America’s ongoing military campaign in Iran has dispelled lingering illusions about the “liberal international order”—and laid bare the power politics defining the 21st century.
There are moments in international history when military actions have a political character—representing not merely an operation but an inflection point in history. In 1914, a rigid alliance system built to discourage war made it inevitable. In 1939, the illusion of Western “accommodation” with fascist nations collapsed under force. In 1991, the Gulf War inaugurated the unipolar world order under American leadership. And the next chapter in global history may be written by “Operation Epic Fury,” the ongoing US-Israeli air campaign to overthrow the Islamic Republic of Iran.
This moment unfolds amid a wider landscape of instability. Even as the United States and Israel fight Iran, Russia’s grinding war in Ukraine continues to strain Europe’s security architecture. Tensions between Pakistan and Afghanistan have escalated into open confrontation. Conflicts rage elsewhere as well, with ongoing civil wars in Sudan, Myanmar, and across the Sahel.
Yet, at least in the Middle East, the importance of the Iran conflict is difficult to overstate. The decapitation of Iran’s revolutionary leadership has upended the strategic balance of the region. What began with the elimination of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and the upper echelon of the Iranian regime, followed by a string of missile attacks directed at nearby Western and pro-Western targets, is more than a breaking military development. It dismantles a sovereign revolutionary core that has lay at the core of the Middle East’s regional and international politics for four decades. And the war has confirmed that the “liberal international order” long governing America and its allies’ approach to Middle East policy has already eroded to nothingness.
The Triumph of Realism in the Middle East
For three decades after the Cold War, policymakers assumed that the “anarchy” prevailing in global geopolitics could be moderated through institutions, interdependence, and shared norms. That assumption rested on the belief that rules, once established, would prove self-sustaining. The unfolding reality in the Middle East suggests otherwise: order ultimately depends not on rules alone, but on the credible capacity to enforce them.
Scholars and analysts have observed that the post-1991 “liberal order” did not collapse in a single rupture, but eroded gradually as the gap between normative aspiration and material capability widened beyond repair. The war in Iran has made that erosion apparent. The United States did not seek the approval of the United Nations in pursuing its war against Iran, or even appeal to a “coalition of the willing” to join it, as President George W. Bush did against Iraq in 2003. Nor has the administration of President Donald Trump invoked high-minded moral considerations to justify the bombing. Trump’s explanation has been far more practical: the United States disliked the government of Iran and had the power to destroy it, and is now on its way to doing so.
These ideas are antithetical to the “liberal international order.” But with the collapse of that order, what returns to the center of the international system is not instability, but structure: anarchy once described as manageable reasserts itself as the underlying condition of international politics. The organizing principle of that system is power, which shapes all nations’ interactions with one another.
Accordingly, the international system is realigning around balance-of-power dynamics. Within this reconfiguration, the West remains a central pole, though no longer ideologically aligned. The United States has moved openly toward the use of force as a legitimate instrument of order-shaping. Europe, despite its continued rhetorical commitment to multilateralism, is simultaneously undertaking its most consequential rearmament effort in decades in response to Russia’s aggression. Germany’s “Zeitenwende” concept illustrates the depth of the shift within Europe itself. As Chancellor Friedrich Merz declared in Munich, “The world order, flawed as it was even at its best, no longer exists as we knew it.” Berlin’s doctrinal turn toward deterrence and rearmament reflects not rhetorical adjustment, but structural recalibration. In the Indo-Pacific, Japan is undergoing a similar transformation, expanding offensive military capabilities for the first time since 1945 in response to China’s assertiveness and North Korea’s threats.
Taken together, these shifts reveal that the central split in the West is not between realism and liberalism, but between realist rhetoric and liberal rhetoric combined with realist practice. Opposite to the divided West stands a hybrid bloc operating through balance-of-power logic: China is pursuing a sustained relative advantage, Russia is using force to consolidate gains, North Korea relies on nuclear deterrence, and Iran and Venezuela have historically provided energy depth that increased the systemic disruption. These actors have virtually no connection in terms of ideology; Russia is an Orthodox Christian state, Iran a Shi’a Muslim one, and China and North Korea atheist ones that suppress both traditions within their own territories. Yet all four understand that ideology matters less than their shared interest in weakening Western leverage.
In this context, the US actions against the Maduro regime and the Iranian regime were not merely military operations intended to target local enemies. In a broader sense, both triggered energy centers that underpinned a wider anti-Western alignment, thereby weakening the structural foundations of the anti-Western axis.
Iran’s Collapse Won’t Bring Peace to the Middle East
The realist logic is clearly illustrated in the Middle East today, where power competition has historically structured order more than institutions ever did. Amid the decline of the “Axis of Resistance,” the rivalry between other states in the region has intensified rather than decayed, leading to new power rivalries. In the vacuum left by Iran’s departure, two competing blocs are forming: the Abraham Accords bloc, led by Israel and grounded in hard security interests; and a Sunni axis led by Turkey and Qatar that is seeking to expand influence across Syria, northern Iraq, Libya, the Eastern Mediterranean, and parts of Africa.
As regional competition intensifies, its effects are felt most acutely in fragile states such as Iraq, which risks emerging as the next arena of external rivalry. This echoes trajectories seen in Syria and Lebanon, where internal fragmentation and outside power-brokers steadily eroded national sovereignty. Such an outcome becomes more plausible if fragments of the Iranian regime and its proxy networks relocate operational and financial infrastructure into Iraqi territory, already politically divided and institutionally fragile.
The same structural pressures also reshape non-state actors. Groups long sustained by Iranian backing must now face strategic recalibration in order to survive. Hezbollah and Hamas, longtime beneficiaries of Iranian largesse, may weaken as support from Tehran erodes. The Houthis, by contrast, positioned along one of the world’s most critical maritime chokepoints, could either grow more autonomous and destabilizing or confront coordinated forces from a regional and international coalition prepared to reassert deterrence. In either case, the logic remains consistent: power vacuums do not eliminate rivalry, but merely redistribute it.
Credibility, Leadership, and the Logic of Force
Structure alone does not explain transition; individuals matter, too. As Margaret MacMillan wrote in The War That Ended Peace—explaining why Europe’s leaders made the conscious choice to lead their nations into World War I, even after benefiting from decades of peace—history is not driven by inevitability alone. Rather, it is shaped by decisions taken or avoided by imperfect leaders who misread, delay, or overreach in times of crisis.
In a power-based system, credibility becomes a form of strategic capital. Trump’s approach to Iran reflects a familiar realist logic: pursue diplomacy where possible, but above all preserve credibility to aid in deterrence. When the Islamic Republic launched its violent crackdown against anti-regime protests in January, Trump pledged to aid the protesters, declaring, “Help is on its way.” By doing so, he made a commitment he could not break without losing credibility. However Operation Epic Fury turns out, the president has responded as he said he would—and ensured that his next rhetorical commitment will be taken seriously.
In Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s posture over three decades has similarly reflected a Hobbesian reading of regional anarchy: in the absence of a guarantor, survival depends on self-help and force. For him, the Iranian regime was never a diplomatic irritant, but a rising existential threat. In other words, his use of force against Tehran is not ideological, but a strategic necessity.
Yet as the war continues, Trump and Netanyahu must remember that realism cuts both ways. As the French historian Albert Sorel warned: “When doctrines no longer correspond to realities, realities take their revenge.” In this context, Khamenei’s persistence in coercive escalation without adjusting to shifting power balances likely accelerated his regime’s collapse. Netanyahu in particular must always remember this lesson. Israel is not a great power, but one among many in the Middle East—and one whose continued survival has never been inevitable. In realist systems, miscalculation is often fatal.
If the 1991 Gulf War marked the birth of American-led “unipolarity,” the strike in Tehran marks the definitive end of the post-Cold War illusion. The world does not return to the past. But it once again speaks in a familiar vocabulary: international anarchy as its structure, nations’ interests as their compasses, and power as a shared organizing principle. Realism has returned. Who will now shape the order it produces?
About the Author: Gad Yishayahu
Dr. Gad Yishayahu is a visiting lecturer in the Department of International Relations at City, St George’s University of London, and a senior fellow, lead researcher on Security and Crisis at the Cambridge Middle East and North Africa Forum.
