Cyrus the Great, the compassionate and tolerant Babylonian who unified Iranian tribes in 549 BC to create the Persian empire, advised leaders to seek “diversity in counsel and unity in command”, and “whenever you can, act as a liberator.”
While Cyrus’ Iranian descendants lost this wisdom, his message was heard by the U.S. For months, we have warned that Iran stood on the precipice of developing a nuclear weapon. While we do not agree with Donald Trump on many issues, we presciently predicted that in the face of this crisis, the president would act decisively to neutralize Iran’s nuclear capabilities.
It is premature to declare “mission accomplished” from Trump’s decision today to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities at Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan, with many expecting potential retaliatory strikes against US forces, allies, and interests by Iran in the hours and days ahead.
But from a broader strategic perspective, it is already clear that today marks a potential turning point for the Middle East.
Far from an unnecessary escalation, as some critics suggest, these strikes represent a step closer to peace and prosperity for the U.S., the Middle East, and the world. The main threat to that – Iran and its proxy network – have been dramatically weakened.
It is hard to overstate the significance of Trump’s strike. A nuclear Iran was one of the gravest long-term security threats facing the world, and nobody wanted to see a regime — dominated by extremist clerics and fanatics responsible for the deaths of millions of innocent people — obtain weapons of mass destruction.
But for decades, the presence of Hezbollah, Hamas, and other Iran-backed proxies as threats on Israel’s borders made the neutralization of Iran’s nuclear ambitions unachievable and even unthinkable. For many, it became easier to live with the threat of a nuclear Iran than to deal with it.
Thanks to Israel’s decimation of Iran’s proxies over the last two years, sometimes in defiance of western governments, that balance of power has gradually shifted.
Khamenei had a chance for a new nuclear deal, but misguidedly chose not to seize it, reflecting the same fundamental miscalculation that brought the demise of Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar and Hezbollah head Hassan Nasrallah, and culminating in today’s coup de grace.
With a substantively denuclearized Iranian regime now stripped of key military capabilities and regional leverage, with Hamas and Hezbollah largely neutralized as offensive forces, the greatest obstacles to peace and prosperity in the Middle East will soon be out of the way, creating potential conditions towards expanding the Abraham Accords and forging new economic, cultural, and diplomatic ties between Israel and the greater Arab world.
In fact, Hamas’s attacks on October 7, 2023, were driven in part by Hamas’ objective of derailing a planned normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia, the home of Mecca and the spiritual and symbolic center of Islam.
Riyadh will not be able to move immediately, even if Israel ends the war in Gaza and is able to bring the hostages back home, with the death and destruction in Gaza having soured Arab populaces toward Israel. But make no mistake, today’s developments will help bring that process back on track over time, as the people of the Middle East continue to push forward with choosing a future of regional peace and economic prosperity over fear, terror and oppression.
As Jared Kushner, the architect of the Abraham Accords, put it: “Iranian leadership has been stuck in the old Middle East, while their neighbors in the Gulf are sprinting toward the future by investing in their populations and infrastructure. They are becoming dynamic magnets for talent and investment while Iran falls further behind.”
Despite criticism of the U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities from across the political spectrum — from Marjorie Taylor Greene, Tucker Carlson and Thomas Massie on the right, to Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on the left — many others have acknowledged its strategic implications and potential opportunities. Figures from both parties, including some of Trump’s most frequent critics, such as President Obama and President Biden’s top Mideast advisor, Brett McGurk, to former White House Chief of Staff and Ambassador to Japan, Rahm Emanuel — have recognized the potential significance of this moment.
As Emanuel pointed out on CNN, the biggest losers from Trump’s strikes are America’s enemies abroad, chiefly China and Russia, who were the biggest supporters and enablers of Iran’s drive towards a nuclear weapon. Some have even suggested that Putin encouraged Tehran and its proxies as a diversion of attention away from Ukraine. It is now apparent that Iran’s struggles have backfired catastrophically on its allies, with their efforts and investment having gone for naught.
Read more: How U.S. Strikes May Have Inadvertently Helped the Iranian Regime
Ever since George W. Bush anointed Russia, Iran and North Korea as the Axis of Evil, the U.S. had failed to cripple its surge — until now.
To be clear, it is still far too early to declare “mission complete”. We are still in the earliest innings as retaliatory strikes from Iran appear imminent. Khamenei will need to do some kind of retaliation, perhaps targeting American forces and bases in the region or targeting the Saudis or Emiratis or another of our regional allies, or shutting down the Strait of Hormuz, to show Iran can hurt the US and its interests.
Regardless, the U.S. is well positioned to fend off Iran’s next move, especially if Tehran should choose to engage in economic warfare and target global oil supplies.
If Iran moves to blockade or attack oil tankers traversing the crucial Strait of Hormuz — where 20% of the world’s oil passes through — the U.S. 5th Fleet, based in Bahrain, can easily break the blockade or provide escorts to tankers as it did during the Gulf War. If Iranian oil is then taken off the market or if Tehran should target Gulf oil facilities, there is plenty of spare oil capacity globally to make up for what is lost. Iran’s roughly two million barrels per day of exports pale in comparison to the approximately three million barrels per day of spare capacity possessed by Saudi Arabia alone, not to mention spare capacity within other OPEC+ countries as well as the U.S., now the world’s single largest oil producer.
Similarly, on a military front, despite reports that Israel is running low on missile interceptors, which may be overstated anyhow; the U.S. is well prepared to continue supporting Israel while Iran runs hopelessly low on its own supply of ballistic missiles, not to mention the destruction of many missile launch sites.
Furthermore, Iran is still well incentivized to avoid an all-out war with the U.S., which they have long dreaded, for fear that the revolutionary regime led by the Ayatollah may be overthrown.
While the full extent of the damage to Iran’s nuclear capabilities remains uncertain, what is clear is that Iran’s nuclear ambitions have been severely degraded and set back years, if not decades. After the U.S., during the Eisenhower administration, helped initiate Iran’s nuclear program for civilian use, the Iranian revolutionary regime has invested half a trillion dollars over 40 years on weaponizing their nuclear program, inching ever closer to the atomic bomb. Between the imploding Iranian economy and the loss of dozens of key nuclear scientists, it will take even longer for Iran to build back what they have lost.
While it remains too soon to know how events will unfold, there is cautious optimism about the possibility of a more stable and peaceful future in the Middle East.
Far from marking a needless escalation, this week’s strikes degrading Iran’s nuclear capabilities represent a step closer to peace and prosperity for the U.S., the Middle East, and the world.
Jeffrey Sonnenfeld is Lester Crown Professor of Management Practice at the Yale School of Management as well as founder and president of the Yale Chief Executive Leadership Institute, the world’s first school for incumbent CEOs across sectors. He has informally advised five U.S. presidents, two Republicans and three Democrats; helped advise the development of the Abraham Accords; and helped catalyze the exit of over 1,000 companies from Russia.
Dennis Ross is former special assistant to President Barack Obama in charge of the Middle East. He is the counselor at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and also teaches at Georgetown University’s Center for Jewish Civilization. He has worked on Mideast peace across six decades for both Democratic and Republican Presidents, including as Special Envoy for President George H.W. Bush and President Bill Clinton as well as a member of the National Security Council staff.
Roya Hakakian is a public scholar at the Moynihan Center at City College, CUNY. She is the author of several books, including Journey from the Land of No: A Girlhood Caught in Revolutionary Iran.
Steven Tian is research director of the Yale Chief Executive Leadership Institute. He previously worked in the U.S. State Department on Iranian nuclear nonproliferation in the Office of the Under Secretary.
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