Some wars start slowly while others spring to life at speed. This one is racing, transforming nations, politics and loyalties at a spectacular rate.
It is only a few days since Iranian and American diplomats sat down in Geneva to discuss the details of a possible nuclear agreement. Now, the Ayatollah is dead, along with dozens of Iranian leaders, while Iranian missiles are fired at an array of countries across this region. Life is coming at us fast.
What is clear is that Iran has three ambitions, and it needs to do them all at the same time.
Firstly, it needs to find itself a new leader, and a layer of people to go alongside him. That search is, according to those within the country, being fast-tracked to such an extent that a new Ayatollah could be named within the week, allowing a focal point to be re-established.
Secondly, Iran is keen to tell the world that it is the victim here – that it had negotiated in good faith and was tricked by its two greatest enemies, America and Israel.
Certainly it is hard to see how, under the terms of international law, this war could be described as legal. Israel was not seemingly facing an imminent threat from Iran and the United Nations Security Council did not authorise this attack. What’s more, President Trump did not attempt to even secure the support of Congress.
Of course, both Israel and America are well aware that the Security Council would not have supported this action – a veto from Russia and probably China was inevitable. They are also aware that the standing of the UN has rarely been lower, with Donald Trump (to an extent) and Benjamin Netanyahu (massively, repeatedly) criticising the UN as a busted flush.
Iran’s third ambition, and the most overt one right now, is to turn this war into a regional conflict. Eight months ago, the 12-day war largely involved Israel and Iran trading missile bombardments. This time, it’s very different.
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Now, Iran has embroiled gulf nations, attacking them repeatedly. Debris landed by a Saudi oil refinery, missiles were in the air above Jordan. Hezbollah, loyal to Khamenei, launched a rocket attack against Israel from southern Lebanon, triggering a furious response that has killed more than 30.
The Strait of Hormuz has been rendered almost unusable, Qatar has stopped selling natural gas, and the price of oil has sharply increased. Even a British air base in Cyprus has been attacked.
The ripples of this conflict are spreading, which is exactly what Iran wants – a war that disrupts life for a huge swathe of the world, tests alliances and leads countries to push for an early end.
But there may be another tactic here from Iran. If the remnants of the regime, notably what’s left of the leadership of the Revolutionary Guard, think their grip is being prised from the country, they may be tempted to launch one final massive salvo against the many countries they see as their enemies.
It is a fearsome, intimidating prospect. Is it feasible? Perhaps – it has certainly been talked about for years. But would they actually do it, or this simply another carefully curated piece, a dreadful threat that the Iranians are quite happy to allow to live in the ether?
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If Iran were to change path – whether to become more authoritarian, more moderate, or even to change to a wholly new form of government – the knock-on impacts would be enormous. It is a country of central importance in every way. And this is a difficult, precarious time in a region that is loaded with long-standing volatility.
“Tell me how this ends” was the statement posed by General Petraeus when confronted by the quagmire of Iraq, and it remains a very pertinent question, not least today in the Middle East.
We simply don’t know the answer and it’s not clear that either America or Israel are asking the question. The lessons of the past are that it’s easy to start a war but hard to rebuild afterwards. Now, even as the Middle East reverberates to the chorus of air-raid sirens, the future is being shaped. But nobody quite knows how.
