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SINGAPORE – A second attempt at US-Iran peace talks in Islamabad, originally scheduled for April 21, is now fraught with considerable uncertainty raising serious doubts not just about the viability of a negotiated outcome but also where relations between the US and Iran might go from here.
What’s clear is that even if the negotiations result in a lasting ceasefire, the structural damage to US-Iran relations wrought by the war is irreversible. There is no returning to the status quo before the US and Israel started their attacks on Iran on Feb 28.
The new Iranian leadership taking over the mantle following the targeted assassination of their predecessors is especially aware that the parameters of their relationship with the US have fundamentally altered.
For decades, despite the US branding Iran as the world’s largest state sponsor of terror, successive US administrations operated within established guardrails, stopping short of an all-out war to oust the Iranian regime.
Even during President Trump’s first term, the 2020 assassination of Qasem Soleimani – then commander of the IRGC – was carefully contextualised. Following his assassination, President Trump notably stated, “We did not take action to start a war,” and clarified that the US did not “seek regime change,” despite labeling the Iranian leaders as “terrorist warlords.”
Iran’s measured response to the killing of Qasem Soleimani was perhaps also based on a tacit, unspoken understanding that the US’s strike was a localised retaliation for suspected Iranian involvement in assassination plots and violent incidents in the West.
However, Iran has long targeted US interests in the region, including Israel and the Gulf countries, via its proxies, notably Hezbollah in Lebanon, Palestinian militant group Hamas, and the Houthis in Yemen.
This network of militant groups across the Middle East provided Iran with leverage in its long-running tensions with the US and Israel, allowing it to claim some degree of self-restraint and envelop itself with plausible deniability. It made it hard – though not impossible – to attribute the attacks to Tehran.
Now, however, the US-Israeli military campaigns against Iran in 2025 and 2026, the most extensive in decades with an explicit goal of regime change, are aimed at blowing this cover entirely.
Hamas and Hezbollah are believed to have been significantly weakened by Israel’s military actions since October 2023. Almost all of Hamas’ 24 battalions are believed to have been destroyed. Thousands of Hezbollah fighters and the group’s key leaders have been killed.
Yet both Iranian proxies are still militarily active and have not been disarmed. Prior to the 10-day ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon announced on April 16, Hezbollah put up a stiff resistance and launched missiles into Israel when Israeli forces encroached into south Lebanon to create a new buffer zone.
“Despite deep mistrust towards the United States, Iran still engaged in negotiations in 2025 and 2026… However, in each case, the United States killed the diplomatic process and attacked Iran,” Mr Seyed Hossein Mousavian, Visiting Research Collaborator at Princeton University and former spokesperson for Iran’s nuclear dossier told The Straits Times.
“If diplomacy fails to provide security, Iran may invest in multiple deterrence options, including strengthening the Axis of Resistance,” he added, referring to Iran’s proxies across the Middle East.
Observers expect the IRGC, now more powerful domestically, to take an increasingly hardline stance.
Following the death of the former Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, the US intercepted an Iranian transmission to multiple countries, which some analysts believe was an encrypted message to activate Iran’s sleeper cells.
Iran has also escalated its rhetoric on stepping up Iran’s nuclear programme and expanding proxy violence beyond the region, which would create a more dangerous world.
“Some voices in Iran increasingly argue that the most effective deterrent would be a nuclear capability similar to that of North Korea,” the former Iranian nuclear negotiator added.
Iran is estimated to possess 440kg of highly enriched uranium, and unless its nuclear programme is verifiably dismantled, the possibility of it developing nuclear weapons in the next few years remains a troubling prospect.
“In the absence of a reliable agreement with the United States, the recent wars have led many in Iran to conclude that international treaties like the Non-Proliferation Treaty and existing international rules may not adequately protect the country’s sovereignty and security,” Mr Mousavian told ST.
With the US and Israel not letting up in their recent attacks – and bombastic threats by US President Donald Trump – Tehran may feel that all traditional red lines have been erased and that it should deploy the full extent of its asymmetric capabilities to ensure its survival.
Iran’s core asymmetric capability is its arsenal of supporters and militant groups across the region, and possibly sleeper cells – operatives clandestinely deployed by the Iranian regime in the West to do its bidding.
Since the start of the war, a few Jewish establishments in Europe and the US have been attacked by sympathisers of the Islamic Republic.
While the Iranian leadership was not believed to be behind those attacks, the US, Canada, and countries across Europe heightened their security alerts for fear of more sophisticated and well-planned attacks from Iranian sleeper cells.
“It’s impossible to know how extensive Iran’s ‘sleeper assets’ are in the West… It could be that the threat is overblown; we really don’t know, but if the Iranians do possess this capability, it could strike a devastating blow if they were to take action,” Dr Colin P. Clarke, director of research at the Soufan Group, a US-based consultancy, told ST.
Just weeks preceding the war, the European Union designated the IRGC a terrorist organisation, citing its role in repression in Iran and activities in Europe.
“Hezbollah would be the Iranians’ tip of the spear, especially in the West. I think Tehran views this as an ace up its sleeve, something to pull out in case the situation continues to deteriorate further,” said Dr Clarke.
Another serious possibility is that Iran may target Western leaders for assassinations, in particular key leaders in the Trump administration and President Trump himself.
A Pakistani man was found guilty in the US last month in an IRGC-linked plot to assassinate Mr Trump to avenge the death of Qasem Soleimani.
“In terms of whether the regime is desperate enough to cross that red line, I’d say yes, this conflict is existential for Iran. The Supreme Leader has already been killed… the Iranians are looking for a reciprocal response, so I don’t think anything is quite off the table at this stage,” Dr Clarke added.
South-east Asia is no stranger to proxy threats from Iran-backed groups, which have historically had an interest in the region.
In the 1990s and early 2000s, a few Hezbollah-linked plots and intelligence operations targeting US and Israeli interests in the region were uncovered.
A Hezbollah bomb plot on the Israeli embassy in Thailand in 1994 came close to succeeding.
Through their propaganda, Hezbollah and Hamas have continued to radicalise South-east Asians, where they maintain a small but sizable base of sympathisers.
The escalation of the conflicts in the Middle East, in particular the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and Lebanon, and the religious overtones by some in the Trump administration and Israel in their rhetoric justifying the wars in the region, feed into Iran and its proxies’ narratives.
“While Gaza’s prolonged conflict has severely weakened Hamas, the group remains resilient through its regional and global support networks including Malaysia. The Palestinian Cultural Organisation Malaysia has been engaged in public outreach and fundraising for the group,” said Dr Ghada Soliman, a Research Fellow at the S.Rajaratnam School of International Studies.
“Similarly, the IRGC has sought to expand its influence among the Shi‘ite populace in the region by promoting Al-Mustafa University, which maintains an active branch in Bangkok, Indonesia and Malaysia,” she added.
The Al-Mustafa University is an Islamic seminary-style institution backed by the Iranian regime with international branches and allegedly acts as a front for IRGC recruitments.
A few Singaporeans have been issued with Detention and Restriction Orders under the Internal Security Act in the last few years, after they were radicalised by Iranian proxy groups.
In January 2026, a 14-year-old Singaporean boy was issued a Restriction Order after he was radicalised through absorbing the ideology of various groups, including Hamas.
While Iran and its proxies’ narrative centered on victimhood might resonate more strongly within Shi’ite rather than Sunni communities, the demographic divide might be blurring with the war.
“Sectarian differences may be overcome if radical groups use this narrative of victimhood to describe Islam’s overall condition, thus appealing to different schools of Muslims,” Dr Soliman said.
The US and Israel, through their recent campaign, have sought to end the threat posed by the regime, including through its proxies, once and for all.
The gamble has so far not only failed to end it, but may have altered Tehran’s strategic calculus, forging a far more dangerous and globally destructive force.