Eight Experts on What You’re Not Being Told about the War in Iran

War reporting has its value. It tells us what was hit and by whom, how the strikes played out, the tactical gains and setbacks. But that is only the first draft of events. The situation in Iran demands more than a battlefield ledger. The harder questions go deeper. Which assumptions—about deterrence, regime durability, regional alliances, or constraints of law—might be wrong?

Over the past couple days, The Walrus has spoken with Middle East and foreign policy experts about where they see the greatest risks of escalation. What alarms them most looking ahead? What is missing from the current coverage? What absolutely needs to be part of the public debate right now?

Their responses follow, edited for length and clarity.

• Pierre Pahlavi
• Thomas Juneau
• Vladyslav Lanovoy
• Greg Fyffe
• Wesley Wark
• Janice Gross Stein
• Jabeur Fathally
• Maral Karimi

“Gulf states, already uneasy, have been forced into a strategic dilemma.” Pierre Pahlavi Full Professor, Chair of the Department of Security and International Affairs, and Deputy Director in the Department of Defence Studies at the Canadian Forces College in Toronto

The temptation in moments like this is to measure escalation by visible firepower: missile ranges, troop movements, the opening—or avoidance—of a second front in Lebanon. But the most dangerous phase of this crisis may not be geographic expansion. It may be structural destabilization.

Much of the coverage treats the conflict as a conventional military exchange between Israel, the United States, and Iran. That framing misses two critical dynamics.

First, Iran was never designed to win a conventional war against a superpower. Its doctrine is asymmetrical. Ballistic missiles reaching 2,000 kilometres make for dramatic headlines, but Tehran’s real leverage lies in calibrated disruption: cyber operations, maritime insecurity in the Gulf, proxy ambiguity, and energy market shockwaves. If escalation comes, it is more likely to unfold in the grey zone than through a direct strike on North America.

Second, there is a growing risk of horizontal escalation—drawing in regional actors not because they seek war but because they are within range. Gulf states, already uneasy, have been forced into a strategic dilemma. European allies providing defensive support may find themselves redefined as co-belligerents. An expanding coalition changes the conflict’s logic. It dilutes pressure on Tehran in one sense—but also raises the stakes for everyone.

What concerns me most is not immediate regime collapse in Iran, nor a sudden regional war, but a grinding destabilization: energy volatility, cyber disruption, miscalculation among overstretched militaries, and a public debate fixated on spectacle rather than systemic risk. The question is not how far missiles can fly. It is how far instability can spread—and how quickly.

“The real test now is turning tactical dominance into strategic success.” Thomas Juneau Professor at the University of Ottawa’s Graduate School of Public and International Affairs and an Associate Fellow with Chatham House

In the first hours and days of their war against the Islamic Republic of Iran, Israel and the US have scored major tactical gains. They have decapitated the regime’s leadership, established near complete control of Iran’s airspace, and significantly degraded its military assets. Israel and the United States have again demonstrated an extraordinary intelligence penetration of the highest levels of the Islamic Republic. At the same time, Iranian retaliation has only caused limited damage. Overall, this should not come as a surprise given the massive military imbalance in favour of the US and Israel.

The real test now is turning tactical dominance into strategic success. And here, the challenges become far more difficult, and the perspective for success murkier—at best.

If the strikes continue for weeks and the regime falls, what then? There is no opposition, democratic or otherwise, ready to take over. There is also no indication that the Trump administration has a serious plan for what comes next. Chaos and prolonged instability are therefore the most likely scenario. This would inevitably spill over across Iran’s borders, threatening its neighbours.

Should President Trump follow through on his offer to resume negotiations with the Islamic Republic’s new, interim leadership, the regime would likely survive. It would not be the same; it would be weaker but also nastier. It would still be able to brutally suppress nascent protests, since it would retain extensive repressive capacity. While Washington would try to extract concessions, notably on its nuclear and missile programs, the Islamic Republic’s anti-American position would likely endure. In this second scenario, the cycle of tension with the US and Israel would continue.

“The scale of hostilities and the risk of spillover effects, both in the region and globally, are at their highest.” Vladyslav Lanovoy Neuberger-Jesin Professor of International Conflict Resolution at the University of Ottawa

The large-scale escalation of violence in the Middle East, triggered by the unlawful aggression against Iran by the United States and Israel and followed by Iran’s retaliation against several Gulf States, is a stark reminder of the alarming state of international law.

These recent military actions show how the prohibition on the use of force in international relations—described by the International Court of Justice as a “cornerstone” of the United Nations Charter—is breached again and again as if it were a minor traffic offence.

The scale of hostilities and the risk of spillover effects, both in the region and globally, are at their highest. The continued silence, or outright inconsistency, of states in responding to other unlawful uses of force—whether by Russia against Ukraine, Israel against Gaza, or the United States against Venezuela—undermines the credibility of statements made by those same states about the universal need to respect international law.

It is especially troubling that states no longer even attempt to advance a credible legal justification for their otherwise unlawful uses of force, such as the United States and United Kingdom did, however controversially, in the case of the 2003 intervention in Iraq. There is not even a token effort to ground the attacks in self-defence or authorization by the United Nations Security Council—nor in more contested doctrines, such as humanitarian intervention or the rescue of nationals abroad.

An openly declared intent to overthrow a regime, however brutal, provides no justification under law. The damage such actions inflict on the stability of international relations is profound. The rapidly deteriorating security and humanitarian crisis in the Middle East is the latest—and unlikely the last—assault on the core principles of sovereign equality, non-intervention, and the prohibition on the use or threat of force that anchor the modern legal order.

But the problem, of course, is not in the legal framework but in those few who see raw might as the path to peace, ignoring every lesson of history which shows that might is nothing but a recipe for a cycle of violence, disorder, and destruction.

“Unprecedented military capabilities are being unleashed with no anchor in principle.” Greg Fyffe Executive Director of the Intelligence Assessment Staff in the Privy Council Office, 2000–2008

The military campaign against Iran can be expected to continue until Iran’s defence assets are systematically destroyed. This will have little impact on the regime’s internal control of the administration and the population. War will increase the misery of the Iranian people and give them no hope of real change. Oppressive regimes fall when they are comprehensively defeated by an enemy, overthrown by internal revolution, or accept a non-violent transition because they have lost legitimacy and the capacity to rule effectively. None of these are a realistic possibility in Iran.

With a prolonged ground campaign unthinkable, the predictable alternative is a brittle accommodation between the US and a slightly adjusted Iranian regime. The US will have to respond to a collapsing Iranian economy, the jilted hopes of the Iranian population for a transition to democracy, and the anger of Iran’s former allies and trading partners—Russia and China. Even if a new administrative structure could be installed, how would the current regime cohorts be absorbed into a new Iran?

Venezuela, Iran, and Cuba are all targets for US-driven regime change. None of these regimes deserve sympathy, but the promised gains for their populations appear doomed to disappear quickly into a fog of illogical assumptions.

From a broader geopolitical perspective, the Iranian military campaign completes the transition of the US from an imperfect but frequently indispensable advocate of patient diplomacy to the status of rogue power. Unprecedented military capabilities are being unleashed with no anchor in principle, realism, or identifiable national interest. The US president is dismissive of allies, the United Nations, international rules and norms, contrary advice and intelligence, and the US constitution.

Another accelerant of global instability has been added to an already explosive mix.

“This is all desperate storytelling, not intelligence.” Wesley Wark National Security Expert and Contributing Writer for The Walrus

Where’s the intelligence?

Whenever a state chooses to go to war, as the United States and Israel did on Saturday, February 28, against the Islamic Republic of Iran, you have to ask—where is the intelligence on the threat?

Think back to 2003. The threat assessment about Saddam Hussein’s alleged weapons of mass destruction was widely touted in public. The intelligence proved deeply wrong. In that war, the US was in a hurry and unwilling to let UN weapons inspectors on the ground, including Canadians, do their job and arrive at the truth.

In the current war on Iran, the Trump administration is also in hurry mode. It chose to set diplomacy aside, despite the fact that the Omani foreign minister who was mediating talks was convinced that remarkable progress had been made on the issue of Iranian nuclear weapons and even journeyed to Washington the day before the first air strikes to try to make the case for continued negotiations.

If the Trump administration’s claim that Iran was unwilling to negotiate looks dodgy, that leaves us two other arguments for the war: that the US faced an imminent threat from Iran, and that Iran’s ballistic missile capability threatened the United States. Scratch this last claim—it’s simply not true, as a Defence Intelligence Agency report to Congress in June 2025 made clear.

Why would a much-weakened Islamic Republic pose an “imminent threat” to the US? To fill the gap on that one, US secretary of state Marco Rubio has come forward with an absurd argument that Israel forced the US’s hand. Its decapitation strike against the Iranian leadership would trigger retaliation against US bases and interests in the region. So the US had to act first.

Does anyone truly believe that Israel would go it alone in a major war operation without US backing, that the operation was not jointly planned? Did Rubio not get the message that the Israeli strike was enabled by US intelligence on the location and vulnerability of regime leadership? Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has doubled down with his own brand-new claim that Iran was building secret nuclear sites that would have been completely resistant to military strikes within a matter of months. Believe that, against all evidence. This is all desperate storytelling, not intelligence. The Canadian government, alas, has bought the story.

“Wars break and create leaders, institutions, and countries.” Janice Gross Stein Founding Director of the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy

The full-scale attack on Iran from the air is the biggest gamble in the recent history of the modern Middle East. After only three days, Iran and the broader Middle East have already changed in fundamental ways.

The supreme leader, who had unique religious and political authority, has been assassinated, and no conceivable successor—whether they come from religious, political, or military institutions—will inherit that authority. Iran has a system of deep institutions, but these institutions worked through the ironclad authority that Ayatollah Khamani exercised. Leaders from all sectors in Iranian society are now in a changed society.

The Middle East has changed as well. For the last several years, Saudi Arabia and other leaders in the Gulf reached out to Iran in an effort to bridge the religious and political divide. Iranian attacks on their Gulf neighbours have gone beyond US bases and have hit airports, civilian towers, and energy infrastructure. These attacks are designed to push leaders in the Gulf to press Donald Trump to stop the war, but they have reacted in a diametrically opposed way. Saudi anger is palpable, and leaders in Qatar and Oman, long-time mediators in conflicts between Iran and its neighbours, can barely contain their fury. The Gulf is now likely to return to its long-standing hostility to Iran.

Wars break and create leaders, institutions, and countries. Trump has gambled his presidency, as has Benjamin Netanyahu his leadership in Israel. That gamble is much greater in the Middle East, where history is being remade in Iran and in the broader Middle East. It is being rewritten in real time.

“The Canadian government, in supporting this aggression, is only legitimizing a future of forced annexation by the United States.” Jabeur Fathally Professor in Comparative Law and International Humanitarian Law, University of Ottawa

With the war in Iran, the world has entered a new era: the end of the old-world order—however flawed and injustice perpetuating it may have been—and a shift toward a global disorder where the power of military strikes is the basis of international relations. The pusillanimity of other Western countries (the European Union, UK, Canada, and Australia) in the face of this reality, and even their complicity in some respects, does not bode well, not only for the Middle Eastern region but for the entire planet.

This is an era where the commission of the most serious crimes (crimes of aggression, of war, against humanity, and of genocide) as well as the possible use of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction can be discussed with unprecedented ease. You might say we are moving from international law to Epstein’s law (invoking here the disgraced American financier and pedophile who lived in a world defined by the power of money, impunity, and perfidy).

Setting aside the pseudo-principle of pre-emptive strikes concocted by some “tailors” of this violation of international law, the Canadian government, in supporting this aggression, is only legitimizing a future of forced annexation by the United States. It seems Mark Carney’s Davos speech was nothing more than a burst of adrenaline rather than a genuine strategy and vision of international relations.

While the Americans are trapped by Trump’s megalomaniacal ambitions and his fears of the Epstein files’ revelation, other nations and governments must be more proactive in defending the fundamental principles of international law, beginning with the principles of the UN Charter.

On the ground, the Iranians have undoubtedly suffered a crushing blow (destruction of nuclear facilities, paralysis of air defence and other military and civilian infrastructures, assassination of high-ranked officers) but far from a fatal one. The assassination of Iran’s supreme leader (eighty-six years old and suffering from cancer) is a significant psychological and political setback, but it could also have the opposite effect. It may strengthen the Iranian government, weakened by the December protests. Khamenei is not only a political leader, but he is also a religious authority for the majority of Shiites globally.

The Americans do not seem to grasp the Iranian leader’s dual status. This means that, on the ground, the escalation of the conflict is practically inevitable. The longer the Iranians manage to prolong this conflict, the more the Americans, who have decided to wage war on behalf of others, will pay the price.

“Democratic transition cannot be air-dropped.” Maral Karimi Faculty Lecturer in the Department of Politics and Public Administration at Toronto Metropolitan University

Externally imposed regime collapse is often presented as a strategic option. But Iran is not a blank slate, and Iranians are not a monolith. That complexity is often flattened by commentary that begins with sweeping claims about what “the people” want.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is deeply embedded in the state and economy and in the regime’s ideological apparatus, and rapid institutional collapse would more likely produce fragmentation than orderly transition into a more stable Iran and region. The failed experiences of Iraq and Afghanistan offer sobering precedents. Attempts to install a diaspora figure or engineer leadership from abroad would risk compounding, rather than resolving, internal legitimacy crises and unresolved domestic demands for democracy, self-determination, and economic prosperity.

A negotiated containment strategy, in which elements within the regime accept limits on nuclear, ballistic, and regional activity in exchange for security guarantees and sanctions relief, is more structurally plausible. But that path would preserve much of the existing power architecture and would likely frustrate those segments of Iranian society that have mobilized for deeper transformation. The greatest risk is that war consolidates hardline nationalism. Moments of external threat often narrow political space, weaken dissent, and allow security institutions to reassert dominance over moderate and democratic forces in the name of sovereignty. That dynamic could sideline the very forces that animated the Woman, Life, Freedom movement the world witnessed in 2022.

A further risk lies in strategic misalignment. Israeli leadership has signalled interest in fundamentally weakening, balkanizing, or collapsing the regime, whereas US policy has historically oscillated between pressure and negotiated containment. Divergence in end goals increases the risk of escalation without a coherent political exit strategy.

What coverage frequently overlooks is that democratic transition cannot be air-dropped. The durability of any post-conflict order will depend on whether it meaningfully addresses long-standing fault lines: gender repression, ethnic marginalization, and the concentration of power in security institutions. Without that, military success could translate into political retrenchment.