US‑Israeli attack on Iran risks plunging the world into turmoil
By Arshin Adib-Moghaddam, SOAS, University of London
The US and Israel have launched extensive, coordinated attacks on numerous targets across Iran, prompting retaliatory strikes in the region. Donald Trump neither tried to obtain Congressional approval, nor did he pursue a United Nations security council resolution ahead of these actions. And the attack has come in the middle of talks between Tehran and Washington. The facts are clear. This is an illegal war, both in terms of US law and international statutes.
The US president has repeatedly said that Iran can’t be allowed to develop a nuclear weapon. The United Nations nuclear watchdog has reported that, because Iran has denied access to key sites hit during last year’s conflict, it cannot verify whether Iran has suspended all uranium enrichment or determine the current size and composition of its enriched uranium stockpile. However, Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said after the latest round of talks that “good progress” was being made on a deal to limit Iran’s nuclear programme in return for sanctions relief.
Now, from everything that the US president is saying, the goalposts have shifted from a nuclear deal to an attempt to force regime change.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 28, 2026
So bombs are falling on various cities in Iran, family members are hiding, tragedies will inevitably happen and the innocent will suffer. This is the endpoint of a longstanding campaign by the US and Israeli right-wing to reshape the Middle East and the wider Muslim world at the barrel of a gun. This is yet another intervention in a long history of disastrous foreign moves that have destabilised the country since Britain and the Soviet Union deposed Reza Shah Pahlavi in 1941 and the CIA and MI6 orchestrated a coup to depose Iran’s democratically elected prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, in 1953.
The consequences of this attack are likely to be dire for the region and the world. Already, Iran has retaliated by targeting US bases in Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain and the first reports of casualties are emerging. Iran is unlikely to hold back. It’s clear that the Islamic Republic is viewing this as an existential threat.
Tehran will call on its allies in the region, the Houthis in Yemen, the Popular Mobilisation Forces in Iraq and Hezbollah in Lebanon which – despite being weakened over two years of attacks by Israel aided and abetted by the United States – have the capacity to expand the conflict throughout the region.
Iran has already indicated in recent drills with the Russian Navy that it may be capable of closing off the Strait of Hormuz, through which around one-quarter of the world’s oil and one-third of its liquefied natural gas travel. As a consequence, oil prices will explode and the world economy will suffer.
Clash of civilisations
There is a cultural component to this war, too. Israel and the US are conducting this war during the month of Ramadan. Muslims all over the world are fasting. For billions of them, this is the month of spirituality, peace and solidarity. Images of Iranian Muslims being killed by Israeli and US bombs threaten to further a clash of civilisations narrative which pits the Judeo-Christian world against Islam.
Muslims in European capitals, together with anti-war activists, will see this war as a clear aggression on the part of the US and Israel. Global public opinion will not be easily swayed into the direction Trump and Netanyahu would like.
And it must be asked, what will the leaders in Moscow and Beijing be thinking as they watch this illegal war and what might this mean for Ukraine and Taiwan? Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping are close to the government of Iran and will condemn this war. At the same time, they must feel emboldened to pursue their own agendas with military might.
So Trump and Netanyahu’s attack on Iran has the potential to plunge the world into deep crisis. Expect more refugees, more economic turmoil, more trauma, death and destruction. The only hope now is that cooler heads among world leaders can prevail to contain this conflict and to limit the actions of Trump and Netanyahu.
Diplomacy has to be prioritised. Attempting to force regime change by launching an illegal war is foolhardy. If Iran is further destabilised, the entire Middle East and beyond will be plunged into utter turmoil. From there the outcome for the whole world is dangerously uncertain.
Arshin Adib-Moghaddam, Professor in Global Thought and Comparative Philosophies, Inaugural Co-Director of Centre for AI Futures, SOAS, University of London
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
My Take: The US-Israeli attack on Iran raises serious legal questions. This is the first major military operation in roughly 40 years launched without Congressional notification, and under the War Powers Act, that’s a significant overreach — one that senators from both parties are already pushing back on. On that point, the criticism is valid and worth taking seriously regardless of where you stand on the broader conflict.
Where I disagree with some of the commentary is on the assumption that this is necessarily destabilizing to the region or emboldening to adversaries. Iran is already one of the most destabilizing forces in the Middle East — funding proxy militias, supplying drones to Russia for use against Ukrainian civilians, and posing a constant existential threat to Israel. The region wasn’t stable before these strikes. The argument that removing Iranian military capacity makes things worse deserves far more scrutiny than this article gives it.
Peter Zeihan makes an interesting point that degrading Iran’s drone production facilities would directly impact Russia’s ability to attack Ukrainian power infrastructure, where Iranian Shahed drones have become a primary weapon. If that’s correct, this operation could weaken Putin’s position. As for China and Taiwan, the calculus is less clear — but watching the US demonstrate the willingness to launch a large-scale precision strike operation may not prove to be emboldening.
None of this makes the legal questions go away, and the absence of a clear endgame — there appears to be no ground force and regime collapse is unlikely from air strikes alone — is a genuine concern. But framing this purely as reckless aggression ignores the very real threat Iran has posed to the region and the world for decades. The truth, as usual, is considerably more complicated.
