ll three key prot­ag­on­ists — Iran, Israel, and the US — are sig­nalling that they are “win­ning”. In what is sup­posed to be his first Nowruz — the pre-islamic Per­sian New Year — mes­sage, the new Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khame­nei, claimed that Iran has dealt a “dizzy­ing blow” to its enemies and that “the enemy has been defeated”. Israel’s Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Net­an­yahu claimed that after 20 days of oper­a­tions, “Iran today has no abil­ity to enrich uranium and no abil­ity to pro­duce bal­listic mis­siles”. US Pres­id­ent Don­ald Trump, who has been claim­ing that the war was pro­gress­ing faster than planned, sig­nalled that the con­flict is “wind­ing down”. The Middle East, a land of proph­ets and proph­ecies, has aunique trait: Noth­ing hap­pens until it really hap­pens.

Three weeks since the assas­sin­a­tion of Supreme Leader Ali Khame­nei, where do we stand today? At least 14 coun­tries are dir­ectly involved in the con­flict, caus­ing sig­ni­fic­ant global reper­cus­sions. The war has already shattered sev­eral taboos and unthink­ables. The killings of the Supreme Leader, secur­ity chief Ali Lar­i­jani, and sev­eral other key Ira­nian mil­it­ary fig­ures have been dev­ast­at­ing for the regime. This has res­ul­ted in two con­flict­ing out­comes. One, the long-anti­cip­ated col­lapse of the regime has not occurred, at least not yet. And two, the con­flict has weakened cent­ral author­ity and loosened decision-mak­ing, giv­ing more power to local author­it­ies — those who con­trol resources decide the tar­gets for attack.

The long-feared clos­ure of the Strait of Hor­muz, the stra­tegic­ally cru­cial choke­point, has occurred. It was accom­pan­ied by Ira­nian energy infra­struc­ture being tar­geted by the US and Israel, fol­lowed by Ira­nian retali­ations against Arab energy assets. Both actions caused a sig­ni­fic­ant sup­ply dis­rup­tion, res­ult­ing in a sharp increase in oil prices, which many expect will soon hit $200 per bar­rel. Although bunkers provide safety, the daily lives of ordin­ary Israelis have also been severely dis­rup­ted by a vol­ley of attacks. Israel has yet to achieve, and is unlikely to develop, a fool­proof fire­wall sys­tem against incom­ing Ira­nian pro­jectiles.

Once the dust settles, what are the likely out­comes? One, the Gulf Arab coun­tries neigh­bour­ing Iran will need to reas­sess their policies and strategies, espe­cially con­sid­er­ing their fail­ure to safe­guard the secur­ity of their cit­izens and large expat­ri­ate pop­u­la­tions. They will be forced to rethink their social con­tract. As shown by the Arab Spring protests, mon­arch­ies tend to be more respons­ive and accom­mod­at­ing to pop­u­lar moods than repub­lican regimes. But this time, the chal­lenge is her­culean. The GCC coun­tries, includ­ing former allies like Oman and Qatar, will need to ree­valu­ate their rela­tion­ships with Tehran. If the US couldn't serve as the depend­able secur­ity pro­vider the Gulf mon­arch­ies had expec­ted, their strategy of appease­ment towards Iran has also failed com­pletely. They will have to go back to the draw­ing board and start over.

An unfor­tu­nate and unin­ten­ded out­come will be the fate of Shia minor­it­ies in Gulf Arab coun­tries. After being mar­gin­al­ised for a long time, espe­cially fol­low­ing the Islamic Revolu­tion, their situ­ation had begun to improve slightly in recent years. The recent dis­cov­ery of Ira­nian sym­path­isers and sleeper cells indic­ates that Gulf Arab coun­tries, par­tic­u­larly Bahrain and Saudi Ara­bia, will view their Shia pop­u­la­tions with increased sus­pi­cion and mis­trust. The Arab Shias will be com­pelled to demon­strate their unwaver­ing loy­alty to their rulers and the state.

Two, the US and Israel will have to ree­valu­ate their decap­it­a­tion strategy aimed at trig­ger­ing regime change in Iran. They will have to review the effect­ive­ness and effi­ciency of their weapon sys­tems. Although some regional coun­tries bene­fit from Iran's dimin­ished mil­it­ary power, few have openly sup­por­ted, let alone par­ti­cip­ated in, Oper­a­tion Epic Fury. Even nations whose energy sup­ply depends on the Strait of Hor­muz are hes­it­ant to join the US in keep­ing the strait open. There­fore, the US and Israel will need to reas­sess their regional strategy.

Three, the mil­lion-dol­lar ques­tion revolves around Iran. While the regime has shown its sur­vival instincts and resi­li­ence in facing and respond­ing to aggres­sion, its future is more uncer­tain now than it was a few weeks ago. The regime’s “sur­vival” comes at a sig­ni­fic­ant While every­one, includ­ing the main lead­ers, wants an early res­ol­u­tion to the grow­ing con­flict, no coun­- try or group can get the parties to the nego­ti­ation table cost, not only mil­it­ar­ily but also socially. Ira­nian prox­ies are weaker than ever before. Hamas is more eager to work towards rebuild­ing Palestinian ter­rit­or­ies, and anger against Hezbol­lah has uni­fied the Lebanese gov­ern­ment and people towards a poten­tial recon­cili­ation with Israel. The weak­en­ing of domestic mil­it­ary cap­ab­il­it­ies has also reduced the clergy’s abil­ity to impose its author­ity. The office of Velayat-e Faqih is cru­cial to the regime’s sur­vival in Iran. However, dyn­astic suc­ces­sion and the appoint­ment of someone with lim­ited and unproven jur­idical expert­ise have greatly weakened the author­ity of the Supreme Leader.

Four, since the cur­rent con­flict began with the US-Israel killing of Khame­nei, it is nat­ural and unavoid­able that Arab anger towards them will emerge, and there may even be pres­sure to recon­sider the Abra­ham Accords. At the same time, Israel alone will not shoulder all the blame. The Arab states and the Arab street are equally angry and upset with the Islamic Repub­lic. This will cre­ate a chal­lenge for Iran. Although its arsenal might give it mil­it­ary dom­in­ance, reck­less attacks on Arab infra­struc­ture will be polit­ic­ally costly for Iran in the long run. While every­one, includ­ing the main lead­ers, wants an early res­ol­u­tion to the grow­ing con­flict, no coun­try or group can get the parties to the nego­ti­ation table. Noises are often inversely related to influ­ence, and there are fewer states­men to help us pro­gress. There­fore, there is no early end in sight to the ongo­ing Iran con­flict.

The writer teaches contemporary Middle East at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi

Note:  This article was originally published in The Indian Express on 23 March 2026 and has been reproduced with the permission of the author. Web Link

As part of its editorial policy, the MEI@ND standardizes spelling and date formats to make the text uniformly accessible and stylistically consistent. The views expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views/positions of the MEI@ND. Editor, MEI@ND: P R Kumaraswamy