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In the DS9 episode 'In the Pale Moonlight", Captain Sisko undertook an act of coercion with the help of Elim Garak, implicating the Dominion in an assassination plot against a high ranking Romulan senator. Their ploy was successful, and the Romulans joined the alliance.

At the conclusion of the war, if the Romulans had found out that they gone to war on the basis of a lie, what would have been the consequences?

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The consequences would have been unlikely to lead to outright war, but it is very likely that Sisko and Garak would have been given over to the Romulans for trial. Dr McCoy and Captain Kirk were similarly given to the Klingons for trial and imprisonment during the film Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.

Cardassia certainly can't afford a war with Romulus at this point, and the Federation, while better off than the Cardassians, still came out of the war worse off than the Romulan Star Empire. All told, the Romulans seem to have come out of the Dominion War as the dominant power in the region, with the Federation scrambling to catch up, as evidenced by Federation willingness to acquiesce to Son'aa demands in Star Trek: Insurrection.

As events occurred, the Dominion War was followed in the Romulan Empire by a military coup and a barely-averted war with the Federation anyway (seen in Star Trek: Nemesis) so the discovery of Sisko and Garak's actions may not necessarily have led to anything different in this case. If Romulus, an aggressive, expansionist power which already had friction with the Federation, didn't feel capable of starting a war against the Federation following the Dominion War in the normal time line, it is unlikely revelations about Federation actions during the war would push them over the edge.

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    I guess if the Romulans found out and went public, the Feds would reveal how the Romulans committed an act of war by killing the crew of the Prometheus and stealing the ship. Politicians have to consider what their enemy has on them before revealing secrets in a war of information
    – user16416
    Sep 27, 2013 at 11:43
  • Funnily enough, the Federation probably had less proof about the Prometheus incident than the Romulans would have about that assassination. Sep 28, 2013 at 6:46

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