The Middle East Agrees: Iran Must Fall

Nineteen days into the war, the assumption that the fighting between Iran and the US-Israeli coalition would burn itself out in a matter of days has been thoroughly buried. Since the last update, the 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 war’s opening day.

An Israeli strike in the early hours of March 17th killed Ali Larijani, a man reported to be both the architect of the brutal crackdown earlier this year and the figure largely calling the shots inside Iran since the war broke out. His death, alongside that of another senior enforcer, removes two of the men most responsible for holding the Islamic Republic together.

Meanwhile, Iran’s conduct in the war has produced a result few could have predicted. Its own neighbors—Gulf states that had previously gone to bat for Tehran—are now dodging Iranian missiles and reportedly pressing Washington to eliminate the Iranian threat for good. The thesis of the moment is stark: across diplomacy, economics, and the battlefield, the regional consensus has shifted from containing Iran to dismantling it.

Key Takeaways

An Israeli strike on March 17th killed Ali Larijani—reported architect of this year’s crackdown and de facto power behind the war effort—alongside Basij commander Gholamreza Soleimani, removing two of the regime’s most important enforcers.
A parallel coalition campaign has targeted Iran’s domestic repression apparatus, not just its missile and nuclear infrastructure, on the theory that degrading the tools of repression will let the population topple the regime without a ground invasion.
The IRGC ignored President Pezeshkian’s apology to the Gulf states and kept striking Bahrain, the UAE, Qatar, and others—turning every Gulf state that once lobbied for Iran into a backer of the campaign against it.
Since February 28th, Iran has launched over 1,800 projectiles at the UAE alone, hitting the Fujairah Oil Industrial Zone and forcing flight delays at Dubai International Airport.
The Strait of Hormuz—through which roughly 20 million barrels of oil pass daily—has become the most contested waterway on Earth, with IRGC shore batteries, speedboats, and drones keeping it dangerous despite the destruction of Iran’s conventional navy.
In Lebanon, at least three IDF divisions are operating south of the Litani in the largest ground operation since 2006, while President Joseph Aoun openly condemns Hezbollah and a divided Lebanese Armed Forces struggles to disarm the group.

Destroying the Tools of Repression

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

Larijani became infamous for his role in the January crackdown that reportedly killed as many as 36,500 people in just two days. He did not act alone. He was assisted by Gholamreza Soleimani, who commanded the Basij—the dreaded paramilitary force embedded in neighborhoods, mosques, universities, and just about every other corner of Iranian life. Between them, the two men were 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 loss of that magnitude would be devastating under any circumstances, but the timing 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 is aimed squarely at the regime’s domestic repression capabilities, and it has been accelerating massively in recent days.

The choice of targets reveals the campaign’s true purpose. Destroying missile launchers and stockpiles degrades Iran’s ability to hit back. But destroying a law enforcement station and the men who run it degrades something else entirely: Iran’s ability to keep the lid on a country that it only barely had a grasp on before the war began. This is a campaign designed less to disarm Iran abroad than to weaken its grip at home.

Why Decapitation May Not Be Enough

There is an important caveat before anyone concludes that the regime stands on the brink of total collapse because of these two strikes. Much of the IRGC and Basij apparatus has dispersed into civilian areas since the bombing started—Soleimani himself was reportedly hiding in a Tehran paramilitary tent camp when the strike found him. The structure the Guards were built around was designed precisely to survive this kind of decapitation.

The provincial corps system relies on semi-autonomous units that can operate independently even if central command goes dark. Destroying the regime’s physical infrastructure and its top leaders absolutely matters, but it does not automatically mean the rank and file have lost the ability to do their job. A force engineered to keep functioning without its head is, by design, harder to kill than the men who lead it.

Whether the strikes will prove decisive may start to become clear soon. At the time of writing, it is Chaharshanbe Suri—a traditional fire-jumping festival that dates back thousands of years—and Iranians across the country are defying regime warnings to fill the streets with bonfires and fireworks. The festival has become an early stress test of the coalition’s core theory.

Early reporting suggests the celebrations are widespread, and that crackdowns are already underway. In the Chitgar district of western Tehran, videos circulating online show sustained gunfire as security forces moved in to disperse crowds around bonfires, with plainclothes agents conducting arrests on the spot. Similar clashes have been reported in Karaj and Mashhad.

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Nowruz as the Real Test

The next few days will be the real measure. Nowruz, or Persian New Year, falls on March 20th this year. Historically one of the largest public gatherings in Iranian life, the holiday has often served as 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 the current war broke out. This year, the situation has shifted considerably.

Nowruz should not be treated as a single make-or-break moment, but it nonetheless represents a significant test of the coalition’s central theory for ousting—or at least seriously pressuring—the regime. The logic runs as follows: degrade Iran’s 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 men who actually control the streets are working from a very different theory. The clearest window into their thinking came in early March, when President Pezeshkian publicly apologized to the Gulf states for uncontrolled missile launches aimed at them. On its face, this should have read as a sensible de-escalation, given that none of the Gulf states were attacking Iran.

It did not play out that way. The IRGC ignored the president entirely, continued to strike Bahrain, the UAE, Qatar, and elsewhere across the region, and were reportedly furious that he would publicly back down from the fight. The significance is hard to overstate. The Guards have never been a conventional domestic military force; they are an ideologically driven body of hardliners explicitly created to defend the Islamic Republic’s survival no matter the cost.

Whatever happens next on the streets of Tehran, these men do not appear likely to lay down their weapons and go quietly.

A Tough Neighbor: How Iran Lost the Gulf

The IRGC’s hardline stance did more than expose the power dynamics inside Tehran. It reshaped the entire region’s posture in ways that would have been almost unimaginable just weeks ago. Before the 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 Gulf governments had adamantly urged the White House not to strike Iran, and were actively working to find common ground between Washington and Tehran to avoid conflict. Part of this was self-preservation—they understood that regional war is rarely good for their economies, at least in the short term—but they were genuinely among 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 these states doubted that Iran posed a threat; they hosted US bases for a reason. But they had calculated that living with the Iranian threat was preferable to being left largely defenseless in a war. Iran’s response to Operation Epic Fury settled that calculation in about 72 hours. The country that had spent years cultivating Gulf goodwill spent three days demolishing it.

The Missiles That Turned the Gulf

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 picture has been similar across the broader Middle East. US air defenses have intercepted the majority of what Iran sends their way, but some projectiles have gotten through. After nearly three weeks of this, the most noteworthy development is not the barrage itself but the reaction taking shape across Gulf capitals.

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” because they are “targeting civilian infrastructure.” When the interviewer pushed back—noting that it was the US and Israel who started the 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 further, branding Iran “treacherous” and taking the lead in sponsoring a UN Security Council resolution condemning Iran for its targets in the conflict, which passed with unusually lopsided support. While not every Gulf state was quite so forceful, all have moved in the same direction. The GCC formalized the shift, invoking the UN Charter’s Article 51 right to collective self-defense and explicitly reserving the option to respond militarily.

Behind the public calls for peace, the private messaging to Washington has been far blunter: finish the job. Gulf officials have pressed the Trump administration for what amounts to a permanent end to Iran’s ability to threaten their infrastructure. This does not necessarily mean full regime change, but it does center on crippling Iran’s military capabilities for a long time to come. In the space of three weeks, Iran turned every Gulf state that had lobbied Washington on its behalf into a partner actively backing the campaign to destroy its military—by almost any measure, one of the most self-defeating foreign policy decisions any country has made in the modern Middle East.

The Chokepoint: Chaos in the Strait of Hormuz

If the diplomatic picture is bad for Tehran, the economic one is where the 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 seen enough back-and-forth to make the head spin. What is actually happening, unhelpfully, 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 has not 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. Swarms of fast-attack speedboats and Shahed-style drones are nearly impossible to address with an air campaign alone, given how easily they are disguised until the moment they launch.

The regime’s own messaging has been wildly contradictory, spreading further confusion. Mojtaba Khamenei’s first public statement—and the term is used loosely, given the uncertainty over whether he is even still alive—declared that “blocking the Strait of Hormuz must undoubtedly continue to be used,” signaling that Tehran was going all in. Foreign Minister Aragchi, meanwhile, told 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 and a Divided West

The economic consequences are hard to overstate. Petrol prices worldwide have shot up since the conflict broke out, but the Gulf states stand at the front of what could be lost. A recent Goldman Sachs stress test, published on March 15, 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 not be hit quite as hard, but they would take five- and three-point hits respectively.

That urgency has not produced a unified international coalition, much to Washington’s frustration. 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.” The implicit threat did little to move reluctant allies.

Germany’s Defense Minister Boris Pistorius captured the prevailing European mood when he said: “This is not our war; we did not start it.” That sentiment more or less sums up the broader European position—this was a war the US and Israel started, and it will be theirs to finish. The result is a contested chokepoint, soaring energy prices, and a coalition that looks far less coalition-like the moment anyone is asked to commit hardware.

South of the Litani: The Second Front

As if all of this were not enough, 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 Israel’s 2006 intervention. Evacuation orders now cover everything south of the Litani. Combined with the evacuated areas in the Bekaa Valley and southern Beirut, that amounts to 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, has 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.

Beirut’s Unprecedented Response and the LAF’s Bind

Lebanese President Joseph Aoun’s response has been the most striking thing to come out of Beirut in years. In the space of 48 hours, 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 a path to become a “second Gaza,” and floated a four-point plan: 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 still falling short of Israeli expectations, for two reasons. First, Lebanon has a long history of promising to finally get tough on Hezbollah—pledges that have rarely materialized. Second, and more pressingly, the LAF is already struggling to implement the ban on Hezbollah’s military operations reported on previously. Hezbollah’s entry into the war was earth-shattering for Beirut, which appeared to have found a rare moment of cross-sectarian agreement that the group simply had to go.

But after initially promising signs, 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 over the whole debacle. In fairness, Haykal’s inaction is not mere indifference.

His calculation is that 20 to 30 percent of the LAF are Shia and might refuse to mobilize against Hezbollah entirely, risking a total fracture of the military. In Lebanon, sectarian identity drives nearly everything—especially in politics—and the LAF is broadly considered the last cross-sectarian institution in the country.

Sovereignty on the Line

The inaction is nonetheless jeopardizing Lebanon’s sovereignty. The lesson Israel drew from the October 7th attacks—rightly or wrongly—was that it could no longer afford to allow a hostile force to exist along its borders. In the aftermath of the 2024 ceasefire with Lebanon, Israel made clear that disarmament of Hezbollah was an absolute, bare-minimum condition.

The tragic irony is that the LAF largely delivered on this once before. Earlier this year, it completed phase one of the disarmament operation. The work was slow going—potentially so slow that Hezbollah was re-arming faster elsewhere in the country than it was being disarmed—but the LAF nevertheless demonstrated that it could deliver. The capability is not in question; the political will, under wartime pressure, is.

Compounding the problem, Hezbollah continues to launch on Israel even now. Its stockpile has been severely reduced and seems likely to shrink further in ongoing clashes with the IDF, but the group does not appear anywhere close to surrender. With Iran’s enforcers being killed, the Gulf states turned against Tehran, the Strait of Hormuz in chaos, and Lebanon teetering between disarmament and collapse, the war’s trajectory points in only one direction—and there will be plenty more to come as the situation continues to develop.

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, by most accounts, one of the most powerful men in Iran after Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s death on February 28th. He was reported to be the architect of the January crackdown that killed as many as 36,500 people in two days, and was largely calling the shots in the country once the war began. An Israeli strike killed him in the early hours of March 17th, alongside Basij commander Gholamreza Soleimani—removing two of the men most responsible for holding the Islamic Republic together.

What is the coalition’s theory for toppling the regime without an invasion?

The coalition has run a parallel campaign aimed at Iran’s domestic repression apparatus, not just its missiles and nuclear sites. The idea is that destroying law enforcement stations, paramilitary infrastructure, and the men who run them will degrade the regime’s ability to control its population. Degrade those tools of repression enough, the thinking goes, and the population will be able to topple the Islamic Republic without an Iraq-style ground operation.

Why did the Gulf states turn against Iran?

Before the war, the Gulf states had urged the White House not to strike Iran and were working to avoid conflict. But after Iran’s response to Operation Epic Fury, Tehran launched over 1,800 projectiles at the UAE alone, hit the Fujairah Oil Industrial Zone, and forced flight delays at Dubai International Airport. The IRGC ignored President Pezeshkian’s apology and kept striking the Gulf, driving states like the UAE and Bahrain to condemn Iran publicly and privately press Washington to finish the job.

What is happening in the Strait of Hormuz?

Roughly 20 million barrels of oil pass through the Strait daily, making it the world’s most contested waterway. Although American and Israeli strikes destroyed most of Iran’s conventional navy, IRGC shore-based anti-ship missile batteries near Bandar Abbas and Qeshm Island keep firing, and swarms of fast-attack speedboats and Shahed-style drones remain hard to neutralize from the air. The regime’s messaging has been contradictory, with one statement insisting on blocking the Strait and Foreign Minister Aragchi claiming it is closed only to American and Israeli vessels.

Why is the Lebanese Armed Forces struggling to disarm Hezbollah?

LAF Commander Haykal has essentially refused to enforce the government’s ban on Hezbollah’s military activities, prompting the United States to suspend some coordination and Lebanon’s prime minister to consider firing him. 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—which is widely regarded as the last cross-sectarian institution in the country.