It is always difficult – perhaps even wrong – to try to assess the significance of events in real time. History, of course, provides comfortable breathing space that allows us to put things in context calmly, free from the challenges of rushing into judgements that do not stand up to the test of time.
There have been three times in my life when I immediately understood that what I was witnessing had epic significance even as it unfolded. The first was the evening of 9 November 1989, when crowds gathered at news that border crossings were to open in Berlin – and the wall began to fall that night. The second, of course, was on 11 September 2001, when it was obvious as we all watched what happened after the coordinated hijacking of four passenger planes that the world was going to change forever.
Since then, there have been many events that have been important, horrific, or both. The Hamas attacks of 7 October, for example, will be seen as a key moment in the reshaping of the Middle East. But what we have seen this weekend is, in my opinion anyway, something that has ramifications and implications that make this the most important two days in a quarter of a century.
The assassination not only of Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, but of a swathe of the senior leadership in the country, has dealt a devastating blow to the state. The murder of a serving head of state by a foreign power is an extraordinary precedent in the modern era. The fact that the decision by the United States and Israel to attack Iran was one of choice, rather than necessity, further dismantles a world order that, while imperfect, has at least provided the semblance of an architecture of international law for decades.
In 2003, in an intervention in Iraq that proved to be deeply flawed, the administration of President George W Bush tried to make a case at the UN; it sought approval from the Senate; it worked to create a network of alliances with partners. President Trump has bothered with none of that. Instead, he got fed up with waiting for a diplomatic solution.
“We warned them never to resume their malicious pursuit of nuclear weapons”, he said as he announced the start of “major combat operations” in the small hours of Saturday morning. “We sought repeatedly to make a deal. We tried. They wanted to do it. They didn’t want to do it again. They wanted to do it. They didn’t want to do it. They didn’t know what was happening. They just wanted to practice evil.” So that was that. He was out of patience. “We can’t take it any more,” he announced.
The following hours brought the decimation of Iran’s political, clerical and military leadership and the essential decapitation of its chain of command. Those left alive have regrouped and announced an interim leadership council to try to steer the country until a new supreme leader can be chosen. They have one priority, and one priority alone: regime survival.
The calculation thus far is that the best way to do that would be to unleash chaos not only on targets across Israel and US military bases, but also on all the countries of the Gulf region – presumably in the hope of getting them to use their leverage with Trump and Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
That approach has gone down badly with those who had been trying to mediate between Iran and the US. Anwar Gargash, the highly experienced and well-connected Emirati diplomat, reminded Tehran that “your war is not with your neighbours”, but also that “through this escalation, you confirm the narrative of those who see Iran as the region’s primary source of danger, and its missile programme as a perpetual source of instability”.
One reason why Iran’s neighbours have been struck with missiles and drones is that the leadership’s information gathering, communication channels and operational effectiveness have all but collapsed in the fog of war – which is hardly surprising. That is why Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister, has been busy making apologetic and reassuring calls to Oman and others, in which he has explained that Iran’s ”military units are now, in fact, independent and somewhat isolated, and they are acting based on general instructions given to them in advance”.
That is why feelers have also gone out to the US as well, with Trump claiming on Sunday that “they [Iran] want to talk, and I have agreed to talk, so I will be talking to them”. What they will say, or offer, is unclear. But one thing is clear: this is a moment in which the great wheel of history is turning. Two weeks ago, the US secretary of state Marco Rubio declared that “the world is changing very fast right in front of us. The old world is gone”. You might not like to hear that, nor the reasons why it has happened, nor what might happen next. But it is hard to disagree.
