Chaos engulfs Iran. What can Britain and Europe do?

Trump and Netanyahu have forced European governments into a precarious position.

Whether it is a democracy or a dictatorship, a state that loses a long war usually faces a dangerous reckoning. For four decades the ideological foundations of the Islamic Republic of Iran were anchored on recurring confrontations with the United States and Israel. This struggle was not only a geopolitical fault line, it also provided a foundational narrative for the domestic legitimacy of Iran’s ruling elite. As the prospect of Iran losing that conflict becomes real in the wake of relentless Israeli and American airstrikes, the Iranian state now teeters on the edge of destabilisation that may prove profoundly dangerous for the wider world.

In the wake of the Hamas attack on Israeli communities along Gaza’s borders on 7 October 2023 and the attacks on Israel by Hezbollah and other Iran-backed militias in the months that followed, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seized every opportunity to weaken Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s theocratic regime in Tehran. The airpower campaign Israel initiated on 13 June to destroy Iran’s nuclear weapons programme cannot topple the Khamenei regime overnight, but economic collapse and public frustration after a military defeat would undermine the foundations of the Islamic Republic. Despite long standing demands for regime change in Iran among American neo-conservatives and Israeli hawks, the US and Israeli governments have not produced a credible plan for what comes next after Iran’s social order falls apart.

Dreams of victory among Israeli and US policymakers were bolstered by signs of Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps overstretch abroad, even as the Khamenei regime’s economic mismanagement led to cycles of revolt among a frustrated populace at home. The Israeli military’s brutal evisceration of Hamas in Gaza, its decisive victory over Hezbollah in Lebanon and the fall of the Assad regime to Syrian rebel forces in the autumn of 2024 marked the humiliating collapse of a network of alliances that the IRGC had propped up for decades. But for all these setbacks, there is no sign of an opposition movement strong enough to restore stability if the Khamenei regime does fall apart.

Though the pressure Israeli and US airstrikes have exerted on the IRGC has led many commentators to draw comparisons with America’s invasion of Iraq in 2003, such analogies are not useful for understanding the distinct geopolitical context of 2025 that will shape Iran’s trajectory. The legacy of Colin Powell’s so-called Pottery Barn Rule of “you break it, you own it” underscoring US responsibility for any post war outcome no longer holds. Unlike Iraq twenty years ago, there is no American land army waiting in the wings to occupy and govern Iran. Instead, in his quest to shatter the Iranian state Netanyahu in particular seems intent on using Israel’s military advantage to pursue chaos as a strategic goal.

If the Khamenei regime is toppled with no viable plan for what comes next, then Syria’s recent civil war may prove a more salient precedent. Though central power would eventually reassert itself in a society as urbanised as Iran, a collapse of state structures is less likely to empower reformist elites than military warlords and regional strongmen. If power flows to the peripheries, a society fractured into fiefdoms would face recurring cycles of civil conflict that could generate refugee flows and economic disruption whose impact would be felt far beyond Iran’s borders. In such a worst case scenario the consequences for the Middle East and Europe would be disastrous.

Yet the US and Israel show no indication of planning for a postwar regional order. The Netanyahu government’s backing of the exiled Pahlavi dynasty whose corruption and incompetence brought about the Iranian Revolution and the rise of the Islamic Republic in 1979 borders on delusion. What is unfolding instead is a strategy of desiccating the Iranian state, letting it collapse, and then disengaging to leave others to clean up the mess.

The EU and the UK will try to keep their distance from such a wild gamble while offering economic incentives to Tehran in the hopes of reviving diplomacy. Yet Europeans have no contingency plans to deal with a collapse of the Islamic Republic. With no answer to the question of how to engage with a fragmenting society in an environment in which Israel and the US pursue chaos as a strategy, the EU and the UK would struggle to prevent such a disaster from exacerbating Europe’s other geopolitical and economic challenges.

Israel and America’s war with Iran is not just a strategic throw of the dice. It is a fundamental shift in how power operates in a multipolar world. Though a transition toward new models of collective security remains theoretically possible, as the foundations of US global hegemony wither under Donald Trump the current trajectory favours entropy over order. The danger is not merely in acts of war, it is also in the chaos they leave behind.

For the EU and UK the escalating crisis in the Middle East means more than diplomatic frustration and higher energy prices. It could shape Europe’s strategic environment for decades to come. The Iranian state might not survive its long war, but nor will the illusion that chaos can be contained.