How the US and Israel shattered Iran’s regime overnight

In a timely commentary for The Australian, Security & Defence PLuS Executive Director Dr Ian Langford writes that “history occasionally compresses decades into a single day.” The co-ordinated US–Israel strikes against Iran, culminating in the killing of Iran’s Supreme Leader and senior regime figures, represent one of those moments.

“The strikes were not symbolic. They were strategic. By targeting the apex of political, military, and clerical authority simultaneously, Washington and Jerusalem appear to have pursued a classic regime-disruption strategy rarely attempted against a major regional power.”

 For decades, Western strategy oscillated between containment, deterrence and negotiation. Yet none fundamentally threatened the regime’s core. “That structure has now been shattered.”

Langford argues that this marks the end of the post-1979 strategic framework built around managing, rather than resolving, the Iranian question. “There is no plausible pathway back to the uneasy equilibrium that defined the region for nearly half a century.” Whatever follows, the Middle East has crossed a strategic Rubicon, and “the rules governing regional competition have changed overnight.”

Read the full article in the Australian: How the US and Israel shattered Iran’s regime overnight