Iran is only the beginning
Iran does not need to win a conventional war. It just needs to survive longer than Serbia did. Serbia was a small, isolated state with a shattered economy and aging Soviet era weapons, facing a united NATO air campaign and with almost no leverage over the global system. Iran is a far larger country, with depth in territory and population, a dispersed missile and drone arsenal, and a unique position astride the main artery of world energy flows.
Libya in 2011 was a sparsely populated petrostate with a tiny population, fragmented institutions, and a hollowed out military that collapsed once its limited air defenses and command structure were hit.
Beyond merely blocking the Strait of Hormuz, which would likely send oil prices sharply higher within a week, Iran has the potential to trigger far deeper chaos by deliberately destroying tankers and attacking oil pipelines across the Gulf. This kind of sustained disruption would not just pause shipments, it would physically erase capacity and infrastructure, taking years to fully restore. Combined with a choke on the strait, it could remove on the order of a third of global seaborne oil, a similar share of key natural gas flows, and a large slice of fertilizer exports tied to Gulf gas.
The worst damage would not fall on the West or even on China with its reserves and diversified suppliers. It would crash into the global south and Gulf countries themselves, where energy imports and food systems are tightly bound to cheap Gulf hydrocarbons and fertilizer. That is exactly the pressure Iran is counting on. Even if it holds out for far less than Serbia did under seventy eight days of bombing, and less than Gaza has endured, the region that emerges from such a shock would never be the same.
Netanyahu and his circle are already speaking as if Iran and Hezbollah are just the first stage, not the last battle. Once the Shia resistance is broken or contained, the discourse in parts of the Israeli security establishment shifts seamlessly to “Sunni extremism” and the so called axis forming around Ankara, Riyadh, and, in the background, Pakistan. Former Israeli officials openly describe Erdogan’s Turkey as a new Iran, talk about a Sunni bloc with Saudi money and Pakistani nukes in the shadows, and hint that the next strategic problem sits in Ankara and the Gulf rather than in Tehran or Beirut. In that frame, Pakistan is the ultimate deterrent sponsor and Saudi Arabia the wallet. Modi’s eager appearance in the Knesset fits neatly into this picture. India is signaling that it wants a seat at the table of this emerging anti resistance coalition, locking in technology, intelligence, and leverage before the map shifts again.
Everything rests on Iran. If this campaign stalls or ends in a bloody draw, the whole template of military coercion and regime strangulation will look far less credible, from Cuba and Venezuela to Nicaragua and even Brazil. The same elites now cheering “decisive action” will quietly shelve plans for bolder adventures in the Americas once they see the costs and limits in the Gulf. And the China narrative changes overnight. Instead of a rising threat that must be boxed in at any price, Beijing starts to look like the only actor that can broker restraint and keep a shattered periphery from sliding into permanent chaos.