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Young Iranian female protesters shout anti-U.S. and anti-Israeli slogans while participating in a protest to condemn the U.S. attacks on Iran's nuclear facilities in downtown Tehran, Iran, on June 22, 2025, amid the Iran-Israel war.
What’s next for Iran?
The United States is back at war in the Middle East: Late Saturday evening, the US military unleashed 75 precision-guided weapons, including 14 “bunker-buster” bombs, against Iran’s Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan nuclear sites. Israel followed up by hitting Fordo’s access routes on Monday. US President Donald Trump is now openly contemplating regime change.
It’s not yet clear how much damage has been done to Iran’s nuclear capabilities. Trump hailed the operation and said that the US had “completely and totally obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program, but Vice President JD Vance said Sunday the White House is going “to ensure that we do something with that fuel,” tacitly acknowledging that the Islamic Republic may still retain supplies of enriched uranium. Tehran, for its part, said it had already moved fuel and key technology away from the key nuclear sites before they were bombed.
How Might Iran Retaliate? Tehran called for revenge, but it’s not yet clear what that looks like. The original Israel-Iran war continues, as the two sides traded barrages of ballistic missiles over the weekend. Whether the US becomes further intertwined is another matter. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi warned in a post on X that the US attacks “will have everlasting consequences” and that Tehran “reserves all options.” Those include:
- Closing the Strait of Hormuz. Iran could sow undersea mines, ban patrols, or harass tankers by quickboat to halt travel in the Strait, which would cripple roughly 20% of global oil transit and send prices soaring – prices are already edging up in anticipation of the strait’s closure. But Tehran would also pay the economic price of withholding its chief export, which US Secretary of State Marco Rubio qualified as “economic suicide.” Iran’s parliament seems unfazed: it voted on Sunday to back a plan to close the Strait of Hormuz, pending approval by the country’s Supreme National Security Council.
- Attacking US bases. US military sites in the region are on high alert after Iran’s Revolutionary Guard labeled US troops as not a “strength” but a “vulnerability.” Tehran also said on Monday that the US attack had expanded the range of legitimate targets. Analysts estimate, however, that half of Iran’s missile launchers have been destroyed and it has significantly depleted its stockpile of roughly 2,000-3,000 missiles.
- Attacking other US interests. Iran could strike US personnel and interests in the region, according to Middle East expert Jonathan Panikoff of the Atlantic Council. It could also bide time, rebuild capabilities, and plan terrorist attacks inside the US, including cyberattacks on major infrastructure. Such tactics may not satisfy hardliners, however, and the weakened regime may feel the need for a greater and faster show of strength.
- Leveraging allies and proxies. Russia has condemned the US strikes and could become more deeply involved, with Araghchi heading to Moscow for consultations on Monday. Iran could deploy proxies Hamas and the Yemen-based Houthis – who have already vowed revenge – to attack US or Israeli sites. Hardline factions inside Iran could also gain momentum.
What Do Iranians Want?
- Domestically, public reaction is mixed: a rally-around-the-flag effect combined with ongoing grievances with the regime over economic hardship, corruption, and lack of freedoms. Critically, there’s no mass opposition movement poised to topple the regime, and tight surveillance makes it more difficult to organize.
- Outside the country, the Iranian diaspora has long advocated for reform or regime change, but the government is now limiting their influence inside the country. It has shut down the internet and deployed AI answerbots, making communication extremely difficult, limiting the news Iranians can receive and their ability to engage.
Suspended Jewish Columbia and Barnard students participate in a press conference outside the president of Columbia University’s house on April 23, 2024, in Manhattan, New York.
Hard Numbers: Columbia punishes deans, Iran boosts missile output, UN accuses Rwanda of fighting in Congo, Colombia protects the forest
3: Columbia University on Monday removed three deans from their positions over antisemitic text messages they exchanged in a group chat during a late-May event about Jewish life on campus in the wake of protests about Oct. 7 and the war in Gaza. The three have been placed on indefinite leave. For our complete on-the-ground coverage of the upheaval at Columbia this spring, led by GZERO’s Riley Callanan, see here.
2: Iran has been ramping up its output of ballistic missiles at two key production facilities, according to satellite imagery. Tehran’s most prominent buyers of the missiles include the Houthi rebels in Yemen, Hezbollah paramilitaries in Lebanon and, of course, Vladimir Putin’s Russia, which signed a missile deal with Iran in 2022.
3,000-4,000: A new UN report alleges that 3,000-4,000 regular Rwandan Army forces are fighting alongside M23 rebels in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, a serious allegation that follows years of accusations that Rwanda is deliberately destabilizing its neighbor. Alarmingly, the report also implicates Uganda — which had deployed a force to fight the rebels as part of a regional military intervention to support Congo — in providing support for M23, essentially playing both sides of the conflict.
305: Deforestation in Colombia fell by more than a third last year, to just 305 square miles, the lowest figure on record. The decline comes atop a 20% fall the previous year. About half of the deforestation was in the Colombian Amazon. President Gustavo Petro has sought to rein in corporate access to the rainforest, but orders from local guerilla groups to stop cutting down trees have also helped. Experts warn that despite progress, droughts caused by the hot-weather El Niño weather pattern this year could push up deforestation.
Why Netanyahu relented to protests in Israel, but France's Macron didn't
Ian Bremmer shares his insights on global politics this week on World In :60.
Why did Netanyahu end up backing down to protests in Israel, but not Macron in France?
Well, they are two different countries. But really, in Israel, they hadn't yet pushed the reform through. At this point, Netanyahu hasn't said he is given up on it. He said he's waiting for 30 days. Now, he might not be able to get it through, but still, it wasn't like it was passed and then he said, "Too much. Now, I've got to undo it." Where in the case of Macron, he had already gotten the vote in the upper house. He'd already forced it through, avoiding the lower house through a constitutional measure, which meant that essentially he had already gotten the agreement and then he was dealing with massive demonstrations. Which, by the way, the demonstrations themselves not super popular in France, even though the pension reform is strongly opposed, so I'm not surprised by that.
Should the West be worried about North Korea developing tactical nuclear weapons?
We got two of these complicated questions. Well, I think that the fact that North Korea continues to expand its nuclear program is a deep concern, because they are an enormously impoverished rogue state, and there's no information on what really goes on inside that country, and there's no real effective diplomatic relations that any countries and certainly their adversaries have with them. So the increasing tests of ballistic missiles that we see going on is a concern, is a worry. In fact, the only thing that calmed them down recently was when Trump met with Kim Jong-Un, and then they did the freeze-for-freeze informally. So you didn't have US military exercises with South Korea, with Japan, and you didn't have tests of ballistic missiles from North Korea. Of course, that's gone and now the tensions are greater. Frankly, there should be more engagement between the two sides.
China is going to break up Alibaba into six parts. What does this tell us about the state of Xi's tech crackdown?
I think more importantly is the fact that Jack Ma is back in China and was clearly told by the Chinese, "Hey, we're not going to arrest you. This would be a really good time to come back." So too, the fact that someone who had been under arrest, involved in the semiconductor program has now been released to start working again. This is the Chinese government saying, "Yes, there's state control, but we want to focus on growth and we want effective response to US and allied export controls on semiconductors, so we have to really empower the private sector with state restrictions, but also with state investment. Whether that's going to be effective or not, very open question, but the Chinese are clearly trying to pile all in on their own national champions in this advanced technology space.
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