What would a US strike on Iran mean for the Middle East?

As Donald Trump keeps the world waiting, experts believe a US attack on Iran could pull Washington into a conflict even more perilous and lengthy than the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Some Iranian officials have said that Tehran has already prepared itself for a "full-blown, drawn-out war", said CNN, a military confrontation that would then dominate – and possibly outlast – Trump's presidency.

Trump's own camp is divided over whether to launch the US air force's "bunker buster" (or Ordnance Penetrator) missiles. They are the only weapons with the capability of hitting Fordow, Iran's most critical nuclear site, a uranium enrichment facility that's buried in a mountain.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Israel is dominating the air space over Iran but destroying Iran's nuclear capability requires "the kind of air attack that only the US air force can execute", said The New York Times. But US involvement could push Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to double down and start producing – and possibly even using – nuclear bombs.

What did the commentators say?

Escalation could happen quickly. "Any attack by the US will lead to a full-scale attack by the Iranians against US bases in the region," Trita Parsi, from the Quincy Institute foreign policy think tank in Washington, told CNN.

These bases are within easier missile reach of Iran than the targets that it is attempting to hit in Israel. If Americans are killed, or even injured, the US president will be under pressure to exact revenge.

"Soon enough, the only targets left for Washington to hit would be the Iranian regime's leaders, and the US would again go into the regime-change business," wrote former US ambassador to Israel Daniel C. Kurtzer and former National Security Council member Steven N. Simon on Foreign Affairs.

Unable to defeat Israel and the US through outright firepower, Iran would mobilise what remains of its proxies across Iraq, Yemen and Syria and try to exhaust its enemies in a war of attrition, as it did against Saddam Hussein's Iraq in the 1980s.

Nowadays, said Parsi, it would use cyberwarfare, drones and short-range missile attacks on oil tankers, which would make transportation in the Persian Gulf difficult, thereby driving up the price of oil, a way to hurt Trump at home. "The Iranian strategy may end up being just to try to sustain themselves, strike back as much as they can, and hope that Trump eventually tries to cut the war short, as he did in Yemen," Parsi said. Last month, the US signed a ceasefire deal with Yemen's Iran-backed Houthi rebels.

Tehran could also try to shut down trade and shipping in the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab al-Mandab Strait, both global maritime chokepoints. The US could retaliate by bombing Iran's own oil industry, but that would make the "oil shock to the global economy even more severe", said Max Boot in The Washington Post.

What next?

At this week's G7 summit in Canada, French president Emmanuel Macron cautioned against "regime change with no plan" and pointed to Iraq in 2003 and the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi in Libya in 2011 as cautionary examples.

"As Tony Blair was warned by Iraq experts in 2002 – but decided to ignore – the removal of a longstanding authoritarian government unleashes unpredictable suppressed forces," said The Guardian. Disagreeing with Macron, Friedrich Merz, the German chancellor, said: "We are dealing with a terrorist regime both internally and externally. It would be good if this regime came to an end."

If Iran's supreme leader were to be toppled, the country, which is made up of a mixture of ethnicities, religions, politics and incomes, could end up divided in a sort of Balkanisation. "Even now, as the regime totters, the uncertainty about what may come next may be its best chance of survival."

Potential replacements for Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei include Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of Iran's last monarch, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who was overthrown during the 1979 revolution. He left Iran at the age of 17 but this week has been on US TV saying: "We see a leader who is hiding in a bunker like a rat. I have stepped in to lead this campaign at the behest of my compatriots. I have a plan for Iran's future and recovery."