Foreign Affairs
After U.S. strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites, Tehran hit Al Udeid base in Qatar, signaling it will punish U.S. forces and regional allies. Though Iran’s military power is weakened, it still has options—proxy attacks, cyberwarfare, and targeting global oil routes. The U.S. must stay firm, coordinate defense with allies, and offer a real path to de-escalation.
How Iran’s Collapse Could Trigger a Central Asian Refugee Crisis
Author: Dana Stroul
Less than 48 hours after Washington’s strikes against Iran’s nuclear program, Tehran launched a ballistic missile attack on the largest U.S. military installation in the Middle East, Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar. The symbolism of the decision to target this base—the same one that U.S. President Donald Trump visited only two months ago during his tour of Gulf states, and one located in a country that maintains close ties to and shares an offshore gas field with Iran—is unmistakable. Tehran will respond to strikes on its territory, will punish others it perceives to have enabled U.S. military operations, and remains undeterred from pursuing an approach that holds the entire stability of the Middle East at risk.
Since the Islamic Republic’s founding in 1979, Iran’s strategic objective in the Middle East has remained consistent: compel the withdrawal of U.S. forces so that it can dominate the regional security order, unchallenged by any rival power. And until recently, Iran’s efforts toward that goal—its development of a network of proxy militias and a vast arsenal of missiles and uncrewed aerial systems and its slow and steady pursuit of nuclear weaponization—constrained the United States’ options to achieve its objective of a more stable, peaceful region.
For decades, Washington and its allies focused on countering, rather than defeating, Iran’s constellation of threats. The United States only selectively employed military force against Iran-backed militias and sought limited concessions—such as its 2015 nuclear agreement with Iran—at moments of heightened risk, generally preferring to use economic pressure and diplomatic engagement to restrain the Islamic Republic. This approach reflected the calculation that any strike on Iranian territory could trigger a dangerously destructive response.
It was predictable that Iran would retaliate against Trump’s bombing of its nuclear sites early on Sunday. The question was when, how, and how often, given the country’s currently weak position, Israel’s ongoing military campaign, and Washington’s pledges to respond forcefully if its interests are attacked. Hamas’s October 7, 2023, assault on Israel and Israel’s subsequent operations across the region changed the strategic calculus for Iran and the United States alike. Tehran’s terror network is degraded and Israel’s attacks—culminating in its recent, broad campaign against Iran’s entire threat industry—laid bare the Iranian armed forces’ own weaknesses. Within the first months of his second term, Trump broke with the United States’ historic approach (and the one he followed in his first administration), seizing the opportunity opened by Israel’s strikes and Iran’s vulnerabilities to make good on the longstanding U.S. pledge to use military force if talks were unsuccessful. Just after the U.S. bombing, many other world leaders who had spent the 20 months after October 7 calling for de-escalation issued mild statements largely focusing on Iranian aggression. And although China and Russia verbally denounced Washington’s move, they have shied away from pledging military assistance to Iran, compounding their recent failure to bail out partners such as Syria’s recently deposed president, Bashar al-Assad.
But Iran still has retaliatory options. And the Islamic Republic’s history strongly suggests that it will seek to deploy them—sooner, then later.
BROKEN RECORD
The Islamic Republic’s record of retaliation suggests that it always responds to attacks—and in phases, employing immediate and longer-term methods both directly and through proxies. Reacting to Trump’s first-term “maximum pressure” campaign, in which he canceled President Barack Obama’s nuclear deal and reimposed sweeping sanctions to drive down Iran’s oil exports, Iran launched drone and cruise missile strikes on Saudi Arabia’s Abqaiq oil facilities and tankers in the Gulf. In 2021, in response to Israel’s years-long effort to block Iran from using Syria to arm its proxies, Iran eventually escalated by attacking U.S. personnel in Syria. In both of these cases, Tehran’s intent was to drive a wedge between Washington and its allies.
In 2020, after Trump ordered the killing of Qassem Soleimani, the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ elite Quds Force, Tehran immediately retaliated by raining ballistic missiles on a U.S. base in Iraq. But according to a 2024 Department of Justice criminal complaint, Tehran also spent years seeking hit men to assassinate former Trump officials associated with the plan to kill Soleimani. In other words, Iran’s timeline for retaliation has historically been long. The regime is willing to limit its responses in the short term while patiently plotting longer-term, more painful options.
Yet the strategic environment Iran now faces has been fundamentally altered. It is confronting unprecedented constraints to its military options as well as a heightened risk that escalation could cement its regional and international isolation. In the first few months of this year, the Iranian regime did engage in indirect negotiations toward a new nuclear deal with the Trump administration. But just before Israel launched its June 13 war, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi, confirmed the alarms that Israel and the United States had raised by warning that his agency’s inspectors could not determine that Iran’s nuclear program was peaceful. On June 16, the G-7 released a statement labeling Iran the principal driver of instability and terror in the Middle East and stressed the group’s commitment to preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. Over the past several days, statements from governments across Europe and the Middle East have been notably muted in their criticism of the actions Israel and the United States took to halt the regime’s capacity to foment instability.
Militarily, the Islamic Republic is more vulnerable than at any point in its history. The world now knows that Iran’s missile attacks can be defeated: repeatedly over the past 18 months, either the Israel Defense Forces or U.S.-led multinational coalitions have successfully intercepted the vast majority of Iranian ballistic missiles launched at Israel. In the space of a week since June 13, Israel has eliminated dozens of senior leaders across Iran’s security establishment, as well as much of Iran’s air defense capabilities. The command-and-control structures of Iran’s security services are now in disarray; top officials are hesitant to meet in groups out of a fear of targeted strikes. Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei himself is thought to be operating from an underground bunker and has ceased communicating electronically, delaying his ability to guide the rest of the regime’s leaders.
Iran’s severely degraded missile and drone program is losing capacity by the day. Israel now controls the airspace over western Iran and Tehran, and its missile defense systems, with U.S. support, continue to neutralize most of Iran’s missile and drone attacks. And although a full assessment is still pending, Washington’s actions against Iranian nuclear facilities—combined with Israel’s recent attacks—have undoubtedly set back Iran’s ability to rapidly weaponize its nuclear program.
Meanwhile, Iran’s hobbled proxy forces appear unwilling or unable to attack Israel or the United States. The Houthis in Yemen and some Iran-backed militias in Iraq issued statements threatening to target U.S. forces in the Middle East before the United States’ weekend strikes. But in the strikes’ immediate aftermath, those groups have refrained from launching new offensives. Following the strikes, Hamas condemned the U.S. attack—but then expressed confidence that Iran could defend itself. And on June 22, a Hezbollah representative told Newsweek that the group did not plan to retaliate against either Israel or the United States.
SPREAD OPTIONS
All these factors may lead observers to conclude that any Iranian response to the United States’ bombing will be limited or only symbolic. But Iran’s ability to damage U.S. interests should not be underestimated. Focusing too narrowly on the threats posed by Iran’s military and its proxies risks missing the wider array of asymmetric or unconventional methods of attack that remain intact and available to the regime. Tehran retains several retaliatory options that could expand the scope of the war, imposing serious consequences on Israel, the United States, and the world.
In the near term, Iran could activate what remains of its threat network. Although Washington in May agreed to halt its campaign against the Houthis if they stopped their attacks on U.S. naval vessels, the Yemeni group has continued to target Israel directly with ballistic missiles. That indicates that Houthi arsenals and capabilities remain substantially intact. Because the group operates somewhat more independently than Iran’s other proxies do, and maintains more resilient resupply lines, it is possible that it could escalate against U.S. interests even if Tehran remains weak. The Houthis could resume their attacks, striking U.S. naval assets, commercial ships, or U.S. partners such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. In Iraq, meanwhile, key militia groups have, since 2024, largely bowed to pressure from Baghdad to cease attacking U.S. forces and turned to political processes to retain their influence. But the Iraqi populace’s opposition to the United States’ offensive action in Iran, as well as accumulated public criticism of Israel since October 7, will challenge Baghdad’s ability to constrain these groups the longer Israel’s campaign against Tehran continues or if the United States executes more direct strikes on Iranian territory.
Tehran could also expand its target set. Between 2024 and today, its missile and drone volleys have targeted only Israel. But over the past week, Tehran reduced its missile launches on Israel—likely an operational decision to preserve an arsenal to attack the 40,000 U.S. forces deployed in the region or the United States’ extensive air and naval assets there. The United States has, this year, rapidly increased its air defenses in the region and relies on the air defense capabilities of some partner countries, but smaller U.S. military outposts in Iraq and Syria remain particularly vulnerable. And Iran could target civilian infrastructure in partner countries that host U.S. bases in the Gulf or the Arab governments that retain Abraham Accord agreements or peace treaties with Israel.
Moreover, the regime still has sufficient firepower to damage Gulf oil infrastructure and imperil commercial shipping. On Sunday, Iran’s parliament voted to close the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas transits. The regime need not follow through on that threat, mine the strait, or seize tankers to destabilize global energy markets and force commercial shippers to seek alternate routes. Simply continuing to issue threats can upend the region’s economic interests and world energy markets.
Tehran has also built a vast external operations architecture that allows it to escalate against softer targets. In recent years, Iran’s intelligence services have grown more aggressive overseas, using criminal networks and third parties to execute assassinations and terror plots. In 2023, Israel’s intelligence chief disclosed that the country had foiled 27 such Iranian plots abroad. Within days of Israel’s campaign inside Iran, Israeli officials announced that they had thwarted a planned Iranian attack on Israeli citizens in Cyprus. Iran could shift from targeting Israelis abroad to targeting Americans—government officials, businesspeople, or tourists—creating a dangerous escalation.
Iran could intensify its cyberwarfare, which it had already ramped up against nonmilitary targets. Just since June 13, according to the cybersecurity firm Radware, Iranian state actors and affiliated hacking groups increased their cyberattacks against Israel 700 percent. In late 2023—in response to Israel’s war in Gaza—Iran-affiliated hackers successfully breached a U.S. water treatment authority outside Pittsburgh, underscoring the vulnerability of the United States’ critical infrastructure and Iran’s intent to target civilian installations. Cyber-retaliation will almost certainly be a feature of the war going forward. Last week, an Israeli-affiliated hacking group claimed to have drained $90 million from Iran’s largest crypto exchange, Nobitex. On Sunday, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security issued a warning that Iranian cyber actors may well target American networks.
Tehran could also widen its quest for proxies from backing Shiite-aligned terrorists to supporting Sunni extremism. For years, U.S. intelligence has monitored the strengthening ties between Tehran and al-Qaeda operatives. A January 2024 UN report documented senior al-Qaeda leaders’ travel between Afghanistan and Iran, and in a February 2024 private briefing, a former State Department official judged that a “new partnership” between Iran and al-Qaeda was taking shape. Going forward, for instance, Tehran could allow senior al-Qaeda leaders sheltering in Iran to travel freely abroad to direct or inspire attacks against the United States.
PREPARATION IS THE BEST DEFENSE
Washington can take steps to prevent worst-case scenarios. First, the United States should publicly affirm that it will maintain an elevated military posture in the Middle East. Since Trump took office in January, his administration has sent mixed messages about its intentions in the region, its readiness to invest military resources, and its commitment to security cooperation and security commitments. That overall ambivalence still renders its position toward Iran and its own Middle East partners unclear, even after Saturday’s offensive operations. Instead, Washington must emphasize that it will continue precise military strikes offensively if its security is challenged, whether directly or through proxies. The United States should telegraph that it will not revert to its status quo ante approach by only making strikes in self-defense against Iran-affiliated groups. Now, it must hold the regime directly accountable.
The United States must also reiterate that it is committed to its partners’ security and initiate consultations on military response options should Iran attack any U.S. partner in the region. Washington should urgently share intelligence about Iranian threats with U.S. partners that host American military bases (such as Bahrain, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates), rapidly expand its radar sharing and air defense coordination, and achieve consensus on any defensive response should Iran target these partners.
Second, the United States should urgently declassify and release intelligence that Iran was making rapid moves to cross the nuclear threshold—moves that foreclosed the possibility of a negotiated settlement before the recent Israeli and U.S. strikes. Exposing Iran’s obfuscation and deception is necessary to explain to other actors abroad why military force had to be used after decades of diplomacy. In the coming weeks and months, selectively downgrading U.S. intelligence indicating that Iran seeks escalation or is preparing attacks will help unify allies against the regime, shift international opinion, counter disinformation, and dissuade Iranian aggression by exposing the regime’s intent.
Third, U.S. officials should activate diplomatic backchannels with Iraq and the Gulf Arab states to deliver coordinated messages to Tehran. Iran should hear a concerted line that continued escalation will carry existential risks. Washington should also pressure Beijing and Moscow to oppose Iranian escalations or a nuclear breakout. No matter their disagreements, China, Russia, and the United States all share a desire to prevent runaway nuclear proliferation and keep energy prices and supplies stable, which creates a narrow but vital area of cooperation.
Finally, the United States should demonstrate its commitment to ending hostilities in the region by offering a road map for sanctions relief in exchange for Iranian concessions. If Tehran’s leaders believe they only have a binary choice—between escalation or regime collapse—they will choose to escalate in whatever manner they can, including by making unconventional or longer-term plans that perpetuate Iran’s role as a force of instability. Washington must make it explicit that if Tehran pursues a set of verifiable steps to halt its nuclear enrichment, the United States will deliver sanctions relief. Proposing a clear road map for de-escalation would show that although the United States stands ready to defend itself and its allies, it also seeks a path to peace—a message that the rest of the world, and not only Iran, needs to hear.
Credits: TCA, LLC.