Why Stability in the Gulf Depends on Regime Change in Iran

Stability in the Gulf cannot be achieved so long as Iran’s current regime remains committed to regional domination through nuclear leverage, proxy warfare, and control over the world’s most important energy routes.

Iran argues that it must retain uranium enrichment, ballistic missiles, proxy forces, and a significant naval capability because of its history—particularly the trauma of the Iran-Iraq War—and the need to defend itself from future threats. It presents them as necessary for national security.

Do the capabilities Iran is determined to preserve reflect legitimate defensive concerns, or are they a pretext for a larger objective: regional hegemony over the Gulf states and leverage over the global economy through control of the Strait of Hormuz, the Bab el-Mandeb, and the Red Sea?

These are the questions policymakers must answer before deciding whether compromise can produce real peace—or merely postpone a larger conflict.

Regimes do not reveal their true objectives through words, but through the capabilities they preserve, the demands they make, and the actions they take.

Yet Iran has spent decades building the largest ballistic missile arsenal in the region, advancing toward nuclear weapons capability, constructing proxy armies across multiple countries, and developing the means to disrupt two of the world’s most vital energy corridors.

These are not the tools of simple defense. They are the instruments of regional hegemony.

For example, Iran’s use of proxies illustrates how that broader objective is pursued. Many analyses of Iran’s regional strategy focus on its effort to encircle Israel with a “ring of fire.” But that focus overlooks a parallel reality: Iran has also effectively surrounded Saudi Arabia through its proxies. To the south, the Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen have repeatedly attacked Gulf shipping and energy infrastructure, including the 2019 strikes on Saudi oil facilities that temporarily cut nearly half of Saudi oil production. To the north, Iranian-aligned militias in Iraq have demonstrated both the willingness and the ability to directly attack neighboring Gulf states, while also deeply undermining Iraq’s own political stability and state authority.

In Lebanon, Hezbollah’s dominance has left the country perpetually at risk of two wars: renewed conflict with Israel and internal civil war over Hezbollah’s power and disarmament. Its political control has also contributed to economic collapse and chronic instability. Hezbollah’s intervention in Syria to preserve Assad’s regime demonstrated that these forces are not simply defensive actors but expeditionary arms of Iranian power. Support for Hezbollah and Hamas has not only prolonged and intensified the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it has also provided Iran with forward military leverage against Israel itself, just as the Houthis and Iraqi militias project Iranian power against Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states.

Israel occupies a central place in Iran’s rhetoric, but Iran’s deeper strategic ambition is regional domination. Israel is both a major military obstacle to Iranian ambitions and a useful foil that diverts attention from Iran’s broader ambitions across the Gulf.

Iran has also spent decades building the capacity to threaten the world’s most critical waterways, reflecting a long-term offensive strategy rather than a temporary defensive measure. Its ability to disrupt shipping in the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab el-Mandeb is the result of deliberate preparation—mines, missile systems, fast attack craft, drone capabilities, concealed coastal infrastructure, and the strategic use of proxy forces.

Together, Iran’s proxy networks, maritime coercion, missile expansion, and nuclear ambitions form a coherent strategy: the ability to influence, disrupt, or potentially control the flow of global energy and trade.

Iran and the Gulf states together account for a substantial share of global oil and natural gas reserves. Control—or even sustained disruption—of the routes through which those resources flow would carry enormous consequences for the United States, Europe, Asia, and virtually every industrial economy dependent on stable energy markets.

Iran’s nuclear program and ballistic missile expansion are force multipliers for a broader objective: regional supremacy backed by strategic coercion.

If Iran were genuinely seeking peace and integration, the path would be clear. It could normalize relations with its neighbors, reduce tensions, abandon proxy warfare, and redirect national resources toward domestic development and prosperity.

Nearly every major country in the region—from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to Bahrain, Jordan, Egypt, and Israel—would benefit from an Iran that no longer relies on coercion, proxy warfare, and nuclear brinkmanship as instruments of policy.

Instead, Iran continues to deepen military coordination with Russia, China, and North Korea while expanding its missile capabilities, supporting proxy militias, and advancing toward nuclear weapons capability.

Iran’s internal conduct also does not suggest a regime capable of peaceful integration. The violent suppression of domestic protests and widespread repression of its own population demonstrate a leadership willing to use force not only externally, but internally to preserve power.

This leads to two unavoidable questions: can durable peace be achieved while this regime remains intact, and is meaningful compromise still possible?

Any agreement that allows Iran to retain future uranium enrichment, continued support for proxy forces, ballistic missile expansion, or the capacity to disrupt navigation through the Strait of Hormuz would preserve the very tools Iran uses to pursue strategic supremacy in the Gulf. It would not produce peace. It would merely postpone confrontation.

This was the central weakness of the 2015 nuclear agreement, the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action). Iran has long practiced what it calls “strategic patience”: accepting temporary limitations while preserving long-term strategic objectives. A compromise that leaves those objectives intact is not a solution—it is merely a pause.

Such a compromise would also severely damage U.S. credibility among its regional partners. Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and other Gulf states would reasonably conclude that Washington was unwilling or unable to confront the very threats that most endanger their security.

For these governments, a settlement that leaves Iran’s proxy warfare, missile expansion, and maritime coercion intact would not be peace. It would be strategic failure.

That is why officials in key Gulf states have repeatedly warned against agreements that leave Iran’s destabilizing conduct fundamentally unchanged.

If Iran refuses to make the concessions necessary to bring real security to the region—especially under sustained pressure—it suggests a longer-term strategy: endure the present moment while waiting for mounting political and economic pressures inside the United States to force Washington into a disadvantageous compromise.

If Iran is correct that enough internal pressure will eventually push Washington toward such a compromise, it would gain the time and opportunity to rebuild its military and nuclear capabilities, restore, and expand its proxy networks, and deepen coordination with Russia, China, and North Korea.

The next phase would not be a return to the status quo. It would be an acceleration: a stronger Iran, more deeply aligned with adversarial powers, and better positioned to exert influence over both the Strait of Hormuz and the Red Sea—all at a time when future American administrations may become more isolationist and less willing to support Israel.

The consequences would extend far beyond the Middle East. Sustained disruption—or effective control—of these maritime corridors would place enormous pressure on global energy markets and Western economies. What appears today as temporary instability could become a lasting shift in the balance of power and structural decline in Western economies.

Under those conditions, the conclusion becomes difficult to escape: if Iran’s objective is regional dominance, and if its strategy is to outlast external pressure and reconstitute its power, then durable Gulf stability cannot be achieved through negotiation alone.

In that case, long-term peace would require not merely a change in Iranian policy, but a fundamental change in the regime itself.

David Sobiloff is a New York–based attorney who has practiced law for over four decades and has a longstanding interest in geopolitical and national security issues.