Operation Rising Lion, launched on June 13, 2025, is much more than a preventive strike by Israel. For the author, it marks a major geopolitical shift in the global balance of power. By simultaneously targeting Iran’s nuclear program, its ballistic arsenal, and the elite Revolutionary Guards, Israel has dealt a severe blow to the neo-totalitarian axis of Moscow, Beijing, Tehran, and Pyongyang, forcing the West to rethink its strategy against an adversary that is weakened but not yet defeated. The weakening of Iran, or even the fall of the Ayatollahs’ regime, could have a particular impact on Russia’s ability to continue its war of aggression against Ukraine.
The end of Iran’s nuclear dream and the structural weakening of the axis
The Israeli attack had become inevitable in the face of the imminent risk of an Iranian nuclear breakout. As Netanyahu’s speech revealed, Iran had crossed all critical thresholds by producing highly enriched uranium sufficient for nine atomic bombs, accelerating the strengthening of its ballistic arsenal, and categorically refusing to abandon domestic enrichment despite Trump’s ultimatum.
This strike deals a systemic blow to the neo-totalitarian axis. For Moscow and Beijing, Iran was not only a regional partner, but a potential fourth nuclear member of the alliance. Its military neutralization, if successful, deprives the axis of this prospect and reveals the limits of the protection its members can offer each other. The fall of Bachar al-Assad, a common client of Moscow and Tehran, had already foreshadowed this vulnerability; Iran’s military humiliation brutally confirms it.
Negotiations with Tehran have fueled the illusion that a deeply ideological regime, invested in a large-scale nuclear program and the construction of an arsenal of ballistic missiles, could be deterred by sanctions or the “lure of trade.” However, unlike the Soviet-American balance of terror, Iran’s nuclear weapons were not aimed at stability through mutual deterrence, but at the destruction of Israel, combined at the very least with the “aggressive sanctification” of Iran’s regional conquests. This strategy, inspired by Putin’s model in Ukraine, consists of using the nuclear threat to immunize conquest operations against any Western intervention.
Impact on Russia: economic respite, geostrategic suffocation
For Russia, the equation is paradoxical. Instability in the Middle East is driving up oil prices (+$10), which could bring in around $18 billion in additional annual revenue, partially filling its structural budget deficit. This financial lifeline comes at a time when Russia’s liquid reserves, reduced to €31 billion, only guarantee 12 to 15 months of survival for its war effort.
But this economic respite may only be temporary, unless the war drags on for several months, and masks geostrategic suffocation. Iran supplies Russia with Shahed drones and Fath 360 short-range missiles, which are important on the Ukrainian front. Although Russia is less dependent on them than it once was, the interruption of deliveries would deprive Moscow of strike capability at a time when the Russian army is attempting to break through the front or, at the very least, convince the West of its inevitable victory. More fundamentally, Iran’s weakening increases Russia’s dependence on Beijing, the only member of the axis still intact. But if the Ayatollahs’ regime falls or is weakened in the long term, Beijing would also lose its ability to take America from behind and divide its forces. This growing subordination limits Putin’s room for maneuver and reinforces the asymmetrical nature of the Sino-Russian alliance, as Tehran becomes more of a supplicant and less of a partner—a development that automatically weakens the entire anti-Western alliance.
Broadening the focus: beyond Ukraine, systemic confrontation
The Israeli offensive reveals the true nature of the contemporary conflict: not mere geopolitical rivalry, but confrontation between the neo-totalitarian axis and Western democracies. It goes far beyond territorial issues. It is a clash of civilizations that forces the West to broaden its strategic focus beyond the Ukrainian front alone and to link the two conflicts that the barbarity of the war in Gaza seemed to separate. The neo-totalitarian axis had developed a “logic of geographical strangulation”: exhaust Europe in Ukraine while the United States watches Taiwan, threaten Israel when Washington is focused on the Indo-Pacific. While exploiting the West’s chronic “diplomatic nonchalance” toward neo-totalitarian regimes, this strategy of dispersing Western forces across all theaters simultaneously reveals its ultimate goal: to undermine the liberal international order.
Iran was a weak but essential link in this chain. Its neutralization does not destroy the axis, but it does deprive it of its most effective means of regional destabilization. With Hezbollah decapitated, Hamas on the run, and al-Assad overthrown, the architecture of the axis of resistance is collapsing, freeing Lebanon and Syria from Iranian tutelage. This dynamic could spread to Iraq and Yemen, creating a geopolitical domino effect.
For Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, the Israeli offensive constitutes a strategic decapitation. The military and geostrategic leaders who shared his vision—from the commander of the Revolutionary Guards to the head of ballistic missiles—were eliminated simultaneously “in their own homes,” revealing the extent of Israeli intelligence penetration. As expert Afshon Ostovar analyzes, this strike has “eviscerated a collective brain that had been directing Iranian strategy for 20 years,” notably with the loss of General Hajizadeh, “who was the architect of Iranian military strategy.”
If the slain leaders are replaced by their deputies, this situation will create an unprecedented dilemma for a totalitarian regime: the theocratic leaders remain, but the military brains that developed the geostrategy of their ideological vision are gone. The axis of resistance from Hamas to Hezbollah, from al-Assad to the Houthis, the nuclear program, and the arsenal of drones and ballistic missiles—this entire strategic architecture is losing its architects just as it is collapsing.
While a prolonged war of attrition between Israel and Iran remains possible, fueling regional instability and oil prices to Russia’s temporary economic benefit, and while a total collapse of the Iranian regime seems unlikely in the short term, its ability to harm is drastically reduced and social and societal conflicts, such as the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement, may resume in the coming months against a morally, economically, and militarily bankrupt system. Could negotiations under duress emerge, with Trump using the Israeli offensive as diplomatic leverage? The presidential entourage remains divided on the strategy to adopt. Last March, Tulsi Gabbard, director of intelligence with known pro-Putin sympathies, still claimed that Ayatollah Khamenei had not authorized the militarization of the nuclear program. Conversely, in the aftermath of the Israeli offensive, influential Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, a staunch supporter of Ukraine, urged Trump to do everything possible to allow Israel to “finish the job.”
Implications for the future of the war in Europe
This realignment is already having an impact on Europe and the war in Ukraine. The weakening of the axis is creating a strategic window of opportunity unprecedented since 2022. The totalitarian nature of Putin’s regime structurally precludes any lasting ceasefire in Ukraine. The Russian war economy, which employs 5 million people and distributes $150,000 per combat death, cannot be stopped without the system collapsing. However, Russia, potentially deprived of Iranian support, is becoming more vulnerable, despite financial respite.
Europe should seize this window of opportunity to step up its support for Ukraine before Russia rebuilds its capabilities or finds new partners. The interdependence of the axis creates exploitable vulnerabilities: forcing Beijing to choose between its trade with Europe and its support for Moscow, targeting Chinese electronic component deliveries on which the Russian military industry depends, taxing countries that buy Russian fossil fuels, and seizing the ghost tankers that deliver them.
Israel’s offensive against Iran marks the beginning of a new phase in the confrontation between democracies and totalitarian systems. The axis, deprived of its Middle Eastern armed wing and nuclear ambitions, remains dangerous but weakened. China will have to bear the brunt of the confrontation with the West while managing failing allies, and its ambitions to conquer Taiwan and expand in the China Sea will have to be reassessed. And the war in Ukraine is now being fought as much on the banks of the Dnipro as in the Strait of Hormuz or the underground depths of Fordo and Natanz, revealing the fundamental interconnectedness of the geopolitical theaters of the 21st Century.
The author has a PhD in History. He specializes in totalitarianism and is a co-founder of French association Pour l’Ukraine, pour leur liberté et la nôtre ! (For Ukraine, for their freedom and ours!)