East vs West: Why More Permanent Seats Won't Fix the Security Council

At this year’s UN General Assembly, Turkish president Erdoğan and Dutch prime minister Rob Jetten both argued that the Security Council is outdated and still stuck in the post-WW2 power balance. Erdoğan has been saying “the world is bigger than five” for years. Jetten told the Assembly on 24 September that the Council needs better African representation at the very least, and that “we must change the balance of power in line with the changing times.“30ld has moved on from 1945. The Iran war suggests it hasn’t.”

Personally I don’t think that’s a good idea, because the balance of power hasn’t really changed. Not since WW2, and not since the Soviet Union collapsed. We are still pretty much living in a West vs East world. In this article I want to explain why I think that, and why the Iran war is extremely relevant to this whole debate.

Iran war developments#

After the General Assembly, Trump rejected Iran’s peace proposal. Then, according to two US officials, Rubio ordered foreign minister Araghchi and his delegation to leave New York after talks through Qatari mediators went nowhere. Iran denies this and says the departure was planned in advance.¹

Trump is heading for what looks like a heavy loss in the midterms. In my opinion he could lose both the House and the Senate to the Democrats. I think the Iranians were betting on exactly that. Gas prices are up, Republicans are nervous, so the idea was that Trump would bend under the economic pressure and take a deal before November.

The problem is that Trump has been telling everyone since March that this won’t work. When prices started climbing he said “If they rise, they rise.” Later he said he doesn’t think about Americans’ financial situation, and when he was asked about it again he called it a “perfect statement.”² So Iran gambled on pressure that Trump had openly said he would ignore. He has now reportedly told aides he expects to resume bombing after the November elections.³ It seems like the war is going back to how it was before this stalemate.

Economic attrition#

For now, the Iran war has turned into a war of economic attrition. The question is simple: who caves first?

Iran is clearly feeling the heat. Operation Economic Outcast, launched on 24 August, expanded secondary sanctions to digital assets, technology, gold, aviation and shipping. The rial is at record lows, and the IMF expects inflation of nearly 70% and a 5.4% contraction this year.⁴ On top of that, the UAE suspended all trade with Iran on 19 August, after saying it had come under renewed Iranian missile fire. That one really hurts, because Iran relied on the UAE for 30.6% of its imports in 2024.⁵ Iran is more isolated from global trade than it has been in years.

But the West is paying too. The US Navy and Air Force are helping tankers cross the Strait of Hormuz, with air defense offered since May on a route hugging the Omani coast. After Iran stepped up attacks at night, that protection was cut down to two time slots a day. The US Energy Secretary says the escorts won’t end anytime soon, and US gas hit $4.15 a gallon, a record for September.⁶

Saudi Arabia’s way around Hormuz is the East-West pipeline to the Red Sea port of Yanbu. It can carry up to 7 million barrels a day and was moving about 4 million, around 4% of global oil supply. On 11 September, drones launched from Iraq hit it. Saudi Arabia blamed Iraqi militias from the PMF network, the drones damaged three pumping stations, and the whole line shut down. Yanbu only had enough oil stored for five to seven days of shipments. Loadings only restarted at the end of September, at around 3.5 million barrels a day.⁷ Meanwhile the Houthis have cut shipping through Bab al-Mandab by about 60% and keep hitting Saudi territory.⁸

This pipeline attack actually proves my point, from both sides. Iran doesn’t need to win battles. A few drones from Iraq took 4% of the world’s oil supply offline for over two weeks, and that’s the kind of cost the West has to keep carrying. But the West could absorb it. The pipeline was repaired and loading tankers again within about two and a half weeks. Iran’s losses don’t come back that fast: the UAE trade, the currency, the oil it can’t sell. Iran can disrupt, but it can’t rebuild what it is losing.

That’s why I think the evidence leans a bit towards a Western advantage, and the peace proposal at the UN is part of that evidence. We mostly see news about the European and American economies taking a blow, but Iran’s economy isn’t holding up well either. The proposal came right after the UAE cut, Economic Outcast and the collapse of the rial. In my view Iran was trying to play its cards before it loses them, maybe loses them all. Selling high while it still can.

Going back to the main story of West vs East, we have to ask: why was Iran attacked in the first place? Who are the direct beneficiaries and losers on each side? Is it so Israel can grow its power in the Middle East? Maybe, but I think there is a deeper layer than the rhetoric you see online.

The balance of power#

You can see that the balance of power hasn’t changed by looking at how many post-WW2 wars had a Western side and an Eastern side. The West backs one party, and the Soviet Union, and after 1991 Russia or China, backs the other.

• The Korean War. US-led UN forces fought North Korea, which was backed by the Soviet Union, and China sent its own troops in.
• The Syrian civil war. Russia and Iran kept Assad in power, while the US, Turkey and the Gulf states backed different opposition forces.
• The Libyan civil war (2014). Russia’s Wagner fighters backed Haftar in the east, while Turkey backed the government in Tripoli.
• The Ukraine war. Russia on one side, and Ukraine backed by the US, the UK, France and the rest of Europe on the other.

And there are many more. Even outside full wars you see the same rivalry. In West Africa, especially Burkina Faso, the junta pushed out French troops in 2023 and turned to Russia, and the two are now competing for influence across the region.

After the Cold War, the interests of Russia and China have mostly been aligned, and China has been a respected power since WW2. It has had a permanent seat since the UN was founded in 1945. All five permanent members were on the winning side of WW2, and 80 years later they are still the ones facing each other in almost every major conflict. That’s evidence the power balance has stayed largely intact.

A presidential term for glory and power#

I think Trump’s plan from the beginning was to indirectly hurt China. China was the whole deal, and you can follow it step by step through energy.

It started with Venezuela. China took more than half of Venezuela’s 768,000 barrels a day of crude exports in 2025. After the US captured Maduro in January, shipments to China were absent for a fifth straight month by May.⁹ Then Panama was cut off from the Belt and Road Initiative.

And lastly Iran. Because of the sanctions, Iran had to sell its oil to China at a discount, mostly to small independent refineries, the so-called teapots. Before the war China was taking 1 to 1.5 million barrels a day. In August it was down to about 534,000, roughly a third, and September looks even lower.¹⁰ But China didn’t simply choose to buy less. The US blockade is stopping new supply from leaving the Persian Gulf, so the barrels physically can’t get out. The US is using its control of the strait to control what reaches China.

So basically, the US is cutting off China’s cheap energy sources one by one, to stop it from growing as fast as it has been.

This is also why I don’t buy the argument that the world has moved on from 1945. The structure is the same: two camps, both already represented in the P5 through the US, UK and France on one side and Russia and China on the other. What changed is the balance inside the eastern camp, with China overtaking Russia. The Cold War was the US against the Soviet Union. Today it’s the US against China. The players inside the eastern camp switched places, but the camp itself never left the Council.

Israel, the new regional superpower?#

We also can’t ignore Israel. It wants to be the big player in the region, fighting for its own interests and trying to eliminate Iran and its proxies, Hezbollah and the Houthis.

If Iran’s nuclear program is gone, Israel stays the only nuclear power in the Middle East. It has never officially admitted it, but it is widely believed to have nuclear weapons. Nobody in the region could balance that. That’s what I mean by complete dominance: Israel as the one and only regional hegemon.

The shipping lanes are part of this too. Around Hormuz, Israel has political leverage through the UAE, its partner since the Abraham Accords. In the Gulf of Aden it has Somaliland. In December 2025 Israel became the first country to recognize Somaliland, and it is already training Somaliland’s police and soldiers. Somaliland’s president has even offered base access at the port of Berbera, right across from Yemen.¹¹ Influence over both Hormuz and Bab al-Mandab would mean critical control over some of the most important shipping lines in the world.

The Security Council#

Putting more countries on the Security Council won’t make it more effective. It will make things even more complicated. The Council already gets stuck with five vetoes. Add more permanent members and every diplomatic solution takes even longer, if it comes at all.

You can see the balance of power hasn’t shifted because wars always have the same major players behind them, as direct or indirect beneficiaries. Those players are also the strongest militaries, the places where innovation happens, and the biggest weapon makers and sellers.

People will say Japan and Germany have huge economies, so they deserve a permanent seat. But they aren’t big players in conflicts. They don’t have the post-colonial reach the UK and France still have, and neither of them has nuclear weapons. India does have nukes, but it doesn’t have global political reach, and it isn’t a player in the major conflicts outside its own region. An economy alone doesn’t make you a great power.

Adding seats would change who is represented, but not who actually decides wars.

And realistically, it won’t happen anyway. Changing the Charter needs ratification by two-thirds of UN members, including all five permanent members.¹² The P5 are not going to vote to share their own power.

For now, the balance of power remains the same.