TEHRAN — Five weeks after the United States and Israel launched an unprovoked invasion of Iran on February 28, the situation in the Middle East has changed forever.
What began with hundreds of coordinated strikes in the first 12 hours, the martyrdom of Seyyed Ali Khamenei, and the deliberate targeting of civilian facilities such as Minab’s elementary school, which claimed more than 170 lives, backfired spectacularly and accelerated the very changes the invaders had hoped to annihilate forever.
Within Iran, the war created a nationalist upsurge and strengthened the social contract.
Old architecture in the area has collapsed.
The Axis of Resistance is a long-standing force that has now united into something stronger and more unified.
The illusion of borrowed security among the Arab states of the Persian Gulf has disappeared.
This is more than just a tactical damage and destruction chapter. It represents the birth of a new strategic reality.
A mirage shatters in the Persian Gulf
Nowhere were the rifts deeper than in the Arab monarchies of the Persian Gulf, where the mirage of American protection and faith in the “Dubai Initiative” finally collapsed.
For decades, they have embraced U.S. military bases as ironclad insurance, touting their cities as isolated oases while covertly enabling Iran’s hostile encirclement. It financed Saddam, supported separatist groups in the 1980s, and expanded its covert military relationship with Israel under the US-led Regional Security Initiative, as revealed in the Centcom documents leaked in late 2025.
These Arab states privately encouraged the invasion of Tehran while publicly condemning Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Trump himself publicly acknowledged this involvement, repeatedly praising their “assistance” during the war.
This double game was exposed and met with Iranian retaliation across the (Persian) Gulf Cooperation Council countries.
At least 13 US military bases have been partially or completely disabled.
Although air defense systems intercepted most missiles, their volume, cost, and drone infiltration proved unsustainable.
Imports faced severe disruption, with prices increasing by 40 to 120 percent. Kuwait and Qatar are currently facing a potential 14% GDP contraction even in a short war.
“We’re caught up in a war we didn’t start,” says an off-the-record Persian Gulf voice.
The Abraham Accords military agreement remains bare. U.S. assets invited retaliation rather than protection.
Glass towers are no longer safe. Proximity to American power now equates to vulnerability.
Holmes rewrites world power
Economically, this crisis will be the weakest shock since the 1970s.
Iran’s wartime control of the Strait of Hormuz did not completely close it, stranding 14 million to 20 million barrels a day, sending Brent crude above $110, and forcing Qatar into force majeure regarding LNG.
Global GDP losses are expected to reach between $330 billion and $2.2 trillion.
Europe and Asia are suffering the most from energy and fertilizer shortages.
As Professor Robert A. Pape wrote in the New York Times on April 6, this war seeks to transform Iran into a major world power — not through traditional parity but through control of 20 percent of the world’s oil flows and an asymmetric toolkit whose staying power makes it unstoppable.
Iran has become the fourth pole along with the United States, China, and Russia.
Resurrection of the Resistance
Before the invasion, Western analysts confidently spoke of “degraded networks.”
In their minds, Hezbollah had lost an irreplaceable commander and supply line. Although Ansarullah operated under a fragile ceasefire, the Iraqi resistance group reportedly faced internal divisions and growing nationalist opposition.
The entire front line was depleted and Iran’s forward defense strategy was portrayed as overextended.
The first wave of retaliation changed everything.
By March 2, Hezbollah had opened a northern front by firing rockets and drones at Israel, forcing a planned ground invasion and the displacement of approximately 1 million Lebanese, but its dedication to the Lebanese people and its ties to the Islamic revolution proved stronger than any tactical losses.
Late March brought a ballistic attack by Yemen on an Israeli airport and signs of renewed pressure on Bab el-Mandeb, raising the possibility that the Red Sea would become a second strategic pressure point after Iran’s effective wartime control of the Strait of Hormuz.
Undaunted by under-reported enemy aggression and the martyrdom of its own troops, Iraq’s Islamic Resistance Movement continued its drone and rocket operations against US bases from Baghdad to Jordan.
What Western analysts once dismissed as a fragmented network now functions as a synchronized regional defense arrangement.
The Hormuz Mandab sluice is no longer a theoretical concept.
Hormuz now exercises actual control, and the potential activation of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait puts the Resistance in a position to exert a powerful geoeconomic veto over global energy flows.
Awakening of civilization and morality
Philosophically, the war revealed deeper rifts.
Pursuant to Article 51 of the UN Charter and guided by necessity and proportionality, Iran’s response was to attack enemy bases and their military enablers while providing a route of retreat.
The participation of some Arab states in the killing spree, from al-Udeid to Crown Prince Sultan, stripped them of their claims of neutrality under international law.
?More importantly, a civilizational shift is occurring.?
The groundless nature of the US-Israel war is seen across the Global South as final proof of Western wrongdoing.
No wonder President Trump publicly threatened on April 7, “Tonight, the entire civilization will perish, never to rise again.”
Iran is no longer seen as just a regional power. It is seen as an organizational pole against the resurgence of colonial style imperatives.
This is a moral and philosophical victory.
Across the Global South, Iran is increasingly seen as a defender of indigenous sovereignty against extra-regional excesses.
• Although the United States and Israel suffered a strategic defeat and failed to achieve any political objectives, the war is not over yet.
The aggressor remains desperate and dangerous, and the impact of this war on global energy markets and Israel’s domestic stability is only beginning to be felt. However, the strategic map has already fundamentally changed.
The end of the American era in the Middle East is no longer a prediction. That is the current reality.