Iran’s Strategic Ascendance and Armenia’s Limited but Newly Expanded Room for Maneuver
Over the past several months, the Iran war has been the foremost event on the international stage. The course and outcome of the war will have long-lasting consequences not only for the Middle East but also for the strategic balance of power far beyond the region. Naturally, they cannot fail to have consequences for the South Caucasus as well, and therefore for the strategic alignment of forces surrounding issues of direct relevance to Armenia.
An objective assessment of the war and the geopolitical legacy it will leave behind is therefore of exceptional importance from the standpoint of the challenges Armenia faces and the interests it must defend. Attempts at such an assessment are not merely an intellectual exercise: mistaken perceptions can only lead to mistaken conclusions, with potentially damaging consequences.
The issue acquires additional importance because the escalating tensions between Israel and Türkiye, together with the Israeli government’s recognition of the Armenian Genocide, have created illusions in certain political and public circles.
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The purpose of this article is to attempt an objective assessment of the course of the war and its consequences for the Middle East and the South Caucasus.
It reaches the following conclusions:
• The United States and Israel have suffered a strategic failure in the Iran war.
• Iran has achieved a clear strengthening of its strategic position.
• Iran and—because of the weakening of the positions of the United States and Israel—Türkiye have emerged as the principal powers in the Middle East.
• The strengthening of Iran’s strategic position improves its standing in the South Caucasus. This does not yet fundamentally alter the strategic hierarchy in the region, which remains characterized by Turkish-Azerbaijani predominance, but it does represent an important qualitative shift. Objectively, this expands Armenia’s room for maneuver.
From the standpoint of the misconceptions alluded to above, the penultimate point is particularly important. From the standpoint of Armenia and the opportunities available to it, the final point is the essential one.
It is this last issue that matters most to us. But in order to substantiate it, we must first correctly assess the course and outcome of the war.
The Objectives of the US–Israeli War
The United States and Israel launched their war against Iran on February 28 with the following objectives:
• the overthrow of the Iranian regime and its replacement by a pro-Western and pro-Israeli government. Israel’s objective, if circumstances permitted, went even further: the fragmentation of Iran;
• the termination of Iran’s nuclear enrichment programs and the seizure of its enriched uranium stockpiles;
• severe restrictions on the production and accumulation of ballistic missiles;
• the termination of Iran’s sponsorship and support for allied and affiliated forces in the region, including Hezbollah, Yemen’s Houthis, and others.
As a result of weeks of extraordinarily intense aerial bombardment, Iran suffered extremely severe losses in weaponry, infrastructure, and economic assets.
Yet none of the objectives pursued by the United States and Israel was achieved.
On the contrary.
Iran Absorbs the Blow and Reverses the Strategic Course of the War
By pursuing a strategy of asymmetric warfare and relying on the effective use of its large stocks of ballistic missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles, Iran and its ruling regime demonstrated, in strategic terms, not only that they could withstand enormous blows without capitulating, but also that they could preserve significant retaliatory capabilities, acquire powerful new instruments of leverage—above all through the Strait of Hormuz—and reverse the strategic course of the war.
This picture had already become fully apparent within a relatively short period after the beginning of the war—within a week to ten days.
The United States and Israel virtually eliminated Iran’s surface navy and perhaps also its already largely obsolete air force. But this had little meaningful effect on the actual course of the war because Iran’s principal military instruments were its ballistic missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles, not its conventional forces.
From the very first days, the claims made by President Trump and Israel that 80–90 percent of Iran’s missiles, missile launchers, and UAVs had been destroyed proved not only incorrect but were repeatedly contradicted in the following weeks by leaked intelligence reports and assessments from the United States and other countries.
Iran rapidly reversed the course of the war.
It succeeded in:
• inflicting powerful strikes on its adversaries;
• destroying and/or rendering unusable most of the US military bases that had been established in the Gulf states over several decades;
• keeping the powerful US armada hundreds and thousands of miles away from its shores, thereby greatly limiting its strategic potential;
• inflicting damage on Israel’s military-industrial infrastructure;
• causing the depletion of more than half of the United States’ and Israel’s enormously expensive and very slowly replenished stocks of anti-missile and anti-drone interceptors;
• undermining the Gulf states’ confidence in the United States and pushing them to seek forms of coexistence with Iran; and more.
The Strait of Hormuz: Iran’s New Strategic Lever
In addition to all this, Iran acquired an enormously powerful new instrument of leverage: control over the Strait of Hormuz.
It now possesses influence over one of the vital arteries that sustains the global economy—a lever that multiplies its strategic weight not only in the region but throughout the world.
As a result, not only did the United States and Israel fail to achieve any of the objectives they had pursued, but the war they launched enabled Iran to acquire a tremendously powerful new strategic instrument.
The United States and Israel have suffered a strategic failure.
A resumption of the war by the United States at its previous level of intensity is almost inconceivable. And if the war is resumed, it will have the same outcome.
A Failure Acknowledged from Within the Western Establishment
The strengthening of Iran and the reality of the US–Israeli failure are acknowledged not only by analysts considered anti-Israeli or anti-American, and not only by highly respected American political scientists, but also by people who for decades have been ardent advocates, implementers, and even architects of American and Israeli policies.
These include, for example, Robert Kagan, one of the founders and principal ideologues of American neoconservatism and a staunch supporter of Israel; Sir Alex Younger, the former head of Britain’s MI6; Joe Kent, the director of the US National Counterterrorism Center, who resigned from his position during the war in March; and many others.
The significance of these assessments lies not simply in the reputation of those making them. It lies in the intellectual and institutional traditions they represent.
When figures whose careers and commitments have been closely associated with American power, Western security institutions, or support for Israel themselves describe the outcome in terms of failure, strategic setback, or strengthened Iranian leverage, their assessments acquire particular evidentiary significance.
Israel Remains Powerful—but Its Regional Ambitions Have Suffered a Major Defeat
Despite its strategic failure against Iran, Israel remains an enormously powerful state.
But it should not be forgotten that its power, vastly disproportionate to its territorial size and population, is due above all to the unconditional and unwavering support of the United States.
That support, which took shape after 1967 and gradually acquired the solidity of bedrock, is now beginning to waver.
Despite intense pressure from Israel and the powerful Israeli lobby in the United States, President Trump has no alternative but to search for ways of extricating himself from the quagmire he created while minimizing the damage.
Independently of Trump himself, the Iranian fiasco has reduced—and will continue to reduce—the United States’ appetite for new adventures.
Moreover, sympathy for Israel in the United States has reached a historic low, and this is no longer a passing phenomenon.
Had the US–Israeli military campaign succeeded, Israel would have become the unchallenged hegemon of the entire Middle East.
That dream has collapsed.
The Abraham Accords, before ever truly acquiring flesh and blood, are in a moribund state.
Israel and Türkiye: Growing Tensions, but No Israeli Hegemony
Had Israel’s hegemonic ambitions been realized, it would have directed its full attention, using every available means, toward weakening, neutralizing, and reducing Türkiye to geopolitical insignificance.
But even under such circumstances, a direct, large-scale military confrontation between Israel and Türkiye would have remained unlikely.
Today, with the plan to crush Iran and establish regional hegemony having failed, Israel is in no position to deal with Türkiye from the standpoint of a hegemonic power.
Tensions with Ankara are growing, but the Jewish state is absolutely incapable of doing to Türkiye what, even hand in hand with the most powerful country on earth—the United States—it failed to do to Iran.
The possibility of Turkish-Israeli clashes on Syrian territory cannot be excluded.
But the idea that Israel could crush Türkiye belongs to the realm of fantasy.
Israel remains powerful.
But it is in crisis.
The Emerging New Middle East
As a result of the strategic failure of the United States and Israel, the reduction of the former’s appetite for intervention, and the increasingly unenviable position of the latter, Türkiye—which has accumulated considerable power over the past two decades—has emerged, alongside a strategically strengthened Iran, as one of the Middle East’s paramount regional powers.
Despite the historical rivalry and numerous confrontations between these two countries, it is more likely that, in the foreseeable future, they will seek to avoid direct conflict with one another in the Middle East.
It is more probable that, at the present stage, they will attempt to construct a new regional architecture, even if only a temporary one, incorporating Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and perhaps even Pakistan.
The notion that, with direct US assistance, Israel and a supposedly “pro-Western” Iran will wage war against Türkiye, crush it, and thereby “save” Armenia belongs to the realm of fantasy.
From the Middle East to the South Caucasus
The results of the Iran war do, however, introduce a change—albeit, for the moment, a limited rather than revolutionary one—into the strategic configuration of the South Caucasus.
The war has not overturned the post-2020 regional order.
It has not eliminated Turkish-Azerbaijani predominance.
It has not transformed Iran into the dominant power of the South Caucasus.
But it may have made the regional order less one-sided.
It is precisely here that a new opportunity emerges for Armenia: an expansion of its room for maneuver—again, still limited, but nevertheless real.
To be continued:
The Implications of the Iran War for the South Caucasus and Armenia: Iran Gains Leverage, Armenia Gains Maneuvering Space
Alec YENIKOMSHIAN