Persian Gulf states are quietly relieved that the 12-day war with Israel has weakened the Islamic Republic, security experts told Iran International, though Tehran's Arab rivals prefer a declawed Iran to a regime change that would lead to instability.
The surprise Israeli attacks that started on June 13 were publicly condemned by Persian Gulf states which oppose Iranian hegemony in the region but seek calm to boost domestic growth agendas.
“These disruptions are of significant concern to Emirati policymakers who place a premium on regional calm and continuity,” said a senior security expert in the United Arab Emirates.
“The UAE remains concerned about the broader implications of regional conflict, economically, socially as well as politically," the expert told Iran International on condition of anonymity due to political sensitivities.
The United Arab Emirates, along with Morocco and Bahrain, is a party to the US-brokered Abraham Accords in 2020 which normalized relations between Israel.
Collective unease with Iran contributed to the historic shift toward normalization, experts say.
Last month, Abu Dhabi publicly condemned the Israeli attacks as a violation of Iran's sovereignty, but the attacks degraded the military might of a rival whose nuclear ambitions its neighbors long feared.
The campaign saw Israel gain control of Iran's airspace within days as it assassinated top military leaders and degraded Iranian missile capabilities.
However, any prolonged conflict or upheaval inside Iran would be viewed as a potential risk to the regional countries' tourism, trade and foreign investment, a taste of which was offered by the closing of air space across the Persian Gulf and crashing stock markets amid the conflict.
The United Arab Emirates is also home to around 500,000-800,000 Iranians who have been a historic force in the country’s trade and commerce concentrated in Dubai.
Interest in relative calm puts Arab capitals potentially at odds with some Iranians' hopes for fundamental change in the wake of the war, which does not appear to be forthcoming despite the punishing air war.
“The UAE takes a pragmatic approach and recognizes that broad systemic change in Iran is unlikely to be externally driven," the expert added.
Risks of regime change in Iran
Iran's southern neighbors are pleased with Tehran's chastisement but will maintain good relations for the sake of regional peace, said Emirati political commentator and academic Abdulkhaleq Abdulla.
The region "is better off now that Iran lost most of its bargaining power, namely its regional proxies, nuclear and missile powers,” he told Iran International.
“But even a weakened Iran remains a key threat to (Persian) Gulf security so the Arab states will continue with their policy of opening up to Iran and show solidarity with its people.”
The fragile ceasefire and the vulnerability of Iran's ruling system is likely to preoccupy Iran's neighbors.
Aimen Dean, of Bahraini-Saudi descent but famous for his deep work for the British spy agency MI6 embedded inside Al Qaeda, said the truce was no panacea.
“The relief isn’t here yet. Not a single government here in this region wants a regime change at least for now,” the managing director of Five Dimensions Consultants in Dubai said.
“They are afraid of two particular scenarios. The first is that an uprising happens and you end up with defections in the army and then the whole country collapses into civil war," Dean added, warning of refugee crisis on Arab shores.
The alternative scenario feared is the possibility of an ethnic breakup of Iran if the government should fall. “Nobody wants that as that also will result in a major flow of refugees and a failed state where people have access to nuclear materials,” Dean explained.
Instead, in the halls of power in the Persian Gulf, from regional juggernaut Saudi Arabia to the tiny island nation of Bahrain, Dean said there is the hope that a “defanged and declawed Iran” would be better contained within its own borders.
“That’s the ideal outcome.”
The video shows two powerful blasts roughly a second apart just steps away from the main hospital in the Tajrish area, near the capital's bustling Qods Square.
One hits a building, sending a huge cloud of smoke up on the other side of the street, and another lands between cars at an intersection.
The second blast hurls the vehicles and a huge plume of smoke high into the air.
At the time of the explosions, around 15:30 local time on June 15, the street was busy with vendors, shoppers, metro passengers and traffic as many had still not left the capital for safer places.
Other videos of the incident posted earlier on social media showed extensive flooding caused by damage to a major water pipeline from the second blast, adding to the chaos. A three-year-old child reportedly drowned in the flood.
The 12-second footage, released on social media on Thursday, appears to be from a traffic surveillance camera.
The footage emphasized the harm endured by Iranian civilians apart from Israeli strikes which assassinated commanders and nuclear scientists and pummeled key military and nuclear facilities until a June 24 ceasefire.
Iran's health ministry reported 610 people were killed in the conflict and 4,746 injured.
Independent tallies put the toll higher—1,190 according to the US-based human rights group HRANA, which reported military deaths just above 400, with the rest either civilians or yet to be determined.
Verified
Some activists and social media users allege that the video was digitally manipulated or AI-generated.
However, Factnameh, an Iranian fact-checking website, and BBC both deemed the footage genuine, comparing it with other images from the area of the impact.
Victims
Iran reported 18 people killed, including a pregnant woman and her child, and 46 injured in the strike but has not released a full list of victims.
The Israeli military reported the killing of Brigadier General Mohammad Kazemi, chief of the IRGC Intelligence Organization, his deputy Brigadier General Hassan Mohaqeq, and military intelligence officer Mohsen Bagheri on the same day.
Iran confirmed their deaths but neither side has disclosed the exact location of their deaths.
Other incidents with high civilian casualties
On June 23, Israel launched several missiles at Tehran’s Evin Prison, calling the site a “tool of repression.”
Among the dead were two prison officials, Ruhollah Tavasoli and Vahid Heydarpour, as well as Evin's top prosecutor Ali Ghanaatkar. Dozens of detainees, medical staff, visiting families — including a young child — and even a bystander were also killed.
Another Israeli attack on June 24 in Astaneh Ashrafieh in northern Iran killed 16 people, most of them from the same extended family, and completely destroyed several homes.
The bombing targeted nuclear scientist Mohammad-Reza Sadighi, who had survived an earlier Israeli attack in Tehran but lost his 17-year-old son Hamidreza in the airstrike.