The Middle East Agrees: Iran Must Fall

Nineteen days into the war against Iran, the assumption that this conflict would smooth itself out in a matter of days has collapsed entirely. Since the last update, the US-Israeli coalition has carried out what is, in all likelihood, the most consequential strike of the entire campaign—second only to the killing of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei himself on the first day.

In the early hours of March 17th, an Israeli strike killed Ali Larijani, a man reported both to have been the architect of the brutal crackdown earlier this year and to have been largely calling the shots in Iran since the war broke out. His death removes one of the most powerful figures left standing in a regime already reeling from decapitation strikes at the very top.

Meanwhile, Iran’s response to this war has achieved something genuinely remarkable. Its own neighbors—the very states that had previously gone to bat for Tehran—are now dodging Iranian missiles, and are reportedly pushing Washington to eliminate the Iranian threat for good. In the space of three weeks, Iran has managed to convert its closest regional friends into partners in the campaign to dismantle its military.

Key Takeaways

An Israeli strike on March 17th killed Ali Larijani and Basij commander Gholamreza Soleimani—the two men most responsible for holding the Islamic Republic together through domestic repression.
A parallel campaign, distinct from the headline strikes on nuclear and missile infrastructure, is aimed squarely at degrading Iran’s domestic repression capabilities, and it has been accelerating sharply.
The Gulf states, once Iran’s last informal coalition against US action, have turned decisively after Iran launched over 1,800 projectiles at the UAE alone since February 28th.
The Strait of Hormuz—through which roughly 20 million barrels of oil pass daily—has become the most contested waterway on Earth, with conflicting signals from Tehran and severe economic fallout across the Gulf.
Israel has opened a major ground operation in southern Lebanon, the largest since 2006, displacing close to a million people and prompting unprecedented warnings from Lebanese President Joseph Aoun.
Lebanon’s army has stalled on disarming Hezbollah, with its commander citing the risk that mobilizing against the group could fracture the military along sectarian lines.

This is the story of where the war stands as of June 2nd, 2026: the targeting of Iran’s repression apparatus, the diplomatic collapse across the Gulf, the contested waters of the Strait of Hormuz, and the second front burning in southern Lebanon.

Destroying the Tools of Repression

Ali Larijani was, by most accounts, one of the most powerful men in Iran following the death of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei on February 28th. The country has officially installed a new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, but his whereabouts remain unknown, and he has not been seen in public since the attacks began. Rumors have swirled that he was variously injured, knocked unconscious, or even killed in the weeks since—and in his absence, the Revolutionary Guards have stepped in.

Larijani became infamous through his role during the January crackdown that reportedly killed as many as 36,500 people in two days alone. He did not act alone there. He was assisted by Gholamreza Soleimani, who commanded the Basij—the dreaded paramilitary force embedded in neighborhoods, mosques, and universities all across the country. Between the two of them, they were the men most responsible for keeping the Islamic Republic from coming apart at the seams.

In the early hours of March 17th, Israeli strikes killed them both.

A Parallel Campaign Against Iran’s Domestic Grip

That kind of loss would be devastating under any circumstances, but the timing here matters enormously. Since the war began, American and Israeli forces have been running what amounts to a parallel campaign alongside the more headline-grabbing strikes on nuclear sites and missile infrastructure. This second campaign has been aimed squarely at the regime’s domestic repression capabilities and infrastructure, and it has been accelerating massively in recent days.

The choice of targets reveals the logic. Destroying missile launchers and stockpiles might degrade Iran’s ability to hit back, but destroying a law enforcement station and the men who run it degrades Iran’s ability to keep the lid on a country it only barely had a grasp on before this all kicked off. The campaign treats the machinery of internal control as a military objective in its own right.

There is an important caveat, however, before assuming the regime is in imminent danger of total collapse on the strength of these two strikes alone. Much of the IRGC and Basij apparatus has dispersed into civilian areas since the strikes began—Soleimani himself was reportedly hiding in a Tehran paramilitary tent camp when the strike found him.

Built to Survive Decapitation

What’s more, the provincial corps structure that the Guards were designed around was built precisely to survive this kind of decapitation. The architecture relies on semi-autonomous units that can operate independently, even if central command goes dark. Destroying their physical infrastructure—and their top leaders—absolutely matters, but it does not automatically mean that the rank and file have lost the ability to do their job.

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Whether any of it will be enough is a question that may start being answered very soon. At the time these events unfolded, it was Chaharshanbe Suri—a traditional fire-jumping festival that dates back thousands of years—and Iranians across the country were defying regime warnings to take to the streets with bonfires and fireworks.

Early reporting suggested that the celebrations were widespread, and that crackdowns were already taking place. In the Chitgar district of western Tehran, videos circulated of sustained gunfire as security forces moved in to disperse the crowd around bonfires, with plainclothes agents conducting arrests on the spot. Similar clashes were reported in Karaj and Mashhad.

Nowruz and the Coalition’s Core Theory

The real test comes next. Nowruz, or Persian New Year, fell on March 20th this year. The holiday is historically one of the largest public gatherings in Iranian life and has often been a flashpoint for protests against the regime. Last year, authorities arrested dozens of people across multiple provinces during Nowruz—and that was before any of this broke out. This year, the situation has changed considerably.

Nowruz should not be treated as a single make-or-break moment, but it nevertheless represents a significant test of the coalition’s core theory for ousting—or at least seriously pressuring—the regime: degrade their tools of repression enough, and the population will be able to do the rest. That is how the coalition envisions toppling the Islamic Republic without an Iraq-style, boots-on-the-ground operation.

But the people who actually control the scene on the ground—the men with guns—are operating on a very different theory. The clearest window into that came in early March, when President Pezeshkian publicly apologized to the Gulf states for uncontrolled missile launches against them. That should otherwise have read as a sensible step, given that none of the Gulf states were attacking Iran. Instead, the IRGC ignored him, continued to hit Bahrain, the UAE, Qatar, and elsewhere across the region, and were reportedly furious that the president would publicly back down from the fight.

The significance for the domestic picture is hard to overstate. The Guards have never been a domestic military force, but rather an ideologically driven group of hardliners explicitly set up to defend the Islamic Republic’s continued existence—no matter the cost. Whatever comes next on the streets of Tehran, it does not appear likely that these men will simply lay down their weapons and go quietly into that good night.

A Tough Neighbor

The IRGC’s hardliner stance did not just reveal the power dynamics inside Tehran—it helped reshape the entire region’s posture in ways that would have been difficult to imagine just a few weeks ago.

Before this war started, the Gulf states were the closest thing Iran had left to a coalition against American military action. Despite hosting US military bases, most of them had adamantly pushed the White House not to strike Iran, and were actively working to find common ground between Washington and Tehran to avoid conflict. This was partly out of self-preservation—they knew that regional conflict is never good for their bottom line, at least in the short term—but they were still some of the best friends Tehran had left. The Emirates had spent years rebuilding its relationship with Iran, and Oman’s foreign minister was in Washington discussing the matter with Vice President JD Vance the day before the strikes took place.

None of them doubted that Iran posed a threat—they hosted US bases for a reason. But they had calculated that living with the Iranian threat would be preferable to being largely defenseless in a war. Iran’s response to Operation Epic Fury settled that debate in about 72 hours.

1,800 Projectiles and a Region Turned

Since February 28th, Iran has launched over 1,800 projectiles—split between ballistic missiles and drones—at the UAE alone. The Fujairah Oil Industrial Zone, one of the largest oil storage hubs in the Middle East and home to pipelines specifically built to bypass the Strait of Hormuz, took direct hits. Dubai International Airport was forced into flight delays after a drone strike near its fuel tanks sent passengers fleeing through smoke-filled corridors.

The scene across the Middle East has been largely the same. While US air defenses have intercepted the majority of what Iran is sending, some have gotten through. But after nearly three weeks of this, the more noteworthy development is the reaction throughout Gulf capitals in recent days.

Perhaps the most revealing moment came in an ABC Australia interview with Emirati Minister for International Cooperation Reem Al Hashimy, who went viral for calling the strikes “almost unhinged,” as they are “targeting civilian infrastructure.” When the interviewer pushed back, pointing out that it was the US and Israel who started this conflict and that the Emirates were being targeted because they host the US base, Al Hashimy did not mince words: “Independent of how this began, the retaliatory measures that Iran has taken to attack the Gulf states is really where the issue we have is… Our relationship with the US… doesn’t falter in moments of crisis… We don’t take to trying to being bullied around.”

Bahrain went even further, branding Iran “treacherous.” It took the lead in sponsoring a UN Security Council resolution condemning Iran for its targets in this conflict, which passed with unusually lopsided support.

Finish the Job

While not everyone throughout the Gulf was quite that forceful, they have all been moving in the same direction. The GCC has formalized the shift, invoking the UN Charter’s Article 51 right to collective self-defense and explicitly reserving the option to respond militarily.

But behind the public statements urging peace, the private messaging to Washington has been far more direct: finish the job. Gulf officials have been pushing the Trump administration for what amounts to a permanent end to Iran’s ability to threaten their infrastructure—and while this does not necessarily mean full regime change, it does center on absolutely crippling the country’s military capabilities for a long time to come.

Step back and consider what has happened here. In the space of three weeks, Iran has managed to turn every Gulf state that was lobbying Washington on its behalf into a partner actively backing the campaign to destroy its military capabilities. It is, by almost any measure, one of the most self-defeating foreign policy decisions a country has made in the modern Middle East.

The Chokepoint

If the diplomatic picture is bad for Tehran, the economic one is where this war really starts to bite everyone else. The Strait of Hormuz—the chokepoint through which roughly 20 million barrels of oil pass on a given day—has become the most contested waterway on Earth, and the situation there has involved enough back-and-forth to make your head spin.

What’s actually happening there seems to depend on who you ask. The conventional Iranian Navy is, by most accounts, gone—American and Israeli strikes have sunk or disabled the bulk of it. But that hasn’t translated into safe passage, because the assets doing the damage were never the big ships. IRGC shore-based anti-ship missile batteries, along the coast near Bandar Abbas and Qeshm Island, are still firing, and swarms of fast-attack speedboats and Shahed-style drones are nearly impossible to address with an air campaign alone, given how easily they’re disguised until launched.

The regime’s own messaging on all of this has been unbelievably contradictory, spreading further confusion. Mojtaba Khamenei’s first public statement—a term used lightly, given the uncertainty over whether he is even still alive—declared that “blocking the Strait of Hormuz must undoubtedly continue to be used,” indicating Tehran was going all in. Foreign Minister Araghchi, meanwhile, has been telling a completely different story: “The Strait of Hormuz is not closed, but it is only closed to American, Israeli ships and tankers and not to others.”

The Economic Fallout

The economic fallout is hard to overstate. Petrol prices worldwide have shot up since the conflict broke out, but the Gulf states are at the front of what stands to be lost. A recent Goldman Sachs stress test published on March 15th showed that if the Strait remained effectively closed through April, Qatar and Kuwait could see their full-year GDP contract by 14 percent—the worst since the 1990 Gulf War. The UAE and Saudi Arabia wouldn’t be quite as hard hit, but they’d both take a five- and three-point hit, respectively.

That urgency has not translated into a unified international coalition, much to the chagrin of Washington. Trump demanded that about seven countries send warships to help police the Strait, then told reporters aboard Air Force One: “Whether we get support or not… We will remember.” Germany’s Defense Minister Boris Pistorius, for his part, captured the mood across much of Europe when he said: “This is not our war; we did not start it.”

That more or less sums up where the broader European position has been: this was a war the US and Israel started, and it’s going to be theirs to finish.

South of the Litani

While all of this has been unfolding between the US and Iran, another front has been raging in parallel: between Israel and Lebanon. The fighting there broke out within two days of the initial strikes on Tehran, and what followed has turned Lebanon into the war’s most volatile second front.

By March 16th, at least three separate IDF divisions were operating simultaneously inside southern Lebanon, pushing through Khiam, Bint Jbeil, and Marjayoun in the most significant ground operation since their 2006 intervention. Evacuation orders now cover everything south of the Litani—which, combined with evacuated areas in the Bekaa Valley and southern Beirut, totals roughly 14 percent of Lebanon’s entire territory and has driven close to a million people from their homes.

Israeli Defense Minister Katz has said at least parts of the operation are modeled explicitly on Gaza, offered no timeline for withdrawal, and some ministers are already floating the idea of a semi-permanent security zone. For now, there are no signs of a push toward Beirut or anything beyond the Litani—but calls for exactly such an operation have materialized. One senior cabinet official has gone so far as to call for Beirut’s southern suburbs to be turned into Khan Younis.

Aoun’s Gambit and a Stalled Army

Lebanese President Joseph Aoun’s response has been the most striking thing to come out of Beirut in years. In a single 48-hour window, he publicly called Hezbollah’s decision to enter the war a “trap” and “an almost overt ambush” serving Iranian interests, warned that the country is on the path to become a “second Gaza,” and floated a four-point plan calling for an immediate ceasefire, international backing for the Lebanese Armed Forces to oversee disarmament, direct negotiations with Israel, and long-term border security agreements.

While unprecedented for a Lebanese president, Beirut is currently falling short of Israeli expectations, for two reasons. First, Lebanon has a long history of promising to finally “get tough” on Hezbollah that hasn’t exactly materialized. Second, and more pertinently, the LAF is already struggling to implement the ban on Hezbollah’s military operations.

Hezbollah’s attack was earth-shattering for Beirut, which appeared to have finally found a moment of cross-sectarian agreement that Hezbollah simply had to go. And while there were initially promising signs that the LAF was taking this seriously, the army has largely stalled. LAF Commander Haykal has essentially refused to enforce the government’s ban on Hezbollah’s military activities, and the United States has even suspended some coordination with the LAF over it. The country’s Prime Minister has considered firing him for the whole debacle.

The Sectarian Math

In fairness to Haykal, this isn’t simple indifference. His calculation is that 20 to 30 percent of the LAF are Shia, and would possibly refuse to mobilize against Hezbollah entirely, risking a total fracture of the military. In Lebanon, sectarian identity is front and center to just about everything that happens, especially in politics—and the LAF is broadly considered to be the last cross-sectarian institution in the country.

All that said, the inaction is seriously jeopardizing the country’s sovereignty. The lesson Israel took away from the October 7th attacks—rightly or wrongly—was that it couldn’t afford to allow a hostile force to exist along its borders anymore.

In the aftermath of the 2024 ceasefire with Lebanon, Israel made clear that disarmament of the group was an absolute, bare-minimum condition. The tragic thing is that the LAF largely delivered on this. Earlier this year, they completed phase one of the operation—and while it was slow going, potentially so slow that Hezbollah was re-arming faster elsewhere in the country than it was being disarmed, the LAF nevertheless demonstrated that it could deliver.

And none of this is helped by the fact that even now, Hezbollah continues to launch on Israel. While its stockpile has been severely reduced, and seems likely to be reduced further in ongoing clashes with the IDF, the group does not appear anywhere close to surrender. The situation will continue to develop, with consequences that reach well beyond Lebanon’s borders.

Presented by

Simon Whistler

Simon Whistler is one of YouTube's most prolific educational creators. WarFronts is his deep dive into military history and conflict analysis.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who was Ali Larijani and why did his death matter?

Ali Larijani was one of the most powerful men in Iran following the death of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei on February 28th, reportedly both the architect of the brutal crackdown earlier this year and the figure largely calling the shots since the war broke out. He was killed in an Israeli strike in the early hours of March 17th, alongside Basij commander Gholamreza Soleimani. The two were the men most responsible for keeping the Islamic Republic from coming apart at the seams.

Why have the Gulf states turned against Iran?

Before the war, the Gulf states were Iran’s closest informal coalition against US military action, lobbying Washington against a strike. That changed after Iran launched over 1,800 projectiles at the UAE alone since February 28th, hitting the Fujairah Oil Industrial Zone and disrupting Dubai International Airport. Within roughly 72 hours of Iran’s response to Operation Epic Fury, Gulf calculations flipped, and officials began privately pushing Washington to “finish the job.”

What is the status of the Strait of Hormuz?

The Strait, through which roughly 20 million barrels of oil pass daily, has become the most contested waterway on Earth. Iran’s conventional navy has been largely sunk or disabled, but IRGC shore-based anti-ship missile batteries near Bandar Abbas and Qeshm Island are still firing, alongside fast-attack speedboats and Shahed-style drones. Iranian messaging is contradictory: Mojtaba Khamenei indicated the blockade would continue, while Foreign Minister Araghchi claimed it is closed only to American and Israeli vessels.

What economic damage could the conflict cause the Gulf?

A Goldman Sachs stress test published on March 15th found that if the Strait remained effectively closed through April, Qatar and Kuwait could see their full-year GDP contract by 14 percent—the worst since the 1990 Gulf War. The UAE and Saudi Arabia would take a five- and three-point hit, respectively. Petrol prices worldwide have already risen sharply since the conflict broke out.

Why has the Lebanese army stalled on disarming Hezbollah?

LAF Commander Haykal has refused to enforce the government’s ban on Hezbollah’s military activities, prompting the United States to suspend some coordination. His calculation is that 20 to 30 percent of the LAF are Shia and might refuse to mobilize against Hezbollah, risking a total fracture of the military. The LAF is broadly considered the last cross-sectarian institution in a country where sectarian identity is central to politics.