “major obstacle.” At the same time, she contended, potential compromises could be found in “limiting Iran’s enrichment capacity in exchange for relief of sanctions on Iranian defense programs, the rebuilding of homeland defenses, and the development of an advanced civilian nuclear capacity.”
But Bagheri Dolatabadi’s article foregrounds what became Israel’s new focus and likely obstacle to a peaceful settlement: an insistence that Iran end its missile program or at least restrict the range of its weapons. By the middle of the June 2025 war, Iran’s missiles had penetrated Israeli defenses and “hit scientific research centers related to military industries (notably the Weizmann Institute of Science in the city of Rehovot), military bases (including Tel Nof, Glilot, Tziporit, Shaar Efraim, and a base near Bnei Nehemia), Mossad facilities in Haifa and Tel Aviv, and critical infrastructure such as the Haifa oil refinery.” Indeed, 16 percent of the missile launches had successfully evaded Israeli, Jordanian, and Western defenses. For this reason, the missile program is far more a concern for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu than is the nuclear file.
As Bagheri Dolatabadi notes, Iran was able to preserve much of this weaponry. “The storage of ballistic missiles in tunnels beneath mountains, which cannot be completely destroyed, prevented Tel Aviv from completely eliminating missile capabilities,” he writes. “Iran will be able to repair damaged facilities and develop new countermeasures against potential future attacks.”
The question is whether the Islamic Republic, now facing a far greater US force than in 2025, can threaten enough American assets and Israeli civilians to prevent a complete regime change—and whether Washington will be satisfied by a decapitation at the top or will fight until there is a fundamentally new Iranian system.
Many articles published in Middle East Policy in the leadup and immediate aftermath of the Iraq War, warned against the unforeseen consequences and examined the ill-founded strategies and rationales for that blunder. They are listed below as cautionary tales.
Middle East Policy articles on the Iran and Iraq wars
THE JUNE 2025 WAR AND ITS EFFECTS
The June 2025 Israeli War: Iran’s Assessment and Regional Consequences
Ali Bagheri Dolatabadi, 2025
The Perils of Nuclear Talks after the US-Israel War on Iran
Banafsheh Keynoush, 2025—open access!
THE NUCLEAR NEGOTIATIONS
Negotiating the Restoration of the Iran Nuclear Deal
Wyn Rees | Hossein Salimian Rizi, 2024
Negotiating the Impossible? A WMD-Free Zone in the Middle East
Robert Mason, 2025
Israel’s Future and Iran’s Nuclear Program
Leonard Weiss, 2009
THE REGIME AND AMERICAN ENMITY
Iran’s Annus Horribilis in 2024: Beaten, but Not Defeated
Thomas Juneau, 2025—open access!
The 2022 Iran Protests: The View from the Streets
Rauf Rahimi | Sajjad Rezaei, 2025
Conjuring an Enemy: US Discourse and Policy on Iran, 1979–88
Annie Tracy Samuel, 2025
THE IRAQ WAR
Editor’s Note
Anne Joyce, 2002
Invading Iraq: The Road to Perpetual War
Ronald Bleier, 2002
Reinventing Iraq: The Regional Impact of U.S. Military Action
Judith Yaphe, 2002
Is It a War for Oil?
Donald F. Hepburn, 2003
The War Against Iraq: Normative and Strategic Implications
Mohammed Ayoob, 2003
Drinking the Kool-Aid
W. Patrick Lang, 2004
Lessons from America’s Misadventures in the Middle East
Chas W. Freeman, 2015