Trump fired 14 bombs, humiliated Iran, and saved Taiwan from annexation

Telegraph

03-07-2025

Now that the smoke has cleared from the Twelve-Day War, what effects will Israel and America's decisive victory have on Iran, the Persian Gulf, and the wider world? Some are already clear; others will take time to emerge. Together, they will be enormous.
The biggest uncertainty is whether Iran's theocratic regime will survive its humiliation at the hands of what the Ayatollah and his regime call the 'Zionist entity'. Even the word 'Israel' is poisonous in their mouths.
The sources of that humiliation cannot be hidden from the Iranian people, despite the regime's adamantine effort to keep the information from them. They know about the regime's defeat and its inability to control the skies over its own country. They know the defeat came mainly at the hands of a Jewish state one tenth of Iran's size. They know the Israelis struck Iranian targets at will. And they know the regime's costly, decades-long project to dominate the Middle East has failed. Its proxy network has been smashed and so have the mullahs' efforts to spread Shia Islam by force.
Those disasters are too big to hide, even for a totalitarian regime. Nor can it hide its isolation. None of its proxies could help in its hour of need because Israel had already decimated them. Nor did help come from Iran's Great Power allies, Russia and China. They stayed silent.
The result is that Iran's Grand Strategy, like its military infrastructure, lies in ruins – very expensive ruins.
Successful as Israel's military campaign was, however, Donald Trump stopped the IDF before it could complete two crucial elements. One was destroying the remainder of Iran's stockpile of missiles and launchers, so the regime still has significant weapons to threaten Israel and the Gulf States. The second was dismantling the regime's formidable apparatus of internal repression, which controls a young population that does not support the mullahs' rigid version of Shia Islam. Iran's internal security forces may still be powerful enough to keep the regime in power since the opposition is neither unified nor well-armed.
But even if the mullahs do survive, their humiliation will have far-reaching effects throughout the Persian Gulf and in Iran's relations with Russia and China.
Within the region, the biggest effect will be to pause the grim prospect of regional nuclear proliferation. The spread of those weapons was likely if Iran developed nuclear warheads and its ability to deliver them. The Saudis had already declared that they would develop their own nuclear capacity if Iran did, and nearby states would have had strong incentives to follow suit. One of the world's most unstable regions would have ended up bristling with the world's most dangerous weapons. That won't happen, at least for several years, thanks to Israel and the United States.
Israel has also saved itself, for now, from the looming threat of a second Holocaust. True, the Islamic Republic might well have been deterred by Israel's undeclared nuclear arsenal. But such deterrence refers to 'normal times' and 'normal regimes'. In Iran's case, the most dangerous moment would occur if the theocratic regime, having acquired deliverable nuclear weapon s, was collapsing. That's when the Ayatollah and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard might seek to fulfil their oft-stated goal of wiping out the Jewish State.
There is historical precedent for this 'Samson Option'. The Nazi regime accelerated its mass murder of the Jews as the Wehrmacht retreated from the Soviet Union. Facing certain defeat, Hitler and his regime devoted scarce resources to implementing the 'Final Solution'.
Finally, Iran's defeat will reshape the region in ways that benefit both Israel and the United States. Tehran's effort to become a regional hegemon is finished for at least a decade and possibly longer. The Middle East's strongest power is now Israel, militarily, economically, and technologically.
The Jewish state, with America's backing, will try to consolidate its position by extending the Abraham Accords, which began during Trump's first term and stalled after Joe Biden abandoned the project and Hamas launched its murderous attack on October 7. Indeed, preventing Saudi Arabia's inclusion in that regional bargain was Iran's aim in sponsoring the attacks on Israel.
There are two obstacles to this next step. One is the perennial sore of Gaza. Can Muslim states make peace with Israel while the Palestinians in Gaza face an uncertain future? The problem is notthat Gulf leaders love the Palestinian cause. They don't, except for Qatar. It is that all the Gulf regimes are narrowly-based, legitimated partly by their support for Muslim causes. They fear internal unrest if they make peace with Israel while Gaza is unresolved.
The other obstacle is geostrategic. The Gulf States' security rationale for partnering with Israel was mainly to counter a strong and rising Iranian threat.
Trump had demonstrated his reluctance to protect the Gulf States in September 2019 when he failed to retaliate after Iran's proxies bombed Saudi Arabia's huge oil facility at Abqaiq and its oilfield at Khurais. (Responsibility for the attack was claimed by the Houthis in Yemen, but their weapons and technical know-how all came from Iran.) With the US stepping back militarily, the Saudis and their allies had to seek another powerful partner. They found it in Israel, the region's strongest military power and Iran's fiercest foe.
That rationale is far weaker now that Iran has been debilitated. But the military logic behind the Abraham Accords was reinforced by the other advantages of cementing ties with Israel, the most sophisticated economy in the region. Economic ties with Israel are especially enticing as Gulf States work to diversify their economies and limit their dependence on petroleum production.
Despite the countervailing currents, therefore, the likely outcome of the war and Israel's steady economic progress is closer ties between the Gulf States and Israel, inhibited only by the lingering problems of Palestinians in Gaza.
What about the impact of the Twelve Day War beyond the Middle East?
The largest impact is likely to be on China. Trump's demonstrated willingness to use military force reinforces American deterrence in the Taiwan Straits. A stronger American deterrent makes Beijing's goal of seizing the island much riskier. With Iran now contained, America can also reorient its military power projection to the Indo-Pacific in order to cope with China. All US strategists consider that country America's most formidable long-term threat.
The threat of a Chinese attack on Taiwan has probably diminished for another reason, unrelated to stronger American deterrence. Xi Jinping, the most persistent advocate of a military attack on Taiwan, might well be losing his grip on power. There are indications that leaders of the People's Liberation Army, who know how risky an invasion would be, are beginning to worry Xi. These internal changes complement America's greater deterrent power, making an invasion of Taiwan even less likely.
China's economy is also struggling, partly because of events in Iran, partly because of Trump's other actions, and mostly because it's hard to run an economy with top-down orders. Chinese economic growth has long been driven by exports, not internal consumption, and the biggest market for those exports is America. China's dependence on Walmart and Amazon gives Trump leverage, and he has used it to squeeze Beijing.
China is facing problems with its energy imports, too, which it has been buying at a discount from Iran and Russia. Trump's sanctions make it difficult even to sell to China. The president will not relax his sanctions on Iran without a peace deal and may well increase them on Russia, which has exasperated him by its truculence on Ukraine.
Russia is also weakened by losing its Middle Eastern allies and the leverage that comes with them. Russia lost its Syrian partner when the Assad regime was overthrown. And what did Moscow do when faced with Iran's imminent defeat? Nothing. Nothing despite mutual defence treaties. As the war unfolded, Putin clearly became so sure Israel would win that he opted to stay out of the fray rather than provide Tehran with real military support.
Russia's military prowess also took a hit when Israel easily eliminated Iran's Russian radar and Western jets flew across the country undetected. Not a good advertisement for Russian military sales.
Now that Vladimir Putin's entire Middle Eastern project lies in ruins, the question is whether he will seek closer relations with Israel? He is likely to, if Israel is receptive.
The larger message is that the Israeli-American victory in Iran has sent shockwaves far beyond Tehran. The big questions now are whether the regime in Tehran will survive and, if it does, whether it will seek a compromise deal or continue to rail at the Great Satan. The fatwa to kill Trump is surely an indication. We know, too, that Iran's regional power has sharply decreased and Israel's has risen dramatically. We know that America's deterrence is now far stronger in the Taiwan Straits and that America's two great antagonists, China and Russia, have suffered major setbacks.
All those are tectonic changes, the result of Western victory in a brief war.