“If Iran implodes, the consequences will be chaotic”

On 20 June 2025 in an interview for ItaliaOggi, our Director, Prof. Luigi Narbone, former EU Ambassador to the Gulf, offered a stark warning on the escalation between Israel, Iran, and the United States.

Prof. Narbone noted that the U.S.-Iran negotiations were ongoing until Israel, with tacit U.S. support, chose the military path. Israel’s objective is to cripple Iran’s nuclear program and possibly provoke regime change. Nevertheless past experience shows that external intervention often result in the opposite of what it tries to achieve. Rather than collapse, regimes may further entrench. While Israeli strikes have severely hit Iranian nuclear infrastructure, Western intelligence does not share the Israeli and Trump’s assessments that Iran was actively trying to weaponise its nuclear program. Nor there is evidence that it was close to building a bomb. Moreover, Israel military action against a wide array of military and civilian objectives in Iran shows that the goals of this operation might be much broader than just destroying the nuclear program.

On possible diplomatic outcomes, prof. Narbone remains skeptical: “What would a negotiation aim for? Total Iranian denuclearization? And who would guarantee that Iran would not go back to the program at a later stage, possibly having decided that the nuclear bomb is the only effective deterrent? Who would guarantee its security after having been severely weakened, as it was the case for Libya, Iraq, Syria after they were disarmed?”

Prof. Narbone also noted that there is a strong risk that the ongoing attacks could provoke a long and thorny regional war. Instability could engulf the Middle East making the dream of a pacified region, built on connectivity and economic growth, increasingly out of reach. Considering that Iran’s complex demographics, cross-regional ethnic ties, and fragile internal cohesion, a regime collapse is a dangerous gamble.

The interview is available in Italian.