The Iran war has exposed the limits of neutrality

The recent US-Israeli military confrontation with Iran is not merely a limited military operation or another round in the cycle of mutual deterrence. Rather, it presents a revelatory moment for the entire structure of the international order. This confrontation redrew geopolitical divisions in an unprecedented way, exposing the limits of assumptions that had governed the behaviour of major powers for decades, chief among them the belief that conflicts could be contained through neutrality or conventional diplomatic instruments.

What became clear in the earliest days of the war is that the world no longer operates according to the logic of managed tensions and deliberate restraint, but within a highly interconnected environment where geography intersects with transnational networks, and regional crises can rapidly transform into direct global shocks. Iran launched strikes across several countries in the region in the first few days of the war alone, targeting American assets as well as Gulf energy and other infrastructure – almost immediately causing global market disruption.

The limits of neutrality

The course of the war demonstrated that the concept of “neutrality” is no longer viable in contemporary regional contexts, particularly in the Middle East. When the instruments of conflict extend through armed proxies, the closure of vital maritime corridors and threats to global energy supplies, any state, regardless of its efforts, finds itself drawn into the trajectory of the crisis in one form or another. Qatar, for example, had invested years in mediation between Washington and Tehran, keeping channels open with all sides, yet faced Iranian strikes on its civilian infrastructure and energy installations hours after the war began.

Neutrality is easier to declare than to maintain. Iranian strikes on energy infrastructure across Gulf states forced several producers to declare force majeure and suspend their operations. In Qatar, Qatar Energy halted LNG production, and the effects were felt almost immediately in Europe through a surge in gas prices of almost 50 percent in the Netherlands and the UK, a reminder that the global economy, energy security and supply chains are now directly tied to the stability of this region.

When allies disagree

Engagement with difficult or intransigent regimes has remained a persistent challenge. Several NATO member states signalled reluctance, or declined altogether, to support Washington’s request for expanded cooperation. At the multilateral level, divisions within the UN Security Council became evident: while some members condemned Iran’s strikes on Gulf states, the Council was unable to reach a consensus regarding the US-Israeli strikes, underscoring deep disagreements among major powers over how to approach and engage with Iran.

The ceasefire camp draws on a weighty historical record. Military interventions, such as those in Iraq and Libya, for example, have demonstrated that toppling regimes by force does not necessarily lead to the construction of stable systems; more often, it opens the door to chaos and institutional collapse. In both Iraq and Libya, external military interventions contributed to prolonged conflict, fragmentation and institutional collapse, from which both countries are still recovering.

This camp holds that war is a crisis multiplier and that the priority must be to halt the humanitarian and economic toll and return to the diplomatic track, even if that means coexisting with a difficult or intransigent regime. It also considers relative stability preferable to chaos with no predictable outcome.

However, this argument faces a central dilemma: it assumes that the Iranian regime is amenable to containment within the rules of conventional diplomacy, an assumption that Iran’s own actions since February 28 have now called into question. For example, Iran struck several Gulf states, including Qatar and Saudi Arabia, which had both given explicit assurances that their territories would not be used to launch any offensive operations against Iran.

The regime change camp takes the opposing view, arguing that the war did not create the crisis but rather revealed its true nature. It contends that Iranian behaviour, whether through targeting maritime corridors or expanding proxy wars, has proven that the regime cannot be contained or tamed through traditional instruments. Decades of diplomacy and sanctions did not prevent the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

Proponents of this position maintain that decades of diplomacy, including the nuclear agreement and regional mediation, have helped expand Iran’s capabilities and expand its influence rather than contain them. For this camp, the solution lies in changing the very structure of the regime itself.

Nevertheless, this argument raises a profoundly complex question: what comes after regime change? Previous experiences in the region offer no successful model for state reconstruction following the overthrow of regimes, making this option riskier than its potential gains may justify. The opening strike of this war, the assassination of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was itself premised on the assumption that removing the head of state would precipitate collapse. Instead, a successor was selected shortly after the initial strike, and state institutions continued to function.

The international order at a crossroads

Indeed, this war reveals a deeper transformation in the nature of the threats confronting the international order. Threats are no longer conventional or confined within state borders; they have become networked and able to spread across military, economic and digital fronts simultaneously. They originate not only from regular armies but from the convergence of multiple instruments: militias, cyberattacks, economic targeting and the closure of maritime passages. This complexity makes it exceedingly difficult to rely on traditional tools, whether diplomatic or military, to address crises effectively.

Calling for a cessation of hostilities without addressing the root causes of the crisis may amount to nothing more than postponing the inevitable explosion, while pursuing radical change without a clear vision for the day after may open the door to even wider chaos.

Between these two options, the world confronts a fundamental question: How can it deal with a regime widely viewed by many states as part of the problem, without allowing the pursuit of its transformation to create an even greater one?

What appears evident is that the coming phase will leave little room for the grey zone within which states have long been accustomed to manoeuvring. It will be either the logic of cautious containment or the logic of decisive resolution. In either case, the cost of the decision will be steep, not only at the regional level but for the international order as we know it.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.