As the regional architecture of the Middle East undergoes a violent transformation, observers are beginning to realize that the collapse of the Islamic Republic of Iran is not the end of the story but the beginning of a far more complex chapter.
The conflict, dubbed Operation Roaring Lion, has entered a phase where the systemic deterrence of the mullahs is effectively finished. However, history teaches us that the moment of greatest victory is often the moment of greatest danger.
We have reached what historians now call a 1919 Moment, a juncture where the primary threats of the past decade – Sunni jihadism and the Iranian proxy network – have been beaten, but the victorious alliance is already beginning to fracture.
The most significant and dangerous crack in this new order is the rising ambition of Islamist Turkey. For months, the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has adopted a strategy that prioritized the survival of the clerical regime in Tehran as a counterweight to Western influence.
Now that the Iranian regime is in its death throes, Ankara is shifting its messaging to prepare for a direct confrontation with the new regional reality. Pro-government Turkish columnists have begun to frame Israel as the last obstacle to regional stability, with some explicitly claiming that after Iran, it will be Turkey’s turn.
Turkey to fill the vacuum left by the IRGC
This rhetoric is not accidental; it is a calculated effort to position Turkey as the sole remaining champion of political Islam in a vacuum left by the IRGC. Ankara fears that a Western-aligned or Israel-friendly government in Tehran would permanently shift the balance of power, leaving Erdogan as a regional outlier.
The signs of this shift are most visible in Syria, which has become the epicenter of the new power struggle. The recent appointment of Kurdish commander Sipan Hemo as Syria’s Assistant Defense Minister for the Eastern Region is a watershed moment.
While on the surface this appears to be a local administrative move by the government of President Ahmed al-Sharaa, it is actually a signal that Turkey and its regional partners are moving faster than the West to consolidate the spaces once held by Iran.
Turkey is treating Syria as a strategic chessboard, positioning its intelligence and air defense assets to create strategic depth that brings its sphere of influence closer to Israel’s border than ever before.
By co-opting Kurdish commanders who were once the backbone of the American-led coalition, Damascus and Ankara are effectively neutralizing Western leverage in the post-war environment.
The challenge for Israel and the US is that Turkey is a state-centered actor embedded within the Western system through NATO, making its Islamist ambitions far more difficult to counter than the proxy-driven model of Tehran.
Erdogan believes his own political future is tied to the outcome in Iran, and he is determined to prevent a geopolitical outcome that strengthens Israel at Turkey’s disadvantage.
This competition among the victors of the current conflict mirrors the maneuvering seen after World War I, where individual goals were advanced at the expense of a durable peace.
The Middle East has been largely cleansed of its traditional threats, but it now faces a sophisticated, state-led challenge from the North that is intent on preventing a genuine Pax Israeliana – a situation where Israel’s strength keeps the region stable.
To ensure that the destruction of the Iranian regime leads to a stable security order, the alliance must look beyond the immediate battlefield. Tactical successes against Iranian missile arrays and naval vessels are necessary, but they are insufficient if the ideological vacuum is filled by an emboldened Turkish Islamism.
The victory doctrine must evolve from the temporary containment of threats to a theory of permanent stabilization.
This means recognizing that the hard-won peace of 2026 will be nothing more than a prelude to a new and even more entrenched regional conflict if the coalition does not act with the same resolve toward this new competition as it did toward the Iranian regime.
The 1919 Moment is here; the question is whether we have the strategic foresight to prevent it from becoming a 1939 Moment. The victory over the mullahs is only the first step in a much longer struggle for the soul of the Middle East.
The writer, a fellow at the Middle East Forum, is a policy analyst and writer based in Morocco. Follow him on X: @amineayoubx