The stakes for Australia in Trump’s Iran gamble

March 1, 2026 — 8:50am

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Last night, a missile struck the United States 5th Fleet headquarters in Bahrain, a base where I served in 2023. That strike is a reminder of how much the strategic landscape has hardened in recent years.

The United States and Israel have struck Iran. Tehran has responded immediately, targeting US and Israeli forces across the Gulf. This is not a limited reprise of last year’s strike on Iran’s nuclear program. The objective now appears broader. Washington appears to be attempting something far more ambitious than its limited strike in June 2025. It is seeking to remove what it views as a persistent source of instability in the region: the regime of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who Israel says was killed in the strikes on his compound.

It is a significant gamble. Whether it succeeds will not be clear for some time.

How did we get here, and what does it mean for Australia? The answer to both is complex. Much will be written in the coming days about the 1979 Iranian Revolution, the 1983 bombing of US Marines in Beirut, and the attack on USS Cole in Yemen in 2000. But the more relevant point is what Iran has represented strategically over the past two decades.

In recent years, Iran has acted as a destabilising force across the Middle........

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