Nine Deadly Scenarios After US Attack On Iran's Nukes Which May Reshape Middle East

News18

17-07-2025

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Is peace going to descend on the Middle East, or is the stormy sea of unending turmoil going to get redder and wider?
In the Iran-Israel conflict, America does not any longer have the gun to Iran's head. With the airstrikes on Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan, it has pulled the trigger.
What is going to be the impact of this in the region and the world? Is peace going to descend on the Middle East, or is the stormy sea of unending turmoil going to get redder and wider?
Let us examine a dropdown of scenarios.
First, the Ayatollah Ali Khameini regime may fall. Israel, and now the US, are not just targeting nuclear, ballistic missile, and military infrastructure. They are going for the symbols of the regime, have assassinated almost the entire military leadership, driven Khameini himself to a secret bunker, and bombed places like the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting.
Second, the assassination of Khameini is not off the table. Israel has taken out a major chunk of his team, Trump said the US knew where he was hiding, and asked if the US would back a possible Israeli hit, US Vice President JD Vance said, it is 'up to the Israelis".
Third, if the Ayatollah regime indeed falls, it does not guarantee peace. In fact, the vacuum could be filled by ideological hardliners in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) or the Iranian military. The prospect of an Iraq 2.0 — with ISIS-like actors running amuck — is looming in Iran now, some analysts claim.
In spite of the western agencies' support for a prominent Opposition figure like US-based Reza Pahlavi — the son of the ousted Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi — he does not enjoy broad popularity inside Iran. A major reason is because Pahlavi wants the restoration of the warm ties which existed between his late father and Israel and to upturn the Islamic Republic's refusal to recognise Israel as a nation.
Monarchists want such a reconciliation to be termed the 'Cyrus Accords', after the ancient Persian king who is credited with freeing the Jews from Babylon.
The other challenger group is the People's Mujahedin (MEK), whose leader Maryam Rajavi told the European Parliament recently: 'The people of Iran want the overthrow of this regime." But most of the other Opposition dislikes the MEK and many Iranians distrust it for supporting Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war.
Fourth, Iran could resume nuclear talks. This is despite Iran's foreign minister Abbas Araghchi posting on X right after the US bombings: 'Last week, we were in negotiations with the US when Israel decided to blow up that diplomacy. This week, we held talks with the E3 (group of European ministers)/EU when the US decided to blow up that diplomacy."
Iran has made it clear that the scenarios may not necessarily work out for the US-Israel-West alliance. Speaking in Istanbul, Iran's foreign minister Abbas Araghchi cautioned on Sunday that his country has 'a variety of options".
Fifth and a distinctly possible outcome could be that of Iran retaliating. Mapping possibilities, James M. Acton, the chair and co-director of the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told The New Yorker: 'The first one is immediate Iranian retaliation. Iran has many short-range ballistic missiles that can reach American bases and American assets in the region. Israel has not particularly targeted that infrastructure. It's been primarily focussed on Iran's longer-range missiles that can reach Israel. So I'm expecting to see some pretty dramatic attempted retaliation by Iran, and I think that puts enormous pressure on the President to respond again."
According to the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the US maintains a presence at 19 sites across the region, with eight of those considered by analysts to have a permanent US presence. As of June 13, the CFR estimated 40,000-odd US troops were in the Middle East. In 2020, an Iranian missile attack on a US garrison left more than 100 soldiers with crippling brain injuries.
Sixth, the escalation could see IRGC activate its much-weakened but existing proxies across Iraq, Yemen, and Syria which have previously attacked US assets in the region. Israel has brought Hezbollah and Hamas on their knees, but Houthis are a less organised ragtag militia still capable of much harm.
Seventh, Iran has moved to block the Strait of Hormuz. It could affect the whole of commercial shipping in the Gulf.
The narrow strait connects the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman, and flows out into the Arabian Sea. Major oil producers like Iran itself, Saudi Arabia, and UAE depend on the Strait of Hormuz to access the open seas. The strait is in the territorial waters of Iran and Oman. A blockage will dramatically affect the world's oil trade and prices.
Interestingly, the Strait of Hormuz accounts for 50 per cent of China's total oil supplies and only 5 per cent of America's, according to some estimates.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio urged China to ask Iran to not shut down the Strait. 'I encourage the Chinese government in Beijing to call them about that, because they heavily depend on the Strait of Hormuz for their oil. If they do that, it will be another terrible mistake. It's an economic suicide for them if they do it," Rubio told Fox News.
About 20 million barrels of oil flow through the strait each day, according to the US Energy Information Administration.
Eighth, Iran may restart its nuclear programme.
'In the slightly longer term, I believe it's very likely that Iran's going to reconstitute its nuclear program. I think Iran is likely to withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and thus kick out inspectors," Acton has been quoted saying in The New Yorker. Iran had a batch of highly enriched uranium once believed to be stored in tunnels underneath Isfahan. While Iranians have claimed that they have removed it, none can say for sure.
Ninth, with its nuclear sites bombed, Iran could make its nuke set-up portable and thus, more ominous. Components for building centrifuges which were being monitored when the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) under Barack Obama's 2015 nuclear deal. Trump pulled out in 2018.
So, these parts are no longer being monitored.
If the highly enriched uranium and the centrifuge components are small, it means they are portable, Acton avers. They can be moved around the country and be easily hidden.
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And that could be the worst scenario born ironically out of the US-Israel attempt to stub off Iran's nuclear challenge. In all these, one outcome seems clear: the war in the Middle East is still not over.
Abhijit Majumder is a senior journalist. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18's views.
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