The Big Picture | War Looms as the US Midterms Draw Closer

My reading of today’s developments is that the approaching US elections are narrowing the room for manoeuvre without creating a clear path towards ending the war. Washington wants pressure on Tehran to produce results. Iran’s threats against shipping suggest it still sees maritime disruption as a source of leverage.

The central risk is miscalculation: each side may believe additional pressure will force the other to compromise. For Gulf states, shipping companies and civilians across the region, that could mean another escalation before either side has defined an achievable political settlement.

My Top 5

1. Washington prepares options for strikes before the midterms

The White House has asked the Pentagon to prepare options for strikes on Iran before the November 3 elections, according to two administration officials cited by The Atlantic. Targets, scale and whether to proceed remain undecided. Even advocates acknowledge that limited strikes alone would not secure Hormuz or quickly reduce fuel prices.

Separately, Barak Ravid reports that the Pentagon ordered CENTCOM to prepare for possible renewed operations. Preparation does not establish a presidential decision.

2. Yemen’s escalation reaches Aden airport as claims of Saudi-backed forces advance prove premature

Yemen’s Transport Ministry says Houthi missiles and explosive drones targeted Aden’s international airport as fighting intensified against Saudi-backed government forces. The escalation follows a government offensive aimed at recovering territory around Bab al-Mandab and Mocha. Reuters also reports that an earlier government claim to have reached Mocha was premature, according to military sources and analysts. Battlefield announcements need careful scrutiny as the fighting develops.

3. Iran threatens coastal routes as tanker attacks rise

Revolutionary Guards adviser Mohammadreza Naqdi says Iran will close routes near Oman’s coast that he describes as illegal and used to transfer oil from smaller vessels to tankers. This is an Iranian threat, not confirmation that those routes have been closed.

A separate Reuters report cites maritime security sources recording at least 12 attacks on oil and gas tankers around Hormuz between September 28 and October 5—the highest weekly total they have tracked since the war began. The International Maritime Organization had recorded nine incidents for the same period, reflecting a different verification process.

4. The service economy behind Iran’s oil exports

The New York Times examines the commercial networks supporting Iranian oil shipments off Malaysia. Ship-to-ship transfers are sustained by businesses providing fuel, repairs, provisions and other maritime services, helping cargoes continue towards China despite US sanctions pressure.

The significance extends beyond the tankers themselves: disrupting this trade requires confronting a dispersed network of service providers with strong commercial incentives to keep it operating.

5. Renewed activity at a suspected Iranian weaponisation site

The Institute for Science and International Security reports increased vehicle traffic, debris clearance, repairs and earthmoving at Minzadayi, northeast of Tehran, following Israeli strikes in March.

The institute associates the compound with nuclear-warhead research, drawing partly on Israeli statements and public reporting. It assesses that the activity could indicate an effort to restore weapons-development capabilities. The satellite imagery establishes renewed activity; it does not, by itself, demonstrate that nuclear-weapons work has resumed.

Beyond the Headlines

Oil exports can recover while shipping remains unsafe

One detail deserves more attention: figures cited by Reuters showed Gulf crude exports exceeding pre-war levels on 14 days in September. But those totals included shipments through Hormuz, the Red Sea and terminals or offshore transfers in the Gulf of Oman. They do not establish that normal passage through Hormuz has been restored.

My takeaway: export volumes measure how much oil producers manage to move; they do not fully capture the danger, expense or fragility of moving it. A recovery built on alternative routes and improvised transfers could remain vulnerable to relatively small disruptions. That distinction matters when assessing claims that the energy crisis is easing.

What I’m Watching

• US–Iran preparations before November 3: Whether military planning is followed by observable deployments, force-protection measures or changes in diplomacy. I’m also watching for verifiable Iranian preparations, rather than relying on outside assessments of Tehran’s intentions.

• Yemen’s shifting front lines: Independently confirmed changes around Taiz, Mocha and Bab al-Mandab, alongside the security of Aden’s airport and the cohesion of the anti-Houthi coalition.

• The pattern of attacks around Hormuz: Whether attacks become more frequent, spread towards alternative routes near Oman, or prompt more operators to suspend passage. Incident totals matter, but so do their location and commercial consequences.

From MENA Nuance | Latest Analysis

10 Ways October 7 Changed the Middle East

Three years on, October 7 has accelerated changes in deterrence, regional alliances and the geography of conflict. My latest analysis examines ten transformations—and why greater military power has yet to produce a stable regional order.

Video / Podcast

China’s Military Modernisation in 2026: What Matters Now and What’s Next

This Janes webinar explores a military transformation whose ambitions extend well beyond Taiwan: sustaining distant operations, protecting maritime supply routes, strengthening nuclear deterrence and challenging American military advantages.

The discussion covers China’s expanding carrier fleet, quieter submarines, growing stealth-fighter force and mobile strategic missiles. It also examines the integration of crewed aircraft and drones, including the potential for two-seat fighters to coordinate unmanned platforms in reconnaissance, targeting and electronic warfare.

For readers focused on the Middle East, a particularly relevant theme is how China studies the region’s wars: the performance of air and missile defences, the challenge of countering drones, and the ability to maintain operations when communications are disrupted. Alongside lessons from Ukraine and India–Pakistan clashes, these experiences inform China’s military development.

The broader question is how China’s growing maritime reach—and its dependence on overseas supplies—will shape its interests in the Gulf and Indian Ocean, while the United States faces competing demands on its forces.

Webinar details · On-demand listing at Carahsoft, listed as “China’s Military Modernisation: Key Trends Reshaping the PLA.”

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October 7, 2023 did not create the conflicts that have shaped the Middle East for decades. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Iran-Israel rivalry, competition between regional powers, and the struggle over the American role in the region all predated it.

But October 7 was an accelerator. It broke assumptions about deterrence, connected conflicts that had previously been managed as separate arenas, and set in motion a chain of events that transformed the regional balance.

Three years later, ten changes stand out.

1. Palestine Returned to the Centre of Regional Politics

Before October 7, there was a growing assumption that the Middle East could move forward while leaving the Palestinian question unresolved. The Abraham Accords had established relations between Israel and several Arab states, while negotiations over possible Saudi-Israeli normalisation appeared to point towards a new regional architecture.

October 7 shattered that assumption.

The Gaza war returned Palestine to the centre of Arab public opinion and regional diplomacy. Normalisation has not disappeared, but it has become politically more complicated. The broader lesson is difficult to ignore: regional integration involving Israel may continue, but building a stable Middle Eastern order while indefinitely bypassing the Palestinian question has become much harder.

2. Separate Conflicts Became One Interconnected Regional Theatre

Before October 7, Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen could still be treated as largely separate security theatres.

That distinction has weakened dramatically.

War in Gaza activated the Lebanese front. The Houthis turned the Red Sea into another theatre of confrontation. Iraqi armed factions targeted American and Israeli interests. Syria became increasingly entangled in the confrontation. Eventually, Iran and Israel moved from indirect confrontation to direct exchanges.

The result is an increasingly interconnected regional security environment in which escalation in one arena can rapidly affect several others.

3. The Iran-Israel Shadow War Became a Direct Confrontation

For decades, Iran and Israel largely avoided sustained direct warfare. Their struggle was fought through intelligence operations, cyberattacks, assassinations, Israeli strikes in Syria and Iran’s network of regional allies.

That barrier has now been broken.

The direct exchanges between Iran and Israel beginning in 2024, followed by the much larger confrontations that came afterwards, changed one of the fundamental rules of Middle Eastern security.

The significance goes beyond individual attacks. The Iran-Israel conflict can no longer be understood simply as a proxy war. Direct military confrontation has become part of the strategic landscape.

4. Iran’s “Axis of Resistance” Was Weakened—but Not Eliminated

The regional network Iran spent decades constructing has undergone perhaps its greatest transformation.

Hamas suffered enormous military losses. Hezbollah was badly weakened and lost much of its senior leadership. The fall of Bashar al-Assad’s government in Syria removed one of Tehran’s most important state allies and disrupted the geographical network connecting Iran to Lebanon.

Yet declaring the end of the axis would be premature.

The Houthis demonstrated a capacity to affect international shipping far beyond Yemen. Iraqi factions remain important political and military actors. Iran has also sought to adapt its relationships with its remaining partners.

What has occurred is therefore better understood as a restructuring of Iran’s regional network rather than its disappearance.

5. Syria Moved From the Iranian Axis to a New Regional Competition

The fall of the Assad government was another major consequence of the regional transformation accelerated after October 7.

For decades, Syria had been central to Iran’s regional strategy. It provided Tehran with a state ally in the Levant and an essential geographical connection to Hezbollah.

That structure has been broken.

Iran’s influence has declined sharply, Turkey has acquired greater weight, Israel has expanded its military activity, and Arab and international actors are competing to shape Syria’s future.

Syria has consequently moved from being a relatively predictable component of the Iranian-led axis to becoming one of the principal arenas in which the region’s new balance of power is being negotiated.

6. Israel Became Militarily More Dominant—but Not Necessarily More Secure

The wars following October 7 demonstrated Israel’s extraordinary military and intelligence capabilities.

Israel severely degraded Hamas, struck Hezbollah’s leadership and military infrastructure, expanded operations in Syria, and demonstrated an ability to strike targets deep inside Iran.

But military superiority raises another question: can battlefield dominance be converted into a sustainable political order?

Weakening Hamas does not resolve the Palestinian question. Weakening Hezbollah does not automatically stabilise Lebanon. Damaging Iranian military capabilities does not necessarily end the strategic competition with Tehran.

This creates one of the central paradoxes of the post-October 7 Middle East: Israel has demonstrated greater military power while the regional environment around it has become more unstable.

7. The Gulf States Became Even More Important

Another important shift is the growing diplomatic and economic weight of the Gulf states.

Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates were already becoming increasingly important before October 7. The conflicts that followed accelerated that trend.

Qatar became central to mediation. Saudi Arabia expanded its diplomatic role while attempting to protect its ambitious economic transformation from regional instability. The UAE continued building extensive economic and political networks across the region.

Their interests are not identical, but they share an important priority: preventing permanent regional warfare from undermining economic development.

The centre of gravity in Arab politics has consequently continued moving towards the Gulf.

8. The Red Sea and Strait of Hormuz Became Front Lines

October 7 also changed the geography of regional conflict.

The Houthis demonstrated that a non-state actor operating from Yemen could disrupt one of the world’s most important maritime trade routes. Attacks around the Red Sea forced shipping companies to reconsider routes and drew outside military powers directly into the crisis.

At the other end of the Arabian Peninsula, the Strait of Hormuz has become increasingly central to confrontation with Iran.

This has connected Middle Eastern security even more closely to the global economy. A conflict beginning in Gaza or involving Iran can now quickly affect shipping routes, energy supplies, insurance costs and international trade thousands of kilometres away.

9. America’s Attempt to Step Back From the Middle East Became Harder

For years, Washington has tried to reduce the resources devoted to the Middle East and concentrate more attention on China and the Indo-Pacific.

October 7 demonstrated how difficult that strategy can be.

The United States was pulled back into regional military operations: supporting Israel, protecting shipping, responding to attacks against American forces and managing escalating confrontation with Iran.

This creates another contradiction in the emerging regional order. Washington wants its Middle Eastern partners to assume greater responsibility for regional security, but repeated crises continue to draw American military power back into the region.

The question is therefore no longer simply whether America wants to leave the Middle East. It is whether the Middle East will allow Washington to disengage.

10. The Old Middle East Is Disappearing, but a New One Has Not Yet Emerged

Perhaps the most important change is also the hardest to define.

The regional order that existed before October 7 has been badly disrupted. The old Iran-Israel rules of deterrence have changed. Iran’s network of allies has been weakened and reorganised. Syria has undergone a fundamental transformation. Israel’s military position has strengthened while its political challenges have deepened. Gulf states have gained influence. The Palestinian question has returned to the centre of regional politics.

But none of this has yet produced a stable alternative.

There is no clear new balance of power and no broadly accepted regional security architecture. Instead, the Middle East appears to be passing through an extended transition in which several powers are simultaneously testing how far they can reshape the regional order.

Bottom Line: October 7 Was an Accelerator

It would be misleading to attribute every subsequent transformation to October 7. Many of these trends were already underway: Iran and Israel were already engaged in a shadow war, Gulf states were already rising, Washington was already trying to reduce its regional military burden, and Syria was already deeply fragmented.

October 7 changed their speed and direction.

It connected previously separate conflicts and forced regional actors to make choices they had previously tried to avoid. Most importantly, it broke several assumptions on which the previous regional order rested: that the Palestinian issue could be contained, that Iran and Israel would avoid direct war, that proxy conflicts could remain geographically limited, and that economic integration could gradually replace geopolitical confrontation.

Three years later, the Middle East has not yet found a new equilibrium.

October 7 did not create a new Middle East. It accelerated the breakdown of the old one—and opened a struggle over what will replace it.

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The Big Picture | Between War and Diplomacy

The Middle East is entering another period in which military escalation and diplomacy are advancing in parallel. Washington is weighing its next steps toward Iran after senior national-security officials met at Camp David, while Tehran is preparing for a potentially broader response if large-scale US attacks resume—even as diplomatic channels remain open.

The same tension is playing out in Yemen. Saudi-backed forces have launched a major counteroffensive against the Houthis, with fighting reaching the strategically vital Bab al-Mandeb area, while Riyadh continues to explore ways of containing the conflict diplomatically. Reuters

Taken together, these developments point to a region preparing for war while still searching for an exit from it. The question for the coming days is whether military pressure will strengthen diplomacy—or close the remaining space for it.

My Top 5

1. Washington weighs renewed war with Iran at secret Camp David meeting
Senior US officials reportedly discussed stalled diplomacy, possible renewed large-scale military operations against Iran, and Yemen. Combined with additional US deployments and Iranian preparations, it raises the central question of whether the ceasefire/pause is becoming only an interval between two rounds of war.

2. Saudi Arabia prepares major Yemen offensive while testing diplomacy with Iran

Saudi Arabia is preparing a potentially major Saudi-backed Yemeni offensive around Bab al-Mandeb and the Red Sea coast, while Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan simultaneously consider an Iranian proposal for political engagement with the Houthis. This is strategically more important than reporting each development separately because it suggests a classic fight-and-negotiate strategy: improve the military balance before negotiating.

Reuters investigation into Saudi military preparations

Reuters on the Saudi-Turkish-Pakistani talks

3. Iran prepares for the possibility of another major round of war

Tehran fears another attack; it is reportedly making military preparations on the assumption that the US military option remains active while simultaneously leaving diplomacy open.

4. Hormuz is functioning again—but under an extraordinary US-protected maritime system while Iran continues targeting ships

Oil and gas traffic has recovered substantially, but shipping is operating under heightened US military protection while attacks continue. The strategic question is whether this represents a sustainable new equilibrium or merely a temporary mechanism keeping the world’s most important energy chokepoint functioning during an unresolved war.

Financial Times on the recovery of Gulf energy exports

Wall Street Journal on renewed attacks in Hormuz

5. Ethiopia’s Tigray war risks becoming a wider Horn of Africa conflict

Renewed fighting in Tigray is intersecting with the Ethiopia-Eritrea rupture and Ethiopia’s accusations against Egypt and Sudan. That potentially connects the Tigray conflict with Red Sea competition, GERD tensions and the wider struggle for influence in the Horn of Africa.

Beyond the Headlines | Sheikh Tahnoon and the New Architecture of Emirati Power

One of the most revealing stories this week is not about a battlefield, but about the extraordinary concentration of money, intelligence, technology and geopolitical influence around Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the UAE’s national security adviser. A major investigation by The Guardian portrays Tahnoon as occupying an unusual position at the intersection of Abu Dhabi’s security establishment and an economic empire it estimates at around $1.5 trillion, spanning sovereign wealth, banking, infrastructure and technology.

The most consequential part of this story is artificial intelligence. Tahnoon chairs G42, which has become deeply connected to the American technology ecosystem. Microsoft has invested $1.5 billion in G42, while the company and its associated AI investment fund have partnerships or investments involving OpenAI, Anthropic and xAI. At the same time, the Guardian traces personnel links between G42 and earlier Emirati cyber-security operations, including DarkMatter and Project Raven—claims G42 disputes, saying it was established as an AI and technology company and operates under rigorous security and compliance frameworks.

The larger significance goes beyond one powerful Emirati royal. Abu Dhabi appears to be pursuing a model in which capital, state security and emerging technology reinforce one another as instruments of national power. The UAE’s planned AI campus is projected to reach 5GW of capacity, while G42 is also participating in large-scale US data-centre investment. This places a relatively small Gulf state increasingly close to the infrastructure on which the next generation of global AI may depend.

Why it matters: The traditional sources of Gulf influence were oil, sovereign wealth and strategic geography. The emerging model adds something potentially more consequential: control over data, computing capacity and AI infrastructure. Sheikh Tahnoon’s rise therefore offers a window into how Gulf power itself is changing—from energy wealth financing geopolitical influence to wealth being converted into technological and informational power.

What I’m Watching

• After Riyadh — Can the Mecca Pact open a political track with the Houthis?

Saudi Arabia, Türkiye and Pakistan convened the Mecca defence pact committee in Riyadh on 5 October amid an escalating Saudi-Houthi confrontation. Iran has proposed political engagement with the Houthis as an alternative to further military escalation. The key signal to watch is whether the three states turn that proposal into an actual diplomatic channel—or whether Riyadh’s military campaign in Yemen becomes the dominant track.

• Hormuz — Are recovering oil flows sustainable?

Middle Eastern crude exports recovered sharply in September, at times exceeding pre-war levels, but the rebound remains extremely fragile. At least seven tanker attacks have been reported since late September, while shipping and insurance costs remain exceptionally high. Watch whether tanker traffic continues recovering despite the attacks—or begins falling again. That may be one of the clearest indicators of whether the region is moving toward economic stabilisation or another energy shock.

• Washington and Tehran — Is the next round military or diplomatic?

After senior US national-security officials met at Camp David to discuss Iran and Yemen, the central unresolved question is whether Washington is preparing renewed military operations or using the threat of escalation to strengthen its negotiating position. Iran, meanwhile, says reopening Hormuz remains conditional on implementation of terms discussed through intermediaries. The signal to watch is not rhetoric but movement: new US force deployments, another round of mediated talks, or concrete steps toward implementing a maritime agreement.

From MENA Nuance | Latest Analysis

Trump Says a ‘Big Decision’ on Iran Is Coming. What Are His Options?

Trump frames the choice as diplomacy or overwhelming force, but Washington’s real options are more complicated—and none offers an easy path out of the escalating confrontation with Iran.

Video / Podcast

Inside the Hostage Negotiations — Brett McGurk on Brink

In this extended conversation, Brett McGurk—President Biden’s former Middle East coordinator and one of the central U.S. negotiators after October 7—takes listeners inside the diplomacy behind the hostage and ceasefire negotiations that followed the Hamas attack. The discussion accompanies his new book, Brink: Inside the Race to Free the October 7 Hostages, released on 6 October.

One particularly revealing part of McGurk’s account concerns what was happening immediately before October 7. He says Saudi ambassador Princess Reema bint Bandar was in his White House office on 6 October 2023 as Washington and Riyadh worked toward a package involving Saudi-Israeli normalization, a U.S.-Saudi civil nuclear agreement, and a political pathway for the Palestinians. According to McGurk’s account, the parties were working toward completing the framework by the end of 2023 and launching it in early 2024. The October 7 attack abruptly transformed that diplomatic landscape.

The conversation is also worth hearing critically. Brink presents an insider’s defense of the Biden administration’s crisis diplomacy: McGurk argues that U.S. officials repeatedly came close to agreements and worked to prevent the Gaza war from becoming a wider regional conflict. Yet the book arrives amid continuing debate over precisely that record—particularly whether Washington’s approach to Israel and Gaza contained escalation or helped create the conditions for the much broader regional confrontation that followed. The result is more than a memoir of negotiations: it is an important contribution to the emerging argument over how the post-October 7 Middle East reached its present point.

[Watch the full conversation →]

Also worth watching: McGurk is discussing Brink with Washington Post foreign-affairs columnist David Ignatius at the Atlantic Council, focusing on Gaza, the U.S.–Israel relationship, Iran, and the future of American Middle East policy.

[Brett McGurk on Brink — Atlantic Council]

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On September 30, the last US-led coalition forces left Iraq, closing another chapter in a military presence that began with the 2003 invasion. American troops had already withdrawn once, in 2011, only to return three years later when ISIS captured large parts of Iraq. Twelve years after that return, the coalition mission has now formally ended.

Baghdad marked the departure as a milestone in restoring full Iraqi sovereignty. Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi declared October 1 “Sovereignty Day,” describing the withdrawal as the beginning of a new phase based on stronger Iraqi institutions and Iraqi control over national decisions. Trump celebrated it from a different angle, calling the US involvement a “very expensive excursion into Hell” and presenting the withdrawal as the end of a costly American entanglement.

But there is another reading of what happened. With Iran still influential in Iraqi politics, powerful armed factions resisting disarmament and ISIS not entirely eliminated, some observers see the withdrawal as leaving Iraq dangerously exposed. The Wall Street Journal captured this argument starkly in its headline: “The U.S. Military Exits Iraq, Leaving Behind a Nation in Peril.”

This creates a comparison with Afghanistan: has Washington once again withdrawn before the country it leaves behind is ready to stand on its own?

1. Iraq Has to Stand on Its Own

An indefinite foreign military presence cannot be the foundation of Iraqi sovereignty. At some point, international assistance has to stop substituting for national responsibility.

Iraq today is very different from the state that emerged from the chaos of the 2003 invasion, or the country that watched ISIS capture Mosul and large parts of its territory in 2014. Over the past two decades, the Iraqi army, intelligence agencies and counterterrorism forces have accumulated substantial experience. ISIS has lost its territorial control and is now reduced largely to scattered cells, although it remains a security threat.

Even Washington presents the withdrawal in these terms. CENTCOM commander Admiral Brad Cooper said responsibility for Iraq’s security was now being handed back to the Iraqi government, while the Pentagon described the transition as the move from a wartime coalition mission to an Iraqi-led security effort. The US will still provide targeted intelligence and training support.

This does not mean Iraq is free of serious threats. ISIS remnants remain active, powerful armed factions still operate with considerable autonomy, and Kurdish leaders have raised concerns about security after the removal of US forces and air-defence systems.

But these challenges also make the case for Iraqi responsibility stronger. After more than two decades of foreign military involvement, there will never be a perfect moment for withdrawal. If Iraq is to function as a sovereign state, its own institutions must ultimately be responsible for defending its territory, controlling its borders and confronting armed actors that challenge state authority. At some point, Iraq has to stand on its own.

2. From Military Dependency to a More Mature US-Iraq Relationship

The withdrawal should not be understood as the end of the US-Iraq relationship. It is an opportunity to change its nature.

For more than two decades, the relationship has been dominated by war, military bases, ISIS and recurring security crises. That made sense at particular moments, but it should not define relations between the two countries indefinitely. A more mature partnership should increasingly focus on trade and investment, energy, technology, education and institutional development, alongside intelligence sharing, training and counterterrorism cooperation.

This transition was also not a sudden decision. It was the result of a process pursued by successive Iraqi governments. I witnessed part of that process firsthand while serving as a strategic communications adviser to the Iraqi prime minister. By 2021, the number of US troops had already been reduced from around 5,000 to 2,500, and the Kadhimi government negotiated the formal end of their combat mission, shifting their role towards training, advising and supporting Iraqi forces. The Washington Post The Sudani government continued the same trajectory. In 2024, Baghdad and Washington agreed on a phased end to the coalition mission and a transition towards bilateral security cooperation. State.gov Two years later, that process has reached its conclusion with the departure of the remaining US forces. Reuters Seen from Baghdad, therefore, this was less an abrupt American exit than the final stage of a long Iraqi effort to move the relationship from military dependency towards a more conventional partnership.

Military withdrawal does not mean the end of security cooperation either. Washington and Baghdad have already discussed moving from the coalition framework towards a conventional bilateral security relationship, including training, intelligence and other forms of cooperation.

This could ultimately make the relationship healthier. A normal relationship between two sovereign states should not require one country to maintain troops permanently on the territory of the other. Removing that issue also takes away one of the most politically sensitive points in US-Iraq relations.

Paradoxically, therefore, the departure of American soldiers could make the US-Iraq relationship broader rather than weaker. Baghdad can engage Washington less as a country hosting a foreign military force and more as a partner with which it shares economic, security and strategic interests. The success of the withdrawal should ultimately be measured not by how much American involvement disappears, but by whether military dependency can be replaced by a more balanced and mutually beneficial partnership.

3. Withdrawal Removes the Militias’ Most Powerful Argument

The US withdrawal also removes one of the strongest arguments used by armed factions to justify keeping their weapons outside full state control. For years, Iran-aligned groups have described their weapons as necessary for “resistance” against the American military presence. Some explicitly made the departure of US forces a condition for discussing disarmament.

The Iraqi government has deliberately linked the two issues. As the withdrawal approached, Baghdad argued that the end of the coalition mission should be followed by bringing weapons under state authority. Government spokesman Sabah al-Numan said the issue of armed factions would be addressed after coalition forces had left.

That moment has now arrived. If the foreign military presence was the justification for resistance, what is the justification for maintaining autonomous armed forces after those troops have gone? The withdrawal therefore shifts the debate from resisting foreign occupation to a more fundamental question: who has the right to carry weapons and make decisions about war and peace in Iraq?

This does not mean the militias will simply disarm. Some of the most powerful factions have rejected surrendering their weapons or attached additional conditions to doing so, and the government has already been forced to extend the process beyond its original September 30 deadline.

But this makes the withdrawal more, not less, important. It removes a central justification for armed groups operating independently of the state. From now on, the debate is harder to frame around American occupation. It is increasingly about whether these groups are ultimately prepared to accept the authority of the Iraqi state—or intend to preserve a parallel military power regardless of whether foreign troops are present.

4. Will Iran Fill the Vacuum?

The strongest argument against the withdrawal is that the United States is leaving a vacuum that Iran will fill. The concern is understandable. Tehran retains substantial political, economic and security influence in Iraq and longstanding relationships with powerful armed factions. The current US-Iran confrontation makes the question even more sensitive.

But this argument risks treating Iraq as if it were still the fragile state that emerged after 2003. Over the past two decades, Iraqi governments have accumulated considerable experience in managing competing relationships with Iran, the United States, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and other regional powers. Baghdad has increasingly tried to diversify these relationships rather than place Iraq exclusively in either the American or Iranian camp.

Iranian influence will not disappear with the American withdrawal. But keeping US troops in Iraq indefinitely would not eliminate it either. Much of Iran’s influence comes through geography, trade, religious and social connections, political relationships and Iraqi armed groups. The answer to excessive Iranian influence cannot therefore be permanent American military deployment. Ultimately, only stronger Iraqi institutions can prevent Iran—or any other foreign power—from exercising disproportionate influence.

There is also a paradox. A continued American military presence can itself strengthen the position of Iran-aligned factions by allowing them to justify their weapons as necessary for resisting a foreign occupation. Removing that presence takes away one of their most powerful political arguments without requiring Iraq to end its broader relationship with Washington.

More importantly, keeping American bases in Iraq during a direct US-Iran confrontation carries its own danger. Those bases can become targets for Iran-aligned groups, prompting American retaliation and turning Iraqi territory into a battlefield between two outside powers. Iraq has experienced this cycle before, with attacks on US forces followed by American strikes against Iraqi armed groups.

The real choice, therefore, is not simply between American presence and Iranian dominance. It is whether Iraq can become strong enough to maintain relationships with both Washington and Tehran while preventing either from using its territory to confront the other. That—not the permanent presence of foreign troops—is the more meaningful test of Iraqi sovereignty.

5. Sovereignty Is More Than the Departure of Foreign Soldiers

The departure of American troops is an important milestone, but it does not by itself make Iraq fully sovereign. Foreign influence in Iraq extends far beyond military bases. Washington retains significant economic and financial leverage, including through Iraq’s dependence on the US dollar system. Iraqi oil revenues are still deposited in an account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, giving Washington considerable influence over Iraq’s access to its own dollar revenues.

Nor is the United States the only outside power with influence. Iran maintains deep political, economic and security relationships inside Iraq, while Turkey continues to maintain a military presence in the north and conducts operations against the PKK. At the same time, several Iraqi armed factions retain weapons and military structures outside the full control of the state.

This is why sovereignty cannot simply be measured by the number of foreign soldiers on Iraqi soil. It also means controlling national territory, monopolising the legitimate use of force, making independent political and economic decisions, and managing relationships with stronger neighbours and international powers.

September 30 ended one form of foreign military presence. It did not complete the project of Iraqi sovereignty. The more difficult stage begins now: turning the symbolism of withdrawal into effective state authority.

Bottom Line: How Will US Forces in Iraq Be Remembered?

The comparison with Afghanistan is tempting, but it is misleading. Iraq in 2026 is not Afghanistan in 2021. It has functioning state institutions, experienced security forces, substantial economic resources and a political system that, despite its serious weaknesses, has survived repeated crises. The withdrawal therefore does not represent the collapse of a US-backed state, but the transfer of full security responsibility to an Iraqi government that has spent more than two decades developing the capacity to assume it.

How the American military presence itself will be remembered is more complicated. Its legacy remains deeply contested inside Iraq. For some Iraqis, US forces ended one of the region’s most brutal dictatorships and later played a decisive role in helping Iraq defeat ISIS. For others, the 2003 invasion destroyed the Iraqi state, opened years of violence and instability, and contributed to an enormous human cost. Estimates of deaths attributable directly and indirectly to the war vary widely, with some studies placing the total in the hundreds of thousands and others substantially higher.

History is therefore unlikely to remember the American presence in Iraq through a single narrative. It will remember both the soldiers who helped remove a dictatorship and defeat ISIS, and the invasion and occupation that contributed to profound instability and human suffering. These two legacies are not mutually exclusive. They are both part of the history the United States leaves behind.

The threat came at an unusual moment. On the same day, US and Iranian officials held indirect talks for around three hours on the sidelines of the UN gathering, mediated through intermediaries. Trump later described it as a “very good meeting.” The combination of talks and threats captures where the conflict now stands: diplomacy has not disappeared, but neither side is prepared to pursue it without maintaining pressure on the other.

Seven months of war have significantly altered the regional balance and handed Iran some new cards, but neither Washington nor Tehran has achieved the political outcome it sought. The United States has demonstrated its overwhelming capacity to strike Iran and damage its military and strategic infrastructure. What it has not yet done is translate that military superiority into a settlement on American terms. Iran, meanwhile, has survived the initial military shock and retained important instruments of pressure, particularly its missile capabilities and its leverage over regional shipping routes. But Tehran has also failed to achieve its central objective: ending the military and economic threat against it and securing conditions under which it can rebuild without the prospect of another round of war. The continuing disruption around the Strait of Hormuz has become one of the most consequential pressure points in this struggle, affecting not only the two belligerents but Gulf states and global energy markets.

Both sides have therefore climbed an escalation ladder from which the exits are becoming increasingly costly. For Washington, accepting Iranian demands risks making months of military escalation look as though they ended in concessions. For Tehran, accepting Washington’s terms under military pressure could leave it vulnerable to renewed coercion later. Yet further escalation carries costs neither side can fully control.

Trump describes the decision as a choice between a deal and overwhelming force. The reality is less binary. Washington has at least four paths available: negotiate a settlement, return to major military escalation, continue maximum pressure without a full-scale war, or allow the confrontation to settle into a prolonged conflict that neither side formally chooses but both learn to manage. None offers Trump an easy endgame.

1. Make the Deal Trump Says He Wants

The most obvious option for Trump is the one he has repeatedly demanded: make a deal. But reaching one now would be considerably more difficult than it was a few months ago. The war has changed the dynamics. It has not degraded the Islamic Republic to the point where it has little choice but to accept Washington’s terms. Instead, it has also handed Tehran new bargaining cards, particularly its ability to disrupt shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, exert pressure around Bab al-Mandab through its regional allies, and causing significant damage to US military assets and interests across the region. Any agreement reached now would therefore look very different from the kind of deal Trump envisaged before the war, when the expectation was that military pressure would weaken Iran’s negotiating position and make a settlement on US terms easier to achieve. Equally, a deal that allowed Tehran to present the outcome as an Iranian victory would be politically difficult for Trump to accept.

The experience of the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding illustrates this problem. In June, following talks mediated by Pakistan, Washington and Tehran agreed to a 14-point framework intended to end military operations and provide a 60-day window for negotiating a final settlement. The arrangement did not survive. Fighting resumed, the two sides accused each other of violations, and Trump announced that he was withdrawing from the agreement before it formally expired in August.

The collapse of the Islamabad agreement matters because it deepened distrust on both sides and raised the price of returning to negotiations. For Tehran, the failure of the agreement strengthened the argument that another ceasefire has little value without stronger guarantees that Washington will abide by it. For Washington, however, providing Iran with additional concessions or guarantees creates the opposite problem. The more concessions Tehran extracts after surviving months of US military pressure, the easier it becomes for the Iranian leadership to portray the outcome as evidence that it withstood the war and forced Washington to compromise. That would make it much harder for Trump to present the settlement as an American victory rather than an acknowledgment of the limits of military pressure.

Iran has consequently set a much higher threshold for returning to negotiations. Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, said Tehran had transmitted seven conditions to Washington through Qatar. Only some have been made public, including an end to the war on all fronts, the release of frozen Iranian funds and an end to the US naval blockade. These are not simply preconditions for discussing the pre-war nuclear dispute. They reflect the new realities created by the war and Iran’s attempt to ensure that any negotiation also addresses the military and economic pressure it has faced during the conflict.

Washington’s demands have been also expanding due the results of the war. For Washington, now it is not only about the nuclear issue, but also also issues created or intensified by seven months of warfare: sanctions, frozen assets, the naval blockade, freedom of navigation through Hormuz, Iran’s missile capabilities and the broader regional security environment.

This creates a difficult political problem for Trump. Any serious agreement will require Washington to give Iran something in return—whether sanctions relief, access to frozen funds, changes to the naval blockade, security guarantees, or some combination of these. After seven months of war and repeated claims that Iran has been severely weakened, accepting significant Iranian demands could make it harder for Trump to present the eventual settlement as the victory for which the war was fought. Tehran faces the mirror image of the same problem: after absorbing months of attacks, it cannot easily accept an agreement that appears to reward military coercion.

The obstacle, then, is no longer simply getting Washington and Tehran back to the negotiating table. It is finding a deal that both can accept while allowing each to argue that seven months of war strengthened rather than weakened its position. Paradoxically, the war that was supposed to make a deal easier may have made the political price of reaching one considerably higher for both sides.

2. Return to Major Military Escalation

Trump’s second option is to do what his warning to “annihilate” the Islamic Republic implies: escalate the war dramatically. The United States unquestionably retains the military capacity to inflict far greater damage on Iran. The more difficult question is what escalation would achieve politically. After nearly seven months of conflict, further bombing would have to do more than destroy another missile facility, naval installation or command centre. It would have to compel Tehran to accept terms it has so far refused. Iran’s previous responses suggest that further attacks could instead produce another, potentially more destructive, round of retaliation. Iranian attacks have already damaged US military facilities across several Gulf states, while the conflict has severely disrupted shipping through Hormuz and contributed to wider pressure on regional energy infrastructure.

This leaves Trump facing what might be called an escalation trap. Having already used extensive conventional air power without securing Iran’s capitulation, each additional step has to be more consequential than the one before it if escalation is to retain its coercive credibility. Yet the more destructive the American action becomes, the greater the incentive for Iran to widen its own response. At the extreme end, three broad options remain available, but each carries risks that could outweigh whatever immediate military advantage it produces.

The first would be the use of a tactical nuclear weapon against deeply buried or otherwise difficult-to-destroy targets. There is no public evidence that Trump has decided to take such a step, and it should therefore be treated as an extreme hypothetical rather than an imminent option. But if Washington crossed the nuclear threshold, the consequences would extend far beyond Iran. Tehran would have a powerful incentive to respond with its most destructive remaining conventional capabilities and to expand the geography of the conflict, rather than capitulate. More importantly, the first wartime use of a nuclear weapon since 1945 would break a taboo that has endured for more than eight decades. That could weaken the broader international restraint surrounding nuclear weapons at precisely the moment Russia has repeatedly used nuclear threats in connection with its war in Ukraine and has revised its doctrine in ways that experts say lower the threshold for their use. It would not automatically cause Russia to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine, but it could make the international norm against doing so substantially harder to sustain.

A second option would be a much broader conventional campaign against Iran’s civilian and economic infrastructure: energy facilities, ports, transport networks, industrial capacity and other assets that allow the state and economy to function. Such attacks could impose enormous costs on Tehran, but they would also give Iran an incentive to respond on the same level. Iran has already demonstrated an ability to impose costs beyond its own territory, almost the entire region. A shift from predominantly military targets towards critical economic infrastructure could therefore transform the conflict from a US-Iran war into a struggle over the infrastructure of the wider Gulf.

That would be particularly dangerous because the Gulf is not simply another theatre of war. It contains some of the world’s most important oil and gas facilities, ports, desalination plants, airports and shipping routes. A sustained exchange involving such infrastructure—combined with continued disruption in Hormuz and pressure around the Red Sea and Bab al-Mandab—could transmit the costs of escalation rapidly into global energy prices, shipping, insurance and supply chains. Iran would not need to match American military power to impose substantial economic costs; it would need only to make the regional infrastructure on which the global economy depends considerably less secure.

The third and most radical option would be to put substantial numbers of American troops on Iranian soil. Limited ground operations have already been considered in Washington, including plans involving Iran’s enriched-uranium stockpile, but a full-scale invasion would be an entirely different undertaking. Iran’s size, population, geography and military capabilities mean that overthrowing the government would be only the beginning. Washington would then face the much harder question that followed its interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan: what comes next?

Occupation, insurgency, state reconstruction and the management of a country of more than 90 million people could drag the United States into precisely the kind of open-ended Middle Eastern war Trump has long claimed he wants to avoid. Current assessments also indicate that the force presently deployed in the region is far below what a major ground operation would require.

3. Continue Maximum Pressure Without Returning to Full-Scale War

The third option is the middle ground between the two alternatives Trump presented at the UN: neither make the concessions necessary for a deal nor take the risks involved in another major military escalation. Instead, Washington could continue tightening the economic, financial and diplomatic pressure on Tehran while maintaining the threat of military action in the background.

There are already signs that this is the direction Washington is pursuing. On September 8, the US Treasury imposed sanctions on 36 targets connected to Iran’s aviation sector, including 27 Iranian airlines, while also targeting foreign companies and intermediaries accused of helping Tehran maintain access to aircraft, technology and international services. The measures were designed not simply to sanction individual entities but to further restrict Iran’s economic connectivity with the outside world. Similar pressure has been applied through financial restrictions, secondary sanctions and efforts to close the networks Iran has developed to move money and goods around existing sanctions.

Trump made the broader objective explicit at the UN, calling on other countries to join Washington in economically isolating Iran. Maximum pressure, in this sense, offers an attractive alternative to further military escalation. It allows Trump to argue that Iran remains under sustained pressure without assuming the enormous risks associated with attacks on critical infrastructure, nuclear escalation or a ground war. It also leaves the door open to negotiations if Tehran eventually concludes that the economic cost of continuing the confrontation is greater than the cost of compromise.

But the history of the Islamic Republic raises questions about how much this strategy can actually achieve. Iran has lived under varying degrees of US sanctions for more than four decades and under particularly intense pressure since Trump withdrew from the nuclear agreement in 2018. That experience has not made sanctions painless. They have imposed enormous costs on the Iranian economy and, perhaps more importantly, on ordinary Iranians. But the state has also developed considerable experience in surviving them. Tehran has built alternative financial and commercial networks, relied increasingly on trade with China and other non-Western economies, expanded informal and illicit channels, used neighbouring states as commercial gateways, and adapted domestic economic institutions to operating under prolonged isolation. The result is not a healthy economy, but an economy and political system accustomed to functioning under pressure.

The international environment also makes complete isolation difficult. Russia and China demonstrated those limits on September 17 when they vetoed a US-backed Security Council resolution that would have extended the mandate of the UN panel monitoring sanctions on Iran. The underlying UN sanctions remain in place, but the veto ended the independent monitoring mechanism Washington wanted to preserve. China and Russia also continue to provide Iran with economic and diplomatic alternatives that did not exist on the same scale during earlier periods of Western pressure.

There is also a question of time. From Tehran’s perspective, maximum pressure does not necessarily have to be defeated; it may simply have to be survived. Trump has a little more than two years remaining in his current term, and there is no certainty that the next US administration will maintain the same combination of sanctions, military pressure and regional strategy. A new president taking office in January 2029 could preserve much of Trump’s policy, modify it or seek another diplomatic opening. Iran therefore has an incentive to calculate that enduring another two years of severe pressure may be preferable to accepting a settlement now that it considers strategically damaging. This does not mean that Tehran can know what the next administration will do. It means only that the finite duration of any presidency gives Iran another variable around which to build its strategy.

That calculation is particularly important because maximum pressure works best when the target believes the pressure will continue indefinitely or until it changes course. If Tehran instead believes that it can absorb the economic damage, keep enough external channels open through China, Russia and neighbouring states, and wait for the American political cycle to change, time itself becomes part of Iran’s strategy.

This exposes the central weakness of the maximum-pressure option: pressure toward what? Sanctions can reduce Iran’s revenues, restrict its international connections and make maintaining its military and economic infrastructure more expensive. They can also create incentives for negotiation. What they cannot guarantee is that Tehran will accept Washington’s political terms.

Without a settlement that Iran can realistically accept, maximum pressure risks becoming less an instrument for ending the conflict than a mechanism for managing it. Washington would continue squeezing Iran, Tehran would continue developing ways around that pressure, military threats would remain in the background, and both sides would wait for circumstances to shift in their favour. For Trump, maximum pressure may therefore be the least immediately dangerous option, but it carries its own strategic problem: the Islamic Republic has spent decades learning how to survive pressure, while Trump is working against a much shorter political clock.

4. Accept a Prolonged Ferris wheel Conflict

There is a fourth possibility that neither Washington nor Tehran would formally choose, but which may emerge precisely because the other three options fail to produce an acceptable outcome: learning to live with the conflict.

In this scenario, the war does not end with a comprehensive agreement, but neither does it develop into an uninterrupted campaign of major military escalation. Instead, it moves through recurring phases of pressure, limited escalation, retaliation, mediation, temporary de-escalation and renewed pressure. Sanctions remain in place, military threats continue, maritime confrontation periodically intensifies, and occasional strikes are followed by attempts to prevent the confrontation from crossing the next threshold. Negotiations take place intermittently without producing a final settlement.

In some respects, this pattern is already visible. Trump used his UN speech to threaten Iran with devastating further action, yet only hours later disclosed that US and Iranian officials had engaged in approximately three hours of indirect talks through mediators. US envoy Steve Witkoff described the discussions as constructive and promising, while Trump called the meeting “very good.” Coercion and diplomacy are therefore no longer separate phases of the conflict. They are increasingly taking place simultaneously.

Such an arrangement would not amount to peace. Iran could continue using pressure on maritime routes and its remaining military capabilities to raise the costs of the war, while Washington could combine sanctions and economic isolation with the continuing possibility of renewed strikes. Qatar, Pakistan and other intermediaries could repeatedly step in when escalation approaches a level that neither side wants. Each round might resolve the immediate crisis without addressing the disputes that produced it.

Time also becomes an instrument in this kind of conflict. Trump himself brought the November midterm elections into the equation at the UN, saying he believed Tehran was waiting to see their outcome, while insisting that the election would not influence his own decision on Iran. Whether or not Trump is correct about Tehran’s calculations, Iran has an obvious incentive to test whether prolonging the confrontation changes the political environment in Washington, the economic costs of the war, or the willingness of other countries to support American pressure. Trump, conversely, has an incentive to demonstrate that waiting will not improve Iran’s position.

This creates another dimension of the escalation trap. Washington can increase pressure to convince Tehran that time is not on its side, but each escalation also creates new Iranian incentives to retaliate. Tehran can increase the costs of waiting for Washington, but doing so risks provoking precisely the larger American attack it wants to avoid. The result could be a conflict in which neither side can impose its preferred endgame but both retain enough capacity to prevent the other from doing so.

A prolonged managed conflict would therefore not necessarily represent a deliberate strategy. It could simply become the default outcome of strategic deadlock. The danger is that something described as “managed” remains manageable only until one strike kills too many people, one missile hits the wrong target, or one confrontation in the Gulf triggers a response that neither government originally intended.

‌Bottom Line: The Decision May Be No Decision at All

Trump says he has a “big decision” to make on Iran. But the choices available to him are less distinct than his UN speech suggested. They are also not mutually exclusive. Washington can negotiate while tightening sanctions, conduct military strikes and then return to negotiations, or maintain maximum pressure while keeping the threat of another major attack in the background. The combination of Trump’s UN threat and the indirect US-Iranian talks on the same day demonstrates precisely how coercion and diplomacy can operate together.

The problem is that none of these options provides a clear route off the escalation ladder. A negotiated settlement requires compromises substantial enough for Tehran to accept them but limited enough for Trump to portray the agreement as an American success. Major military escalation can inflict far greater damage on Iran, but it also risks widening the war without producing capitulation. Maximum pressure can make Iran poorer and more isolated, but the Islamic Republic has decades of experience adapting to sanctions and may calculate that it can survive the remaining years of Trump’s presidency. Managed conflict avoids the immediate risks of the most extreme forms of escalation, but leaves Washington committed to a war it has been unable to conclude.

Trump therefore faces a problem that military superiority alone cannot resolve. The United States remains capable of climbing further up the escalation ladder, but everyadditional rung potentially raises the cost of eventually climbing back down. The more Washington invests in demonstrating that Iran has been defeated, the more politically difficult it becomes to offer Tehran the concessions required for a negotiated settlement. At the same time, the more destructive the pressure becomes, the greater Iran’s incentive to use the remaining tools at its disposal to demonstrate that it cannot simply be coerced into submission.

This is why the most sustainable near-term outcome may resemble neither the peace Trump says he wants nor the overwhelming military victory he threatens. Instead, periods of negotiation may alternate with sanctions, maritime confrontation and limited military escalation, with mediators repeatedly intervening to prevent each crisis from becoming something larger. That pattern could continue until one side changes its demands, the balance of costs shifts significantly, or the political circumstances in Washington or Tehran change.

Trump’s “big decision,” then, is ultimately not simply whether to choose diplomacy or force. He has already been using both. The harder decision is what political outcome he is prepared to accept—and how far up the escalation ladder he is willing to climb before concluding that the cost of imposing a better one has become too high.

The recent migration surge into the Spanish enclave of Ceuta was, in many respects, a familiar episode. Similar crises have occurred repeatedly over the past two decades, reflecting the unresolved dispute between Spain and Morocco over Ceuta and Melilla, as well as broader regional tensions surrounding Western Sahara. Spain’s support for the Sahrawi cause and its growing relationship with Algeria—Morocco’s principal regional rival—have repeatedly strained relations with Rabat. Whenever these tensions intensify, migration has frequently become a source of political pressure. In previous episodes, footage has shown Moroccan security forces allowing—or at least not preventing—large numbers of migrants from crossing into the Spanish enclave. The latest incident also came only days after Spain and Algeria agreed to launch a new phase in their bilateral relations by holding their eighth High-Level Meeting in October, adding another layer to an already complex regional context.

The immediate crisis was relatively limited. Spanish authorities quickly regained control, and many migrants soon began returning to Morocco. Yet on social media, the episode rapidly evolved far beyond a local border dispute. Israeli officials and pro-Israel accounts linked the incident to Spain’s criticism of Israel over Gaza, questioning Madrid’s moral authority to criticise Israeli security policies. At the same time, a segment of the MAGA movement that remains loyal to Donald Trump presented the episode as evidence of the dangers of Europe’s immigration policies and as validation of Trump’s own border agenda. This came after a significant portion of the MAGA movement had become increasingly critical of Trump over the war with Iran and his unwavering support for Israel’s military campaigns in Gaza, Lebanon and the wider region. As a result, the discussion quickly expanded beyond Ceuta itself, becoming increasingly framed through the lenses of immigration, Islamophobia and civilisational conflict—narratives that served different political purposes in both the Israeli and American contexts.

Shifting the Conversation from Gaza to Europe: Constructing a Counter-Narrative

The Ceuta migration crisis quickly became more than a debate about Spain’s border policy. It also provided an opportunity to redirect attention from Gaza toward Spain itself. Israeli officials increasingly questioned Spain’s own credibility on issues of sovereignty, migration and colonialism. In doing so, the focus shifted from Israel’s actions to Spain’s perceived vulnerabilities.

The timing is significant. Since the outbreak of the Gaza war, Spain has emerged as one of Israel’s most outspoken European critics. Madrid has recognised the State of Palestine, imposed a national arms embargo on Israel, permanently withdrawn its ambassador, and urged the European Union to reconsider its broader partnership with Israel. These measures have made Spain one of the principal European targets of Israeli diplomatic criticism.

Israeli officials have increasingly framed Spain’s domestic challenges as evidence of political hypocrisy. Responding to the Ceuta crisis, Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations argued that “Spain, which never misses an opportunity to lecture Israel,” should first explain why it continues to administer “colonial enclaves in Africa.”

Similar arguments have repeatedly appeared in the rhetoric of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s son, Yair Netanyahu. In one post, he criticised Spain for allegedly supporting organisations opposed to Israeli settlements while asking Madrid to stop supporting groups that challenge Israel’s claims over the West Bank. In another, he published a map of Spain’s North African territories with the message: “Dear Arabs and Muslims. Want to free occupied Arab and Islamic lands? Here’s a good start.”

These remarks are consistent with a broader pattern of Israeli diplomatic messaging. Last April, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned that he would not allow any country to “wage a diplomatic war” against Israel without “paying an immediate price.” Whether or not the Ceuta episode formed part of a deliberate communication strategy, the migration crisis rapidly became another platform through which Israeli officials challenged Spain’s moral authority and redirected international attention away from Gaza and toward Europe’s own political and border disputes.

More importantly, the episode illustrates how modern information warfare increasingly relies on constructing competing narratives rather than simply rebutting criticism. In this case, two parallel narratives emerged. The first sought to portray Israel’s security policies as a necessary response to the same civilisational challenge that Europe now faces through irregular migration, implicitly arguing that what Israel is doing today is what European states may eventually have to do themselves. The second reframed Spain not as a credible critic of Israel, but as a country struggling with its own unresolved border disputes, migration pressures and colonial legacies. Together, these narratives do not seek to deny criticism of Israel; they seek to redefine the terms of the debate by shifting public attention from Gaza to Europe’s own insecurities.

Why Did Suspicion Fall on Israel?

The rapid politicisation of the Ceuta crisis also generated speculation about whether Israel had played any role beyond the information campaign that followed. The episode triggered intense online debate because it coincided with a series of earlier proposals arguing that Israel should use Morocco’s territorial claims to pressure Spain over its support for Palestine.

One of the strongest reactions came from Spain’s Minister of Transport, Óscar Puente, who responded to the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations’ comments by writing on X: “Well, things are starting to get pretty clear.” His remark reflected a broader suspicion circulating on social media that the migration crisis was being politically exploited against Spain.

That suspicion was reinforced by several articles published months before the crisis. In March, Michael Rubin of the American Enterprise Institute argued that Morocco should organise a new “Green March” into Ceuta and Melilla, suggesting that civilians enter the enclaves peacefully while raising Moroccan flags to expose what he described as Spain’s anti-colonial hypocrisy. A month later, writing for the Israeli outlet *Ynet*, Middle East Forum fellow Amine Ayoub proposed that Israel should support Morocco’s claims over Ceuta and Melilla as a way of punishing Spain for recognising Palestine and challenging both American and Israeli policies. Ayoub outlined three possible avenues: direct diplomatic backing for Morocco, lobbying through Washington, and repeatedly portraying Spain as hypocritical over questions of occupation and sovereignty.

The resurfacing of these articles immediately after the migration crisis intensified online speculation. Commentators noted that proposals advocating support for Morocco had appeared months before thousands of migrants crossed into Ceuta. Others revived a 2019 post by Yair Netanyahu calling on Arabs and Muslims to “free” Ceuta and Melilla, arguing that the latest events appeared consistent with earlier rhetoric directed at Spain.

The speculation has also been reinforced by reports that Morocco was among several countries discussed in proposals for relocating Palestinians from Gaza following the October 7 attacks, a plan widely criticised by human rights organisations and many governments as amounting to ethnic cleansing, further intertwining Rabat’s relationship with Israel in the eyes of many observers.

Reviving MAGA Around Trump

The Ceuta crisis also resonated strongly within the segment of the MAGA movement that remains loyal to President Donald Trump. This came at a politically significant moment. In recent months, divisions had emerged within the movement over Trump’s handling of the war with Iran and his unwavering support for Israel’s military campaigns in Gaza, Lebanon and the wider Middle East. For many critics within MAGA, foreign intervention had begun to overshadow the movement’s traditional priorities of border security and domestic politics.

The migration crisis in Spain helped shift that conversation. Rather than focusing on the Middle East, Trump’s allies reframed the debate around one of the issues that has long unified the movement: immigration. In doing so, a distant border incident in Europe became evidence that Trump’s warnings about uncontrolled migration and national sovereignty were not uniquely American but part of a broader Western challenge.

Trump himself quickly seized on the episode. Speaking at Camp David, he described the events in Spain as “an invasion of a country by hundreds of thousands of people” and warned that the United States would face an even greater crisis if Republicans failed to retain power. His administration followed with an unusually coordinated messaging campaign. The State Department blamed Spain’s government for “deliberate efforts to enable and facilitate mass illegal migration into Europe” and indicated that Washington was considering measures to assist European allies confronting similar challenges.

Other senior officials reinforced the same message. Vice President JD Vance described the scenes from Ceuta as evidence of “radical left-wing globalist policies that have enabled the invasion of the West.” White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller argued that the crisis demonstrated the consequences of permissive immigration policies, while Secretary of State Marco Rubio declared that the incident represented “an egregious violation” of Spain’s sovereignty and publicly criticised Madrid’s handling of migration.

Taken together, these statements illustrate how quickly a local border dispute in North Africa was incorporated into America’s domestic political debate. The episode became more than a discussion about Spain; it was transformed into a powerful symbol reinforcing Trump’s long-standing narrative on immigration, borders and national sovereignty. At a time when foreign policy had become an increasingly divisive issue within MAGA, the Ceuta crisis helped redirect attention toward an issue that has historically unified the movement and remains central to Trump’s political identity.

The result was a convergence of narratives on both sides of the Atlantic. While Israeli officials used the crisis to challenge European criticism of Israel and reframe the debate around security and migration, Trump’s allies employed the same images to revive familiar arguments about illegal immigration and Western decline. A local migration incident thus became a shared communication asset serving different political objectives in Israel and the United States, demonstrating how modern information warfare increasingly repurposes the same event for multiple audiences and strategic goals.

Redirecting the Far Right’s From Anti-Israel to Anti-Muslim Narratives

One of the less discussed consequences of the Ceuta crisis is its potential impact on divisions within the American and European right. Over the past two years, prominent conservative and far-right figures—including Tucker Carlson, Steve Bannon, Candace Owens and Nick Fuentes—have become increasingly critical of Israel’s conduct in Gaza. Although they differ significantly in ideology and influence, they have shared concerns over Washington’s unconditional support for Israel, with some questioning whether Israel continues to serve American strategic interests.

The migration crisis in Spain provided an opportunity to redirect that conversation. Rather than focusing on Gaza or Israel’s military campaign, the debate shifted back to one of the defining themes of right-wing politics: immigration. Images of large numbers of migrants crossing into Ceuta, combined with narratives portraying Europe as facing an existential civilisational challenge, reactivated an issue around which many conservatives and far-right movements have historically found common ground.

This shift also blurred the distinction between two separate debates. Criticism of Israel’s policies in Gaza increasingly gave way to renewed attention on migration, border security and Islam. The result was not necessarily the disappearance of anti-Israel sentiment within sections of the right, but its displacement by a more immediate and emotionally resonant narrative centred on Muslim migration and national identity.

For Israel, such a shift carries an obvious strategic advantage. The less public debate focuses on Gaza and Israeli policy, and the more it centres on immigration and the perceived threat posed by Muslim communities, the easier it becomes to frame Israel’s conflict as part of the same broader struggle confronting Western societies. In that sense, migration narratives do more than influence domestic politics; they also reshape the international political environment in ways that can indirectly reduce pressure on Israel while redirecting public frustration toward a different target.

Amplifying Islamophobia

The European and American far right pushed the narrative a step further by transforming a local migration incident into evidence of a broader civilisational conflict between Islam and the West. In doing so, the discussion moved beyond border security and became increasingly framed through the language of cultural survival, demographic replacement and national decline.

Prominent right-wing figures quickly amplified this interpretation. Elon Musk shared a scene from a zombie film with the comment, “Wow, the situation in Spain looks crazy!”—invoking imagery that portrayed migrants not as individuals but as an overwhelming and uncontrollable force.

Canadian psychologist and commentator Gad Saad described the events as proof that Western civilisation had chosen to surrender “its culture, heritage, women, and children” through what he called “suicidal empathy,” arguing that such attitudes would ultimately lead to the West’s demise.

European political leaders echoed similar themes. Alice Weidel, co-leader of Germany’s Alternative for Germany (AfD), claimed that Ceuta had been “left in ruins overnight” and warned that Germany was likely to become the migrants’ next destination, calling for tighter border controls and stricter deportation policies. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Finland’s right-wing governing coalition called for suspending Spain from the Schengen Area, while Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babiš argued that the crisis was the inevitable consequence of Spain’s migration policies, accusing the government of “replacing Spaniards with migrants.”

Although these statements differed in tone and political context, they converged around a common narrative. The events in Ceuta were no longer presented as a recurring border dispute between Spain and Morocco but as evidence of an existential threat posed by Muslim invasion of European civilisation. In this framing, distinctions between irregular migrants, Muslims, Islamism and security threats became increasingly blurred, allowing a local migration episode to reinforce broader fears about identity, sovereignty and cultural survival.

This narrative also intersected with the parallel communication campaigns discussed earlier. By portraying migration as a civilisational challenge, it reinforced arguments used by Israeli officials to frame their security policies as part of the same struggle confronting Europe. The result was a mutually reinforcing information environment in which a local border incident simultaneously served Israeli diplomatic messaging, Trump’s immigration agenda and the broader mobilisation of far-right movements around a shared narrative of Islam, migration and Western decline.

Bottom Line

The significance of this trend lies not only in its ability to shape public opinion, but also in its capacity to weave unrelated events into a single, emotionally compelling narrative that transcends borders. A local migration dispute in North Africa can rapidly become a debate about Gaza, Islam, European identity, and American politics, with different actors appropriating the same event to advance entirely different agendas. In this environment, information warfare is no longer confined to defending one side or attacking another; it is increasingly about defining what the public sees as the real issue. Understanding how these narratives are constructed, amplified and weaponised is therefore essential—not simply to challenge misinformation, but to deconstruct the strategic logic behind it, preserve the distinction between legitimate political debate and coordinated information operations, and enable citizens to engage with complex events based on evidence rather than emotionally engineered narratives.

While al-Hayya is one of Hamas’s most experienced political figures—having served as deputy head of the Political Bureau and led the movement’s ceasefire negotiations—his election is significant less because of who he is than because of what Hamas chose. Rather than signalling a post-war strategic reset, the movement has opted for continuity in leadership, priorities, and its broader resistance strategy.

His victory over Khaled Meshaal suggests that Hamas remains committed to a leadership rooted in the realities of Gaza and shaped by the experience of war, rather than shifting towards an externally driven political approach. The election therefore offers an important window into how Hamas interprets the lessons of the past two years and the direction it intends to pursue in the years ahead.

Why Khalil al-Hayya?

Khalil al-Hayya’s election is the culmination of decades of involvement in Hamas’s political and organisational leadership. A member of the movement’s founding generation in Gaza, he has been part of Hamas since its formative years and has witnessed its transformation from a local Islamist movement into one of the central actors in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. This long institutional experience has made him one of the movement’s most influential decision-makers.

Like many senior Hamas leaders, al-Hayya’s political identity was shaped by imprisonment. He spent three years in Israeli prisons in the early 1990s, an experience that reinforced his standing within the movement and deepened his credentials among its rank and file. Over the following decades, he rose steadily through Hamas’s leadership, eventually becoming deputy head of its Political Bureau and one of its most trusted strategists.

His prominence increased further after the Gaza war. As head of Hamas’s ceasefire negotiation team, al-Hayya became the movement’s principal political interlocutor with regional mediators, particularly Egypt and Qatar. This role required balancing military realities on the ground with political negotiations, giving him first-hand experience in managing one of the most difficult phases in Hamas’s history.

Al-Hayya also maintained a close political relationship with Yahya Sinwar. While Sinwar embodied Hamas’s wartime leadership inside Gaza, al-Hayya increasingly emerged as the movement’s political voice during the conflict, helping translate battlefield developments into diplomatic and political strategy. His elevation therefore represents not a break from the Sinwar era but its institutional continuation.

His personal experience has further strengthened his legitimacy within Hamas. He has survived several Israeli assassination attempts, while seven members of his family, including four of his children, were killed during the war. Like many of Hamas’s senior leaders, his political authority is therefore intertwined with personal sacrifice, reinforcing his standing among supporters who view such losses as evidence of commitment rather than merely personal tragedy.

Taken together, these experiences give al-Hayya a rare combination of political leadership, wartime legitimacy, and negotiation expertise. Unlike figures identified primarily with either diplomacy or military operations, he has accumulated credibility across both spheres. This broad acceptance helps explain why he emerged as a consensus candidate, capable of commanding support from Hamas’s political leadership while maintaining the confidence of its military wing during one of the most critical periods in the movement’s history.

Continuity Over Change

The most important message conveyed by al-Hayya’s election is not about personalities but about strategy. His victory over Khaled Meshaal reflects a choice between two different visions for Hamas’s future rather than a simple contest between two senior leaders. At a time when many observers expected the movement to reassess its direction after the devastating war in Gaza, Hamas instead chose continuity over transformation.

Meshaal represented a leadership model shaped largely from outside Gaza. Having spent years leading the movement from exile, he became closely associated with regional diplomacy, broad political engagement, and efforts to expand Hamas’s international relationships. His experience positioned him as the face of Hamas’s external leadership, emphasising political manoeuvrability and engagement with regional actors.

Al-Hayya, by contrast, embodies the leadership that emerged from within Gaza itself. His political legitimacy has been forged through years of organisational work inside the Strip, close coordination with Yahya Sinwar, and direct involvement in managing the war and its aftermath. Unlike Meshaal, whose authority stems largely from his long-standing regional and international role, al-Hayya derives his legitimacy from the battlefield experience of Gaza and the movement’s internal institutions.

His election therefore reinforces the dominance of the Gaza-based leadership over the external leadership. Since the outbreak of the war, decision-making has increasingly shifted toward leaders directly involved in the conflict, whose credibility rests on their ability to manage both military confrontation and the political consequences of war. Choosing al-Hayya signals that Hamas continues to prioritise leaders shaped by these realities over those whose influence has been built primarily through regional diplomacy.

This does not mean Hamas is abandoning diplomacy. Al-Hayya himself led the movement’s ceasefire negotiations and maintains close relations with regional mediators, particularly Egypt. Rather, the election suggests that diplomacy will continue to serve the movement’s broader resistance strategy, not replace it. Political negotiations remain an important instrument, but they are viewed as complementary to, rather than a substitute for, armed resistance.

Ultimately, Hamas’s decision reflects a deliberate rejection of a post-war strategic reset. Faced with unprecedented military losses and immense humanitarian devastation, the movement had an opportunity to signal a fundamental change in direction. Instead, it chose a leader who represents organisational continuity, wartime legitimacy, and the conviction that the core strategic principles guiding Hamas before the war remain valid after it. The message is clear: while tactics may evolve to accommodate new realities, Hamas does not believe the war requires abandoning the strategic identity on which the movement has been built.

Hamas’s Immediate Priorities

Al-Hayya’s first public statements following his election suggest that Hamas’s immediate priorities remain focused on managing the consequences of the Gaza war rather than redefining the movement’s long-term strategy. His agenda combines military, humanitarian, political, and diplomatic objectives, reflecting an effort to secure the movement’s survival while positioning it for the post-war phase.

1. Ending the War

The movement’s foremost priority remains bringing the Israeli military campaign to an end. Al-Hayya has reaffirmed Hamas’s insistence on a comprehensive ceasefire that includes a complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Gaza Strip, rather than temporary pauses or limited humanitarian arrangements. This position indicates that Hamas continues to view any political process as contingent upon ending the war and restoring a degree of Palestinian territorial control.

2. Relief, Reconstruction, and Humanitarian Recovery

Alongside ending the fighting, Hamas has placed significant emphasis on addressing Gaza’s humanitarian catastrophe. Al-Hayya has identified reconstruction, restoring basic services, and facilitating the return of normal civilian life as immediate priorities. He has also stressed preventing any plans for the permanent displacement of Gaza’s population, an issue that has become central to Palestinian political discourse throughout the war. The movement likewise continues to include the release of Palestinian prisoners in any future negociations, treating prisoner exchanges as both a humanitarian objective and a political priority.

3. Rebuilding the Palestinian Political System

Beyond Gaza, al-Hayya has called for a comprehensive national dialogue among Palestinian factions to rebuild political unity after years of internal division. This includes reforming and restructuring the Palestine Liberation Organization to make it more representative and rebuilding Palestinian political institutions on democratic foundations. Although the prospects for new elections remain uncertain, Hamas continues to frame political legitimacy and institutional reform as essential components of the post-war period.

4. Revitalising Regional Diplomacy

Al-Hayya’s early diplomatic outreach also highlights the importance Hamas places on rebuilding and maintaining regional relationships. His reported contact with the head of Egyptian intelligence shortly after assuming office underscores Cairo’s central role as both mediator and regional interlocutor. Beyond Egypt, Hamas seeks to strengthen its engagement with Arab and Islamic states, encouraging them to exert greater political and diplomatic pressure to halt the war, support Palestinian rights, and contribute to Gaza’s reconstruction.

5. Expanding International Pressure

At the international level, Hamas is expected to continue pursuing legal and diplomatic efforts aimed at increasing pressure on Israel. Al-Hayya has called on the United Nations and the broader international community to provide protection for Palestinian civilians, support humanitarian relief, and hold Israeli leaders accountable under international law. While Hamas remains diplomatically isolated in much of the West, the movement appears determined to capitalise on growing international criticism of the humanitarian consequences of the war and ongoing legal proceedings in international courts.

Taken together, these priorities suggest that Hamas is attempting to balance immediate humanitarian needs with longer-term political objectives. The emphasis is not on redefining the movement’s strategic identity, but on securing an end to the war, preserving its political relevance, and creating conditions under which it can remain a central actor in Palestinian politics once the fighting subsides.

The Loud Silence on Weapons

Leadership transitions often reveal as much through omission as through declaration. In al-Hayya’s case, one of the most striking features of his early political agenda is what it does not contain. While he has articulated Hamas’s priorities on ending the war, reconstruction, Palestinian unity, and regional and international diplomacy, there has been no indication of a willingness to reconsider the movement’s military doctrine.

There has been no reference to disarmament, restructuring Hamas’s armed wing, or transforming the movement into a purely political organisation. Nor has al-Hayya suggested that the experience of the Gaza war requires abandoning armed resistance as Hamas’s central strategy. Given the scale of the destruction, such omissions are unlikely to be accidental. They reflect a deliberate effort to reassure the movement’s internal constituency that political engagement will not come at the expense of its military identity.

This silence is particularly significant because many external observers have argued that the post-war environment would force Hamas to fundamentally rethink its approach. Yet al-Hayya’s rhetoric points in a different direction. The movement appears prepared to adjust its political tactics, expand its diplomatic engagement, and participate in discussions on Gaza’s future governance, but without revising the strategic principles that have defined it for decades.

In this sense, Hamas distinguishes between political adaptation and strategic transformation. The movement acknowledges that the political and military landscape has changed dramatically and that new diplomatic and humanitarian realities must be addressed. However, it does not appear to believe that these changes require abandoning what it regards as the cornerstone of its identity: armed resistance against Israel.

For Hamas, therefore, the post-war phase is not about replacing resistance with politics. Rather, it is about using politics, diplomacy, and reconstruction alongside resistance as complementary instruments for advancing its objectives. The message conveyed by al-Hayya’s leadership is one of continuity: the political environment may have changed, but the movement’s underlying strategic doctrine has not.

This continuity is further reinforced by Hamas’s own post-war narrative. In its January 2024 document, “Our Narrative... Operation Al-Aqsa Flood”, the movement defended the decision to launch the October 7 attack and reaffirmed what it described as the legitimacy of “all forms of resistance,” including armed resistance, against Israeli occupation. Rather than presenting the war as a reason to reconsider its military doctrine, the document portrayed military resistance as an indispensable pillar of the Palestinian struggle and sought to justify its continuation despite the immense costs of the conflict.

This omission in al-Hayya’s agenda, therefore, should not be interpreted as ambiguity. Instead, it is consistent with Hamas’s broader strategic narrative since the outbreak of the war: while the movement is prepared to adjust its political tactics and diplomatic engagement to the changing regional environment, it has given no indication that it intends to abandon or fundamentally revise armed resistance as a core component of its long-term strategy.

New Regional Balance: Why Iran and Egypt Matter More Than Turkey and Qatar

Khalil al-Hayya’s election also reflects a broader shift in Hamas’s regional relationships. The Gaza war has not only transformed the movement internally; it has also reordered the relative importance of its external partners. While Hamas continues to maintain relations with all four countries, the balance of influence appears to be moving towards Iran and Egypt.

Iran’s position has been reinforced by the war. Despite suffering setbacks across the wider “Axis of Resistance”—including the weakening of Hezbollah, the fall of the Assad regime in Syria, and its own confrontation with the United States—Iran remains Hamas’s principal military and strategic backer. More importantly, there is little indication that Tehran has reduced its commitment to supporting the movement. For Hamas, maintaining close relations with Iran remains essential for preserving its military capabilities and sustaining its long-term strategy of armed resistance.

At the same time, Egypt’s importance has grown considerably. Cairo occupies a unique position that no other regional actor can easily replace. It controls the Rafah crossing, plays a central role in ceasefire negotiations, facilitates prisoner exchanges, and will be indispensable to any meaningful reconstruction effort in Gaza. Al-Hayya’s early contact with the head of Egyptian intelligence was therefore more than a diplomatic courtesy; it reflected Hamas’s recognition that Egypt will remain the primary regional mediator in shaping Gaza’s post-war future.

By contrast, Qatar and Turkey continue to provide Hamas with valuable political support, but their room for influence has been always narrowed due to alliance with the United States and relationship with Israel. Qatar remains an important diplomatic intermediary and humanitarian donor, hosting Hamas’s political office and maintaining channels with both Western governments and the movement. However, its role depends largely on mediation rather than strategic leverage over developments inside Gaza. Turkey likewise continues to offer political backing and diplomatic advocacy for the Palestinian cause, yet Ankara’s broader regional priorities and efforts to manage its relations with Israel and Western partners have limited its ability to shape Hamas’s immediate strategic environment.

The distinction is therefore not one of allies versus adversaries, but of changing functions. Iran provides strategic depth and military support, while Egypt has become indispensable for diplomacy, humanitarian access, and any future political arrangements in Gaza. Qatar and Turkey remain important political partners, but neither currently possesses the same capacity to influence Hamas’s operational choices or the trajectory of the conflict.

Al-Hayya’s leadership appears well suited to this evolving regional landscape. Having led Hamas’s ceasefire negotiations and maintained close relations with Egyptian mediators while remaining firmly aligned with the movement’s resistance strategy and its partnership with Iran, he embodies the balance Hamas now seeks to strike. The movement is not replacing one regional axis with another; rather, it is adapting to a new geopolitical environment in which Tehran and Cairo have become the two indispensable pillars of its external strategy—one sustaining its capacity for resistance, the other shaping the political conditions under which that resistance can continue.

The growing importance of Iran is also reflected in al-Hayya’s own political background. According to Israeli intelligence assessments based on documents reportedly recovered from Gaza, al-Hayya played a central role in coordinating Hamas’s relations with Iran and Hezbollah in the period leading up to the October 7 attack. The documents reportedly describe his participation in a confidential meeting in Beirut in 2021 alongside Ismail Haniyeh, Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah, and Iranian officials, during which preparations for closer strategic coordination were discussed. Whether every detail of these reports can be independently verified or not, they reinforce the widely held perception that al-Hayya has long been one of Hamas’s principal interlocutors with Tehran and the broader Axis of Resistance.

At the same time, some regional observers argue that al-Hayya’s leadership could gradually reduce Doha’s centrality within Hamas’s external leadership structure. Given his extensive engagement with both Tehran and Ankara in recent years, the movement’s political centre of gravity may become more dispersed than under Ismail Haniyeh. Even so, the immediate post-war environment suggests that the most consequential external relationships for Hamas are likely to remain those with Iran, as its principal strategic backer, and Egypt, as the indispensable mediator in Gaza’s future.

The Challenges Facing al-Hayya

While al-Hayya’s election signals continuity in Hamas’s strategic direction, the environment in which he assumes leadership is fundamentally different from that faced by his predecessors. He inherits a movement that has preserved its organisational cohesion but faces unprecedented political, military, and humanitarian challenges. His success will depend not only on maintaining Hamas’s internal unity but also on navigating a rapidly changing regional and international landscape.

Internal Challenges: Rebuilding a Movement and Its Legitimacy

The immediate challenge is rebuilding both Gaza and Hamas itself. Years of war have severely disrupted the movement’s political, administrative, and military structures, requiring a major organisational effort to restore its capacity to govern and operate. At the same time, Hamas must redefine its role in Gaza’s future governance while responding to the immense humanitarian needs of a devastated population.

The movement also faces growing political pressures. Calls for renewed Palestinian elections, long delayed by the division between Gaza and the West Bank, are likely to intensify as discussions over the post-war political order continue. Equally important will be managing public expectations. While Hamas continues to portray the war as a strategic confrontation with Israel, many Palestinians will inevitably judge the movement by its ability to improve living conditions, secure reconstruction, and provide effective governance.

Perhaps the most sensitive internal challenge will be assessing the legacy of the October 7 attack. Although Hamas has publicly defended the operation and reaffirmed its strategic rationale, debates over its long-term political and humanitarian consequences are unlikely to disappear. Balancing organisational unity with lessons drawn from the war will remain one of al-Hayya’s most delicate tasks.

Regional Challenges: A Changing Strategic Environment

The regional environment has become considerably less favourable for Hamas. Hezbollah has emerged from the conflict significantly weakened, reducing its ability to deter Israel or provide strategic support. The collapse of the Assad government has effectively removed Syria as a central pillar of the so-called Axis of Resistance, depriving Hamas and its allies of an important geographical and logistical link.

Iran remains Hamas’s principal strategic partner, but Tehran is also navigating its own security challenges following its confrontation with the United States and Israel. Although Iranian support is unlikely to disappear, its ability to devote the same level of attention and resources to the Palestinian file may become more constrained than in previous years.

At the same time, the broader regional trend towards Arab-Israeli normalisation has not entirely disappeared despite the war. Several Arab governments continue to balance domestic sympathy for the Palestinian cause with broader strategic and economic interests, limiting Hamas’s ability to translate public support into sustained regional political pressure.

International Challenges: Isolation, Reconstruction, and Accountability

Internationally, Hamas continues to face profound diplomatic constraints. Despite growing criticism of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza and increased international attention to the humanitarian crisis, Hamas remains politically isolated across much of the Western world. This limits its ability to participate directly in international discussions over Gaza’s future or secure broad diplomatic recognition.

Reconstruction presents an equally formidable challenge. Gaza will require enormous financial resources and long-term international assistance, yet many potential donors are reluctant to support reconstruction without new political and security arrangements. Hamas will therefore need to reconcile its determination to retain its military capabilities with the conditions many international actors are likely to attach to reconstruction funding.

Finally, the movement must operate within an increasingly legalised international environment. International investigations into alleged violations of humanitarian law, growing calls for accountability, and continuing scrutiny by the United Nations and international courts will shape the diplomatic context in which Hamas seeks to rebuild its political position.

Taken together, these challenges illustrate that al-Hayya’s task extends well beyond preserving Hamas’s organisational continuity. He must guide the movement through a post-war environment that is more fragmented, more constrained, and more complex than at any point in its history, while convincing both supporters and regional partners that Hamas remains capable of shaping the future of the Palestinian national movement.

Bottom Line

Khalil al-Hayya’s election should not be interpreted as the emergence of a new Hamas. Rather, it reflects the movement’s determination to preserve its strategic identity while adapting to a profoundly altered political and regional environment. Hamas appears to believe that the October 7 attack and the ensuing war have transformed the context in which it operates, but not the fundamental principles that define it. In the movement’s assessment, the environment has changed; its core strategy has not.

This explains why al-Hayya’s leadership combines continuity with adaptation. Hamas is seeking to expand its diplomatic engagement, strengthen its regional relationships, pursue reconstruction, and participate in discussions over Gaza’s political future. At the same time, it has given no indication that these political adjustments will come at the expense of armed resistance, which it continues to regard as a central pillar of its national strategy. Rather than replacing resistance with politics, Hamas appears intent on integrating military, political, and diplomatic instruments into a single, coherent approach.

Whether this strategy proves sustainable will depend on factors that extend well beyond Hamas itself. The pace of Gaza’s reconstruction, the future of Palestinian political institutions, Israel’s post-war strategy, the willingness of regional actors to engage with Hamas, and the evolving balance of power following the recent Iran–US confrontation will all shape the movement’s room for manoeuvre. Hamas may have settled the question of leadership, but the strategic environment in which that leadership must operate remains deeply uncertain.

Ultimately, al-Hayya’s election is best understood as a vote for continuity rather than transformation. The movement has chosen a leader whose credentials bridge the battlefield, political leadership, and regional diplomacy, but whose strategic outlook remains firmly rooted in Hamas’s long-standing doctrine. The faces at the top may have changed, yet the movement’s central calculation remains largely intact: armed resistance, political negotiation, and regional alliances are not viewed as competing alternatives, but as complementary instruments in the pursuit of the same long-term objectives.

When War Becomes Cheaper Than Negotiation

In a recent interview, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi summarized Tehran’s strategic thinking in a single sentence: **”We do not fight unless the cost of not fighting is greater.”** Whether intended as deterrence or explanation, the statement captures a central principle shaping Iran’s current approach to the conflict.

From Tehran’s perspective, the renewed war did not emerge in isolation but followed months of growing doubts about the viability of the ceasefire and the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) reached with Washington. Although the agreement appeared to offer Iran important gains—including sanctions relief and the unfreezing of assets—many within the Iranian leadership reportedly viewed it with deep suspicion. To them, the deal seemed unusually favourable for Iran and therefore difficult to reconcile with President Donald Trump’s previous approach toward Tehran.

That skepticism was reinforced by a broader strategic reading of recent developments. Iranian decision-makers increasingly appear to believe that Washington is pursuing a gradual strategy of dismantling Tehran’s regional leverage piece by piece. Pressure around the Strait of Hormuz, continued military operations in Lebanon and Yemen, financial restrictions, and efforts to weaken Iran’s regional partners are interpreted not as isolated events but as successive steps designed to reduce Iran’s bargaining power before any future negotiations.

From this perspective, accepting negotiations while these sources of leverage are steadily eroded would place Iran in an increasingly weaker position. Each concession would invite additional demands, while commitments favourable to Tehran could remain delayed, conditional or only partially implemented. Iranian leaders often draw lessons from cases such as Libya and Iraq, where they believe concessions to Western powers ultimately failed to preserve the existing political order. Whether those comparisons are accurate is less important than the fact that they appear to shape Tehran’s strategic mindset.

Within this framework, continuing military resistance may be viewed as the less costly option. War undoubtedly imposes enormous economic hardship and military losses, but negotiating under sustained military pressure is seen as carrying an even greater long-term risk: the progressive erosion of deterrence, the loss of regional influence, and ultimately the survival of the Islamic Republic itself.

For Tehran, therefore, the central question is not whether war is costly—it clearly is. The question is whether the political cost of negotiating from a position of weakness would be even greater. Seen through that lens, continuing the war may appear less dangerous than negotiating from weakness.

Meeting the Madman with a Madman

One of the defining features of Donald Trump’s approach to foreign policy has been what political scientists describe as the “Madman Theory”—the deliberate cultivation of unpredictability to convince adversaries that the United States is willing to take actions they cannot anticipate or control. The objective is psychological as much as military: by making escalation appear limitless, opponents are expected to back down before reaching the point of direct confrontation.

Iran increasingly appears to be responding with a version of the same strategy.

For decades, Tehran’s regional doctrine was built on what its leaders described as **strategic patience**—avoiding direct confrontation while relying on gradual, calibrated responses through diplomacy, regional partners, and asymmetric deterrence. The current conflict, however, suggests a significant shift. Rather than exercising restraint to prevent escalation, Iran now appears willing to signal that almost every previous red line is open to revision if the United States continues expanding the conflict.

This shift is reflected in the logic of Iran’s responses. Strikes on critical infrastructure have increasingly been met with reciprocal attacks against comparable infrastructure linked to US partners in the Gulf. Military operations against Iranian facilities have been followed by attacks targeting American military positions or those of its regional allies. As discussions emerged about possible ground operations, Iranian officials and allied groups signalled that any such move could widen the conflict beyond Iran’s borders, potentially opening new fronts across the region. Whether every threat is ultimately carried out is almost secondary; the strategic purpose is to convince Washington that escalation will always produce a broader and more painful response than anticipated.

The message appears to be straightforward: if Washington abandons predictability and restraint, Tehran will do the same. Rather than allowing the United States to monopolize uncertainty, Iran seeks to demonstrate that it, too, is prepared to behave in ways that complicate American planning and increase the risks of every additional military step.

This represents more than retaliation. It is an attempt to restore deterrence through uncertainty. By convincing Washington that each new strike could trigger a wider regional response, Iran hopes to raise the political and military costs of continued escalation. In this sense, Tehran is not simply responding to Trump’s “Madman Theory”; it is attempting to neutralize it by adopting a version of its own.

Ultimately, deterrence in this conflict no longer depends solely on military capability. It depends on convincing the other side that one is both willing to absorb greater pain and prepared to impose even greater costs in return. From Tehran’s perspective, strategic ambiguity has become as important a weapon as missiles or drones.

Who Can Endure More Pain?

Tehran appears increasingly confident that it can outlast Washington. Its calculation is not necessarily that Iran is militarily stronger, but that it possesses greater tolerance for prolonged pressure. Iranian leaders seem to believe that President Trump will eventually seek an exit, as they argue he did in previous confrontations, once the political, economic, and military costs begin to outweigh the benefits of continued escalation.

The United States faces several constraints in any prolonged conflict. Rising oil prices can quickly affect the domestic economy, military casualties can erode public support, and approaching elections increase pressure on the administration to demonstrate either decisive success or a credible pathway out of war. Washington must also preserve the cohesion of a regional coalition whose members may support containing Iran while remaining reluctant to absorb retaliation against their own territory, infrastructure, and economies.

Iran operates under a different political logic. Decades of sanctions have forced the state and society to adapt to chronic economic pressure, even at considerable human cost. Centralized decision-making enables the leadership to sustain policies without facing the same electoral constraints as an American administration. The state can also draw on nationalist and ideological mobilization, especially after Ayatollah Khamenei’s funeral ceremonies reinforced collective identity and allowed the political order to display continuity and resilience after the loss of its leader.

None of this means that Iran can absorb unlimited pain. Its economy is vulnerable, public frustration is substantial, and prolonged damage to infrastructure and livelihoods could eventually weaken domestic cohesion. Yet Tehran may calculate that the Islamic Republic’s survival is directly at stake, making it more willing than Washington to tolerate economic hardship, casualties, and a long period of instability.

The conflict therefore becomes less a contest over who can inflict greater immediate damage than over who can sustain the resulting costs for longer. Washington may possess overwhelming conventional power, but Iran is betting that political endurance—not battlefield superiority—will ultimately determine the outcome. In this classic contest of wills, Tehran’s strategy rests on the belief that it does not need to defeat the United States; it only needs to remain standing after Washington decides the war has become too costly.

Iran’s Escalation Ladder

Iran’s escalation is neither impulsive nor indiscriminate. Rather, it appears to follow a carefully calibrated strategy in which every response is intended to restore deterrence while preserving room for further escalation if necessary. Tehran is responding according to the principle of reciprocity, but it is choosing both the timing and the targets strategically, seeking to avoid actions that could unnecessarily unite the region into a broad anti-Iran coalition or prematurely exhaust its own leverage.

This reflects a clear understanding of the escalation ladder. Instead of moving immediately to its most destructive options, Iran appears to be climbing the ladder gradually, matching American actions while signalling that each additional step by Washington will be met with a broader and more painful response.

That process is already underway. As American strikes expanded beyond military targets, Iran widened both the geography and nature of its retaliation. The campaign has moved beyond attacks on military facilities to targeting critical infrastructure and American personnel. Tehran has already begun hunting US military personnel, with several reportedly killed in attacks on the US base in Jordan and at King Hussein Airport. It has also struck an oil refinery, electricity facilities, and a water desalination plant in Kuwait, signalling that the conflict is no longer confined to conventional military targets. These attacks carry a broader message: if the war continues, the economic infrastructure sustaining America’s regional partners will increasingly become part of the battlefield.

At the same time, Iran has deliberately held back some of its most consequential options. Three major escalation cards remain available.

The first is Bab al-Mandab. Expanding military pressure from the Strait of Hormuz to the Red Sea would threaten the world’s two most important maritime energy corridors simultaneously, dramatically increasing the economic consequences for international trade and global energy markets.

The second is a much broader campaign against vital Gulf energy infrastructure. While Tehran has already demonstrated both capability and intent, a sustained campaign against oil production, export terminals, electricity networks and desalination facilities across the Gulf would impose costs far beyond the immediate region.

The third is directly expanding the conflict with Israel. Tehran still retains significant capacity to increase both the scale and intensity of attacks, potentially opening another major front in the conflict and forcing Washington to divert additional military resources.

The logic behind this strategy is straightforward. Iran does not seek maximum escalation immediately because doing so would leave it with few credible options if the conflict continues. By climbing the escalation ladder step by step, Tehran preserves strategic flexibility while continuously increasing the costs for its adversaries. Each rung serves as both retaliation for previous attacks and a warning of what remains possible.

From Tehran’s perspective, deterrence is sustained not by demonstrating all of its capabilities at once, but by ensuring that every American escalation can be answered with an even more costly response. The objective is therefore not simply to retaliate, but to convince Washington that there is always another rung on Iran’s escalation ladder—and that the price of continuing the war will keep rising.

Washington’s Escalation Trap

From Tehran’s perspective, the conflict is gradually moving in its favour—not because Iran is winning militarily, but because Washington appears to be entering an increasingly narrow strategic corridor. The United States seeks to coerce Iran into accepting a less favourable political settlement by steadily increasing military pressure. Iran, by contrast, seeks to convince Washington that every additional step up the escalation ladder will impose disproportionately higher costs on the United States and its regional partners.

This dynamic creates what may become Washington’s own escalation trap. Every successful American strike generates pressure to sustain momentum, yet each new round of attacks also invites broader Iranian retaliation. The result is a cycle in which military success creates new strategic problems rather than resolving existing ones.

Iran appears to understand this dilemma and has deliberately preserved several of its most consequential options for future escalation. By contrast, Washington’s choices are becoming increasingly difficult. Expanding attacks against Iranian civilian infrastructure would almost certainly invite reciprocal strikes against critical infrastructure in the Gulf, including oil facilities, electricity networks and desalination plants. Such an exchange would extend the conflict beyond Iran itself, placing America’s regional allies under growing pressure while carrying potentially severe consequences for global energy markets, international shipping and the wider world economy.

The alternatives are equally problematic. A prolonged air campaign may continue degrading Iranian capabilities without fundamentally changing Tehran’s strategic calculations. A ground operation would involve enormous military and political risks. Even more extreme options, such as the use of nuclear weapons, would cross an unprecedented threshold in the post-1945 international order. Beyond the humanitarian catastrophe, such a decision could fundamentally reshape global non-proliferation norms and reinforce Tehran’s conviction that only a nuclear deterrent can guarantee the survival of the Islamic Republic.

This helps explain why Washington’s room for manoeuvre may be narrowing even as its military superiority remains overwhelming. Tactical success does not automatically translate into strategic success if every escalation leaves the opponent with both the willingness and the capacity to raise the costs further.

Bottom Line

Much of the debate surrounding the current conflict focuses on what Washington is trying to achieve. That is only half of the strategic equation. Wars are not shaped solely by one side’s objectives, but by how each side interprets the other’s intentions, assesses risks, and calculates the costs of fighting versus compromise.

Whether one agrees with Tehran’s worldview or not, its decisions are unlikely to make sense unless viewed through its own strategic logic. Iran appears to believe that negotiating under pressure invites greater pressure, that deterrence can only be restored through reciprocal escalation, and that endurance—not battlefield superiority—will ultimately determine the outcome. These assumptions explain much of its behaviour more effectively than portraying it as acting irrationally or simply seeking confrontation.

History shows that many Western policy failures in the Middle East have stemmed not from a lack of military capability, but from a failure to understand how regional actors perceive threats, opportunities and survival. Misreading an adversary’s strategic calculus often produces policies that achieve the opposite of their intended objectives.

Understanding Tehran’s logic is therefore not an exercise in sympathy or justification. It is an analytical necessity. Whether Iran’s assumptions prove correct or disastrously mistaken, they are shaping the decisions that will determine the next phase of this war. Ignoring that reality will not change it—it will only make the conflict harder to predict and even harder to end.

Ahead of the latest escalation, the United States sought to establish an alternative shipping corridor through Omani waters, reducing Iran’s ability to control maritime traffic through the Strait. Tehran, watching these developments closely, resisted and targeted vessels using the new route. Washington responded by launching a renewed military campaign—this time extending across Iran’s southern coastline in a broad arc from west to east.

A Map of US Targets

The renewed US campaign against Iran appears to mark a shift from limited punitive strikes toward a broader effort to reshape the military balance in the country’s south. In recent days, American attacks have reportedly concentrated on Iran’s coastal and maritime infrastructure around Bandar Abbas, Jask, Chabahar, Bushehr, Abu Musa and Greater Tunb. The targets have included radar and surveillance facilities, coastal defence systems, missile and drone capabilities, command centres, naval assets and military logistics. Strikes have also reportedly hit bridges, rail links, electricity facilities and other infrastructure connecting Iran’s southern coast to the interior.

Taken together, this pattern suggests that Washington is no longer targeting isolated military assets alone. Instead, it appears to be degrading the wider system that enables Iran to monitor the Strait of Hormuz, move forces and equipment along its southern coastline, sustain its military logistics, and protect its maritime positions.

Yet weakening Iran’s operational capacity in Hormuz may be only the immediate objective. The scale, geographical spread, and selection of targets point to a campaign with broader strategic ambitions. The key question is therefore no longer what the United States is striking, but what political and military endgame these strikes are intended to achieve.

The following five scenarios explore the most plausible strategic objectives behind Washington’s renewed campaign and assess the opportunities, risks, and implications associated with each.

1. Neutralizing Iran’s Leverage Over the Strait of Hormuz

The most immediate and observable objective of the renewed US campaign appears to be reducing Iran’s ability to use the Strait of Hormuz as a strategic weapon. For decades, Tehran has compensated for its conventional military disadvantages by exploiting geography. Although it had repeatedly threatened to disrupt shipping, it had never needed to close the Strait completely. The mere ability to threaten commercial traffic was usually sufficient to influence global energy markets, raise insurance costs, and increase the strategic risks associated with any confrontation. Only during the recent war—when the Islamic Republic faced what it perceived as an existential threat—did Tehran move from deterrence to actively using this leverage.

Washington now appears determined to change that equation. Rather than accepting Iran’s dominant position on the Strait, the United States has sought to encourage commercial shipping to use a corridor closer to Omani waters, effectively moving vessels farther from Iranian territorial waters and military positions. Tehran quickly interpreted this as an attempt to erode one of its most valuable strategic assets and responded by targeting ships using the alternative route. The latest US military campaign followed shortly afterwards.

The pattern of American strikes supports this interpretation. The targets extended well beyond individual missile launchers to include radar and surveillance systems, command-and-control facilities, coastal defence positions, naval assets, transport infrastructure, and military logistics spread across Iran’s southern coastline. Taken together, these attacks appear designed to degrade the integrated network through which Iran monitors maritime traffic, deploys forces, sustains military operations, and threatens vessels transiting the Strait.

If successful, such a strategy would gradually reshape the strategic geography of Hormuz. Instead of relying on shipping lanes running close to Iranian waters, commercial traffic could increasingly use routes where Tehran’s capacity to interfere is significantly reduced. Iran would remain geographically adjacent to the Strait, but its ability to translate geography into political and military leverage would be substantially weakened.

The implications extend well beyond maritime security. Control over the Strait of Hormuz has long been one of Tehran’s strongest bargaining cards in its dealings with the United States and the wider international community. Reducing that leverage would strengthen Washington’s negotiating position by depriving Iran of one of its most effective instruments of coercion. In that sense, the campaign may be aimed as much at reshaping the political value of Hormuz as at securing freedom of navigation.

Whether this objective can ultimately be achieved remains uncertain. Geography cannot be changed, and Iran retains numerous asymmetric capabilities beyond its southern coastline. Nevertheless, if Washington intends to pursue any of the more ambitious scenarios discussed below, reducing Tehran’s leverage over the Strait would be a logical first step. It would provide the operational foundation upon which the rest of the campaign could be built.

2. Fighting an Attrition War to Improve Washington’s Bargaining Position

A second possibility is that Washington is not seeking a decisive military victory at all, but a prolonged campaign designed to steadily reduce Iran’s room for manoeuvre. In this scenario, the purpose of the strikes is not regime change, but coercive diplomacy: applying enough military, economic, and social pressure to force Tehran back to negotiations from a weaker position.

Once pressure in the Strait is established, the United States can widen the cost of confrontation without necessarily escalating to full-scale war. Repeated strikes on coastal military infrastructure, logistics, transport routes, and energy-related facilities would make it more difficult and expensive for Iran to sustain its southern front. At the same time, disruption to shipping and trade would add pressure to an economy already strained by sanctions, capital shortages, and declining public confidence.

The logic is cumulative. Each individual strike may have limited strategic effect, but over time the combined damage can erode military readiness, reduce export capacity, increase insurance and transport costs, and deepen domestic economic hardship. The burden would not fall only on the state. Shortages, inflation, unemployment, and declining public services could gradually increase social pressure on the leadership.

This is where the strategy differs from a direct attempt to overthrow the Islamic Republic. Washington may calculate that regime change is too unpredictable, costly, and dangerous, while sustained attrition offers a more controlled way to influence Tehran’s choices. The aim would be to convince Iranian leaders that continuing the confrontation is more costly than accepting a revised agreement.

In that sense, the battlefield becomes an extension of the negotiating table. Military pressure is used not to eliminate the adversary, but to change its calculation of costs and benefits. Washington would seek to remove Iran’s strongest bargaining cards one by one—first its leverage over Hormuz, then its access to revenue and strategic infrastructure—until Tehran concludes that returning to negotiations is the least damaging option.

The difficulty is that attrition works in both directions. Iran has its own capacity to impose economic, military, and political costs on the United States and its regional partners. A prolonged campaign could therefore produce escalation rather than compliance, harden nationalist sentiment, and make compromise more politically difficult in Tehran.

3. Creating an Internal Front Through Proxy Forces

A third—and more controversial—scenario is that the military campaign is intended to create the conditions for a sustained internal conflict by encouraging armed opposition groups operating along Iran’s periphery. If maritime pressure weakens Tehran’s ability to project force externally, a parallel internal front could further stretch the state’s military and security resources.

Iran’s border regions have long hosted armed groups with varying degrees of separatist, ethnic, or ideological agendas. In the southeast, Baluch insurgent organizations have periodically carried out attacks against Iranian security forces. In the southwest, some Arab separatist organizations in Khuzestan have also challenged the Iranian state, although their operational capacity has generally remained limited. Additionally, in the northwest, several Kurdish armed groups continue to maintain bases across the Iraqi border and have a long history of confrontation with Tehran.

None of these groups currently poses an existential threat to the Islamic Republic on its own. However, if they were to receive greater intelligence, financial, logistical, or political support while Iran remained under sustained military pressure, they could significantly complicate Tehran’s security calculations. Instead of concentrating resources on confronting the United States in the Gulf, Iran would be forced to divide its military attention between external operations and multiple internal fronts.

Such an approach would not be unprecedented. Throughout modern military history, external military pressure has frequently been combined with support for local insurgencies as part of a broader strategy of irregular warfare. Rather than relying solely on conventional military superiority, states have often sought to exploit existing internal fractures to increase the costs of resistance and gradually erode an adversary’s capacity to govern contested territory.

At the same time, this scenario carries considerable risks. History suggests that external support for insurgent movements rarely remains confined to its original objectives. Such conflicts often become prolonged, difficult to control, and capable of producing wider regional instability. Iran’s ethnic borderlands are closely connected to neighbouring states—including Pakistan, Iraq, Turkey, and the Gulf—which means that a localized insurgency could quickly acquire broader regional dimensions.

For that reason, opening an internal front would represent a significant escalation. While it could increase pressure on Tehran, it would also transform the conflict from a conventional interstate confrontation into a prolonged hybrid war whose consequences would extend well beyond Iran itself.

4. Seizing Kharg Island to Disrupt Iran’s Oil Exports

A fourth—and far more escalatory—scenario is that the current campaign is laying the groundwork for the seizure or neutralization of Kharg Island, the heart of Iran’s oil export infrastructure. Unlike the previous scenarios, which focus primarily on military pressure and coercive diplomacy, this option would strike directly at the economic foundation of the Islamic Republic.

Kharg Island is arguably Iran’s single most strategic economic asset. Located in the northern Gulf, it handles more than 90 percent of the country’s crude oil exports. Although Iran possesses large oil reserves across several provinces, without Kharg its ability to export them at scale would be severely constrained. In strategic terms, Kharg is to Iran’s economy what the Strait of Hormuz is to its geopolitical leverage.

From Washington’s perspective, seizing—or even rendering the island inoperable—would fundamentally alter the balance of the conflict. Rather than relying primarily on sanctions, the United States would acquire direct leverage over Iran’s principal source of foreign currency. Control over Kharg could become a powerful bargaining chip in future negotiations, allowing Washington to link the restoration of Iran’s export capacity to broader political and security concessions.

Such a move would also reinforce the logic behind the current operations in southern Iran. The systematic targeting of coastal air defences, missile batteries, naval assets, logistics networks, and command centres could be interpreted not only as an effort to secure maritime navigation but also as preparations for protecting any future operation in the northern Gulf. In military planning, degrading an adversary’s anti-access and area-denial capabilities is often a prerequisite for conducting more ambitious operations.

Yet this scenario would also represent a dramatic escalation. Unlike strikes on military infrastructure, the occupation or prolonged denial of Kharg would directly target the backbone of Iran’s economy. Tehran would almost certainly regard such an operation as an attempt to strangle the state financially rather than merely alter its military behaviour. The pressure for retaliation would increase significantly, raising the likelihood of wider attacks against Gulf energy infrastructure, regional shipping, and American interests across the Middle East.

The consequences would extend well beyond Iran. Removing the export terminal responsible for the overwhelming majority of Iranian oil exports would tighten global energy supplies, increase volatility in international markets, and place additional pressure on major oil-importing economies. Even if other producers attempted to compensate, markets would likely react sharply to the prospect of prolonged disruption in one of the world’s most important energy corridors.

Whether Washington is prepared to take such a risk remains uncertain. Nevertheless, if the objective is to deprive Tehran of its most valuable sources of leverage before negotiations resume, Kharg Island represents one of the few targets whose strategic value rivals that of the Strait of Hormuz itself.

5. Preparing the Battlespace for a Limited Ground Operation

The fifth and most ambitious scenario is that the strikes across southern Iran are intended to prepare the battlespace for a limited ground operation. This remains the least likely of the five possibilities, particularly given the enormous political and military costs associated with deploying American forces on Iranian territory. Yet the geographical concentration and selection of targets make it difficult to dismiss the scenario entirely.

Any operation across the Gulf would likely begin as an amphibious assault rather than a conventional land invasion. US forces would need to cross from bases or naval platforms on the Arab side of the Gulf, secure a section of Iran’s coastline, and establish one or more beachheads through which personnel, vehicles, fuel, ammunition, and air-defence systems could be brought ashore. Even a geographically limited mission would therefore require extensive preparation and sustained control of the surrounding sea and airspace.

The latest targets are relevant in this context. Strikes on coastal surveillance networks, missile and drone sites, air defences, naval assets, command centres, bridges, rail links, and logistics infrastructure could weaken Iran’s ability to detect an approaching force, contest a landing, or rapidly reinforce the southern coastline from the interior. Attacks stretching from Bushehr and Bandar Abbas to Jask and Chabahar may be intended to create operational uncertainty across a broad front, preventing Tehran from concentrating its defences around a single possible landing area.

Southern Iran offers several potential objectives for a limited operation. These could include securing islands or coastal facilities, temporarily occupying a port, establishing control over strategic energy infrastructure, or creating a buffer around shipping routes. Such an operation would not necessarily seek to conquer Iran or march toward Tehran. Its purpose could instead be to seize a limited but strategically valuable area and use it as leverage in negotiations.

Yet securing a beachhead would be only the beginning. The greater challenge would be sustaining it. Iran’s coastline is backed by difficult terrain, long supply routes, major population centres, and military forces capable of irregular resistance. A supposedly limited operation could quickly expand if Iranian forces attacked supply lines, if local resistance developed, or if Washington felt compelled to push farther inland to protect its initial position. The experience of previous Middle Eastern wars demonstrates how easily a narrowly defined mission can produce broader and more enduring commitments.

The political risks would be equally severe. The presence of foreign troops on Iranian soil could strengthen nationalist support for the state and reduce internal divisions. It could also provoke wider retaliation against American bases and allied states across the region.

For that reason, A ground operation remains unlikely today, but the logic of military planning means that Washington may still be shaping the battlefield so that such an option exists tomorrow. The present attacks may be preparing an option rather than signalling a decision.

Bottom Line

The renewed US campaign against Iran should not be understood through a single objective. Modern wars often pursue several political and military goals at once: degrading an adversary’s immediate capabilities, reshaping the strategic environment, strengthening negotiating leverage, and preserving options that may never ultimately be used.

These five scenarios are therefore not mutually exclusive. Neutralizing Iran’s leverage over the Strait of Hormuz could support a wider war of attrition. Pressure on the southern coastline could also prepare the conditions for operations against Kharg Island, enable support for internal armed groups, or preserve the option of a limited ground intervention. Each scenario may function as both an objective in itself and a means toward a broader political end.

The most likely near-term purpose remains coercive diplomacy rather than outright regime change. Washington appears to be trying to remove Iran’s bargaining cards one by one, increase the costs of continued resistance, and force Tehran back to negotiations from a weaker position. Yet the danger is that a strategy designed to produce concessions may instead create a cycle of escalation in which both sides continually expand the conflict to recover lost leverage.

The central question, then, is not simply what the United States is targeting, but which outcome it ultimately considers sufficient. Until Washington defines the political settlement it is prepared to accept, military success may continue to widen the battlefield without bringing the war any closer to an end.

Iraq’s new anti-corruption campaign has begun with a familiar sense of urgency. A number of officials accused of corruption have been arrested, and the government has presented the measures as evidence of seriousness, reform, and a break with the failures of the past. For a country where corruption has weakened state institutions, drained public resources, and damaged public trust for two decades, any serious effort to confront it deserves attention.

Yet public optimism is mixed with deep skepticism. Iraqis have seen similar campaigns before. New governments often begin with promises to fight corruption, announce investigations, arrest selected officials, and present themselves as reformist forces. But over time, many of these campaigns lose momentum, disappear into opaque legal processes, or become entangled in political rivalries.

The central question, therefore, is not whether some officials are corrupt or whether their arrest is justified. The question is whether this campaign represents a genuine attempt to transform the system that produces corruption, or whether it is another selective exercise shaped by political conflict and the need to build legitimacy at home and abroad.

This article argues that while the current campaign may produce important short-term outcomes, corruption in Iraq is deeply institutionalized. It is embedded in party networks, state contracts, public appointments, patronage systems, and the distribution of state resources. Without structural reform, anti-corruption drives risk becoming instruments of political competition and legitimacy-building rather than genuine reform.

A Familiar Pattern

Iraq has been here before. Almost every recent government has entered office promising to confront corruption, only for the campaign to later become trapped in accusations of selectivity, political rivalry, and institutional weakness.

Mustafa al-Kadhimi’s government launched a wide anti-corruption campaign that initially attracted significant attention. Yet it was soon criticized by many Iraqi and international actors actors as selective and politically motivated, with serious allegations of human rights violations surrounding some of its methods. More damagingly, the government’s final period was overshadowed by the so-called “heist of the century,” one of the largest corruption scandals in Iraq’s modern history, involving senior officials, political networks, and state institutions.

Mohammed Shia al-Sudani’s government also began with a loud anti-corruption campaign. But over time, many suspects were released, momentum slowed, and allegations of corruption began to touch figures and networks close to the government itself. The current government of Ali al-Zaidi is now pursuing some of those cases, presenting its own campaign as a new break with the past.

This creates a familiar pattern: each new government targets corruption associated with the previous one, partly as a political battle and partly as a way to build domestic and international legitimacy. The danger is that anti-corruption becomes less a project of institutional reform and more a recurring instrument of political transition.

Why Now? The Politics of Timing

The timing of Iraq’s latest anti-corruption campaign is unlikely to be coincidental. Anti-corruption initiatives in Iraq have rarely emerged in a political vacuum. More often, they coincide with moments when governments seek to consolidate authority, strengthen their public image, or redefine political balances.

The current government is still relatively new and, like its predecessors, faces the challenge of establishing its authority within Iraq’s highly fragmented political system. Launching a visible anti-corruption campaign allows the government to project decisiveness, demonstrate independence from previous administrations, and send a signal that a new political era has begun.

The international dimension is equally important. With an upcoming visit to Washington, the government has strong incentives to showcase its reform credentials to international partners. Fighting corruption has long been a central demand of Western governments and international financial institutions. Demonstrating seriousness on this issue can strengthen Iraq’s diplomatic standing, facilitate economic cooperation, and improve prospects for foreign investment.

Domestically, the campaign comes amid continuing economic difficulties, high unemployment, inadequate public services, and declining trust in political institutions. Corruption remains one of the issues that most deeply frustrates Iraqi citizens. Consequently, anti-corruption measures can serve as an effective means of mobilizing public support and redirecting popular frustration away from the current government.

In this sense, anti-corruption campaigns often emerge at moments when governments require political capital. They can strengthen legitimacy, both at home and abroad, while simultaneously reshaping political competition. The challenge, however, is ensuring that the pursuit of political legitimacy does not come at the expense of genuine institutional reform.

Corruption as a System, Not a Collection of Individuals

For the current anti-corruption campaign to gain broad public credibility, several essential elements remain either absent or insufficiently developed.

First, many Iraqis continue to question the principle of equal accountability. The campaign appears selective, targeting certain individuals and networks while leaving other powerful actors untouched. Whether this perception is accurate or not, it significantly undermines public confidence. In a deeply fragmented political system such as Iraq’s, selective justice is easily interpreted as political justice.

Second, transparency remains limited. Investigative procedures are often unclear, information available to the public is restricted, and independent oversight mechanisms remain weak. Citizens are frequently asked to trust official statements without having access to sufficient information regarding the evidence, legal procedures, or criteria used in selecting cases. This opacity creates fertile ground for suspicions of political motivation.

Without transparency and the equal application of the law, anti-corruption efforts risk being perceived not as judicial processes aimed at strengthening the rule of law, but as political instruments used to weaken rivals, reshape power balances, and generate legitimacy.

Yet even if these shortcomings were addressed, a more fundamental problem would remain: corruption in Iraq is not simply the product of corrupt individuals. It is a system.

Over the past two decades, corruption has become embedded within Iraq’s political, economic, and administrative structures. The post-2003 political order created extensive patronage networks through the *muhasasa* system, in which political parties distribute state positions, contracts, and resources among themselves. Control over ministries and state institutions often provides parties not only with political influence but also with access to vast financial resources.

As a result, corruption is frequently incentivized rather than merely tolerated. Public employment, procurement contracts, customs revenues, and investment projects have all become intertwined with party competition and patronage. In such an environment, individual officials often operate within broader institutional arrangements that both facilitate and reward corrupt practices.

This is why arresting officials, while necessary, is insufficient. Arresting individuals without reforming institutions resembles treating symptoms while leaving the underlying disease untouched. Sustainable progress requires structural reforms: strengthening independent oversight bodies, reforming the civil service, increasing transparency in public procurement, reducing partisan control over state institutions, and fundamentally rethinking the political economy that sustains corruption.

Until these deeper reforms occur, anti-corruption campaigns are likely to remain cyclical—highly visible, politically significant, but ultimately limited in their ability to transform the system.

Can This Time Be Different?

Despite the reasons for skepticism, it would be premature to dismiss the current campaign entirely. Iraq’s corruption problem is severe, but it is not immutable. Under the right conditions, the present campaign could become an important step toward genuine reform rather than another episode in a familiar political cycle.

Meaningful change, however, requires moving beyond high-profile arrests and toward comprehensive institutional reform. At the center of such reform must be an independent judiciary capable of investigating and prosecuting corruption cases without political interference. Equally important is the strengthening of oversight institutions, including audit bodies, integrity commissions, and parliamentary committees, ensuring that they operate independently and transparently.

Transparency in public contracts is another essential pillar. Government contracts have long been among the principal sources of corruption in Iraq. Opening procurement processes to public scrutiny and digital monitoring would significantly reduce opportunities for abuse.

Civil service reform is equally necessary. The politicization of public appointments through patronage networks has weakened state institutions and undermined professionalism. Building a merit-based civil service would help reduce the influence of political parties over administrative institutions.

Protecting whistleblowers and investigative journalists is also critical. Many corruption cases come to light only because individuals are willing to expose wrongdoing at considerable personal risk. Without effective legal protections, corruption will continue to flourish in the shadows.

More fundamentally, reducing party control over state institutions is indispensable. As long as ministries and public agencies remain tied to partisan interests, corruption will continue to be embedded within the political system itself.

Finally, expanding electronic government services could play a transformative role. Excessive human involvement in administrative procedures creates opportunities for bribery, favoritism, and manipulation. Digitizing government services, financial transactions, licensing procedures, and procurement systems would reduce direct human discretion, increase transparency, and make corrupt practices more difficult.

The current campaign could indeed become a turning point. But this will happen only if it evolves from selective prosecutions into a broader project of institutional transformation. The true test of success will not be the number of officials arrested, but whether the rules and institutions that enable corruption are fundamentally changed.

Bottom Line

The latest anti-corruption campaign should neither be dismissed outright nor embraced uncritically. Holding corrupt officials accountable is an essential function of any state seeking to restore public trust and strengthen the rule of law. Yet Iraq’s experience over the past two decades suggests that arrests alone are insufficient to address a problem that has become deeply embedded within the country’s political and institutional structures.

The ultimate measure of success should not be the number of officials detained, nor the publicity generated by high-profile cases. Rather, it should be whether the campaign succeeds in changing the rules, incentives, and institutional arrangements that make corruption possible in the first place.

Without meaningful institutional reform—strengthening judicial independence, enhancing transparency, reducing partisan control over state institutions, and modernizing public administration—today’s anti-corruption drive risks becoming another chapter in Iraq’s long history of fighting corruption without transforming the system.

The real challenge facing Iraq is not simply to punish corrupt individuals, but to build a state in which corruption is no longer rewarded, protected, or politically useful. Only then can anti-corruption move from being a recurring political slogan to becoming a sustainable pillar of state-building.

The Unthinkable Is Becoming Thinkable

Imagine Air Force Two touching down in Tehran, carrying Vice President JD Vance for talks with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian. For nearly half a century, such an image would have belonged more to political fiction than diplomatic reality. Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, relations between Washington and Tehran have been defined by hostage crises, sanctions, proxy conflicts, military confrontations, and deep mutual mistrust.

The idea of high-level engagement is not entirely unprecedented. In 1986, President Ronald Reagan secretly dispatched National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane to Tehran in an attempt to open a strategic dialogue with Iran. The mission ended in humiliation for both sides. The secret contacts were exposed, triggering the Iran-Contra scandal in Washington while embarrassing Iranian leaders domestically and reinforcing suspicions on both sides. Rather than opening a new chapter, the episode deepened hostility and made future engagement politically toxic.

Yet history rarely moves in straight lines. Paradoxically, despite recent wars, direct military confrontations, and years of maximum pressure, the United States and Iran may now be closer than ever to a historic accommodation.

The reason is simple: the recent wars demonstrated the limits of military coercion for both Washington and Tehran. The United States discovered that sanctions, military pressure, and even direct confrontation could not compel Iran to surrender or fundamentally alter its strategic posture. Iran, for its part, learned that while it could impose significant costs on its adversaries, perpetual confrontation carries enormous economic and security risks that might lead to system collapse.

Having tested escalation and survived it, both sides increasingly appear to recognize that coexistence—even between adversaries—may be less costly than endless conflict. The road to reconciliation remains long and uncertain, but for the first time in decades, the unthinkable no longer seems impossible.

Why the War Was Necessary

Paradoxically, the recent war may have been a necessary stage on the path toward a possible US-Iran accommodation. For decades, both sides believed that time, pressure, and deterrence would eventually force the other to concede. The war tested these assumptions in the most direct way possible. It revealed not only the strengths of each side, but also the limits of their power.

For Washington

Despite being widely viewed as highly risky, a military confrontation with Iran had remained an attractive option for successive American administrations. Many in Washington believed that only the credible threat—or actual use—of force could compel Tehran to accept a fundamentally different relationship with the United States and the regional order.

Donald Trump was the first president willing to take that gamble. Convinced that the Islamic Republic was at its weakest point domestically and regionally, he sought to force a better deal than the JCPOA and perhaps even alter the strategic behavior of the regime itself. The war became the ultimate test of the maximum pressure strategy.

Washington also needed to demonstrate resolve—to Israel, to Gulf allies, and to domestic audiences skeptical of American deterrence after years of regional retrenchment. Yet the conflict simultaneously exposed the limits of American power and, more importantly, the limited willingness of the United States to sustain another major Middle Eastern war.

What initially appeared as a show of strength gradually turned into an escalation trap. The administration ultimately faced two unappealing choices: either escalate toward a much larger war involving unconventional weapons, prolonged air campaigns, and potentially a ground confrontation that could drag the United States into a disaster even more costly than Iraq or Vietnam; or accept compromise and return to negotiations in search of a deal attractive enough for Tehran to accept. Washington eventually chose the latter.

For Tehran

Iran also entered the conflict believing that its multilayered deterrence system would prevent direct war. Over decades, Tehran had constructed a sophisticated network of non-state regional allies, developed one of the region’s most advanced missile programs, and accumulated significant nuclear capabilities through high-level uranium enrichment.

Yet the war demonstrated the limits of these deterrent tools as well. None proved sufficient to prevent military confrontation or eliminate the possibility of an existential threat to the Islamic Republic. Iran discovered that while it could survive direct confrontation, the long-term economic, political, and security consequences of sustained conflict could be extremely dangerous.

A famous quote from former supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei summorizes the previous stance: “There won’t be a war, and we won’t negotiate”. However, after the war, his successor, Mujtaba Khamenei, said: “He dislikes dealing with the U.S., but he allowed it”.

At the same time, the war provided Tehran with an opportunity to redraw deterrence and establish new red lines. Iranian leaders sought to demonstrate that attacks on Iran itself would impose unacceptable costs on its adversaries. Although the conflict did not eliminate the prospect of future confrontations, it significantly strengthened Iran’s deterrent posture.

Surviving the war increased the regime’s confidence and improved its bargaining position. Yet it also reinforced another lesson: the long-term survival and stability of the Islamic Republic may ultimately require ending, or at least managing, its hostility with the United States through a sustainable and mutually acceptable arrangement.

Ironically, both sides needed the war to discover the same reality: neither could impose its preferred outcome through force.

China and Russia: Indirectly Pushing Toward Compromise

Another factor pushing Washington and Tehran toward accommodation has been the role played—largely indirectly—by China and Russia. Neither Moscow nor Beijing intervened militarily on Iran’s behalf during the recent wars. Yet their restrained support may have delivered an important strategic lesson to both Tehran and Washington.

For Iran, the conflict exposed the limits of reliance on its traditional great-power partners. Although China and Russia provided diplomatic backing, economic cooperation, intelligence support, and political coverage in international forums, neither was willing to enter the conflict directly or assume significant costs on Iran’s behalf. Tehran discovered that, unlike North Korea’s relationship with China, it could not expect an unconditional security guarantee.

More importantly, Iranian leaders have little interest in becoming strategically subordinate to either Moscow or Beijing. Such dependence would reduce Iran to a weaker and more isolated state, largely confined to trading with these two powers while remaining cut off from broader global markets and institutions. The Islamic Republic has historically sought strategic autonomy and has consistently rejected becoming a junior partner to any external power, whether Eastern or Western. The war reinforced the necessity of diversifying Iran’s international relations and reducing its isolation through some form of accommodation with the West.

Washington reached a different but equally important conclusion. Continued maximum pressure and further military escalation risked pushing Iran even deeper into the orbit of Russia and China. Such an outcome would fundamentally alter the regional balance of power and further weaken American influence in the Middle East. A permanently isolated Iran with no option but to rely on Moscow and Beijing would not necessarily serve US strategic interests, particularly at a time when Washington increasingly views China as its principal global competitor.

From this perspective, the war highlighted an uncomfortable reality for both sides. Iran realized that neither Russia nor China could substitute for normalized relations with the broader international system. The United States realized that excessive pressure could accelerate the emergence of a stronger anti-American alignment linking Tehran more closely with Moscow and Beijing.

Paradoxically, therefore, China and Russia may have contributed to peace not by intervening in the conflict, but by demonstrating to both Washington and Tehran the strategic limits of confrontation. Their position indirectly pushed both sides toward compromise, making negotiations appear less like a concession and more like a strategic necessity.

A Changing of the Guard: New Thinking in Washington and Tehran

A lasting accommodation between the United States and Iran has become more conceivable not only because of the recent wars, but also because both countries are undergoing important strategic transformations. The political forces that shaped four decades of hostility are gradually giving way to new generations with different priorities and understandings of power.

In the United States, the era of the neocon project that dominated Washington after the end of the Cold War appears largely over. The ambition to export democracy through military intervention and pursue regime change as a central pillar of American foreign policy has lost much of its appeal after the costly experiences of Iraq and Afghanistan. Across the political spectrum, there is now little appetite for another large-scale Middle Eastern war.

Instead, a new foreign policy consensus has emerged, best reflected in Trump’s “America First” doctrine. While far from isolationist, this approach favors minimizing costly military commitments abroad, reducing direct involvement in regional conflicts, and focusing American resources on strategic competition with major powers, particularly China. From this perspective, endless confrontation with Iran increasingly appears as a distraction rather than a strategic necessity.

Important voices in both the Republican and Democratic parties now prefer burden-sharing, regional balancing, and transactional diplomacy over nation-building and regime change. This does not mean that Washington has abandoned coercion or military pressure, but it does suggest that future American administrations are likely to be more interested in managing rivalry with Iran than overthrowing the Islamic Republic.

Iran is experiencing a parallel, though different, transformation. A new generation of military and political elites is gradually assuming greater influence within the system. Unlike the revolutionary generation that founded the Islamic Republic, many of these figures are less driven by ideology and more by strategic calculation and state interests.

This emerging technocratic class does not seek to abandon Iran’s sources of power—its missile program, regional alliances, or nuclear capabilities. Rather, it increasingly views these assets as bargaining chips that can be strategically exchanged for other forms of power, including economic development, technological modernization, sanctions relief, and international legitimacy.

For this new generation, the central objective is not permanent confrontation but preserving the system while adapting it to a changing regional and international environment. In this sense, engagement with the United States is increasingly viewed not as ideological surrender, but as a potential instrument for strengthening the Iranian state.

These parallel shifts do not eliminate the profound differences separating Washington and Tehran. Yet they do create a political environment in which compromise has become more conceivable than at any time in recent decades. For the first time in a generation, influential actors on both sides appear more interested in managing hostility than perpetuating it indefinitely.

A Shifting Regional Dynamic

Another reason this moment may be different from previous attempts at US-Iran rapprochement is the dramatic change in the regional environment. Unlike in 2015, when several regional actors viewed the JCPOA with deep suspicion, today almost every major regional power—with the notable exception of Israel—supports some form of accommodation between Washington and Tehran.

The Gulf states, once among the strongest advocates of maximum pressure on Iran, have increasingly shifted toward de-escalation and engagement. Years of regional conflict, attacks on energy infrastructure, and economic uncertainty have convinced many Arab governments that stability is more valuable than confrontation. The Iran-Saudi rapprochement brokered by China in 2023 was perhaps the clearest indication of this strategic shift.

At the same time, the Gaza war has significantly altered Israel’s regional and international position. While Israel remains America’s closest ally in the Middle East, the war has deepened tensions between Washington and Tel Aviv and exposed growing differences over regional strategy. Increasing international criticism of Israeli policies, combined with concerns in Washington about the costs of endless regional escalation, has left Israel more isolated than at any point in recent decades.

This changing regional landscape creates an important opportunity. For the first time in years, both Washington and Tehran are operating in a largely supportive regional environment that favors de-escalation rather than confrontation. Regional powers increasingly see a US-Iran understanding not as a threat, but as a prerequisite for stability, economic development, and the avoidance of another catastrophic war.

In other words, the diplomatic path that once faced strong regional resistance now enjoys broad regional support. That does not guarantee success, but it significantly improves the prospects for finding a common ground between the United States and Iran.

The MoU as an Emerging Roadmap: Why This Moment Is Different

The emerging memorandum of understanding between the United States and Iran falls far short of a peace treaty. It does not resolve the fundamental disputes that have divided the two countries for nearly half a century. Yet it may represent something equally significant: a roadmap for managing rivalry rather than perpetuating confrontation.

The framework includes several important elements: a ceasefire and broader de-escalation, the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, limited sanctions relief and the release of some frozen Iranian assets, and a timetable for future negotiations on the central issue—the nuclear program. More broadly, it could open the door to wider regional de-escalation, particularly in Iraq, Lebanon, and the Gulf.

Such efforts are not new. Previous attempts at rapprochement repeatedly failed because of deep mistrust, powerful domestic opposition on both sides, regional spoilers, and fundamentally different expectations about the end state of negotiations. Washington often sought transformational change in Iranian behavior, while Tehran sought recognition, security guarantees, and sanctions relief without sacrificing what it considered core sovereign rights.

What makes the current moment different is that both sides have now experienced direct war. The costs have been substantial for Washington, Tehran, and the wider region. The United States discovered the limits of coercion, while Iran learned that even a successful deterrence strategy cannot eliminate the dangers of prolonged conflict.

Moreover, the strategic incentives have changed. Trump needs stability: politically, economically, and strategically. Another prolonged Middle Eastern war would undermine his broader domestic and international agenda. Iran, meanwhile, urgently needs economic relief, investment, and reintegration into global markets after years of sanctions and conflict. Regional states, particularly in the Gulf, overwhelmingly support de-escalation, having witnessed firsthand the economic and security costs of confrontation.

Most importantly, there now appears to be a meaningful area of overlap between American and Iranian interests.

Neither side seeks the complete elimination of the other. Washington increasingly appears willing to tolerate Iran as a limited regional power, provided that Tehran’s influence remains bounded and does not directly threaten American interests or regional partners. Tehran, for its part, appears prepared to accept a regional order in which it remains influential but not hegemonic.

Similarly, while Iran’s missile program remains contentious, it no longer appears to be the central obstacle to an agreement. A compromise on the nuclear issue could create sufficient political space for both sides to manage disagreements over missiles and regional influence without allowing them to derail the broader relationship.

In other words, for the first time in decades, Washington and Tehran may have identified a common strategic ground on which to meet. The emerging MoU is not peace. But it may be the first serious attempt by both sides to replace a cycle of endless hostility with a framework for managed competition and coexistence.

Conclusion: Waiting for Air Force Two

The image of Air Force Two landing in Tehran, carrying Vice President JD Vance, may still appear improbable. Few in the early 1970s could have imagined Richard Nixon walking through Beijing and shaking hands with Mao Zedong, bringing an end to more than two decades of hostility between the United States and China.

History rarely changes because adversaries suddenly become friends. More often, it changes when both sides conclude that endless conflict no longer serves their interests.

None of this guarantees peace. Deep mistrust remains, domestic opposition persists, and some regional spoilers, particularly Israel, will continue to resist any rapprochement. The road ahead will be long, fragile, and vulnerable to setbacks.

But for the first time in decades, the strategic logic on both sides may be moving in the same direction: away from perpetual confrontation and toward managed coexistence. The destination may still be distant, but the journey may already have begun.

Recent reports suggest that the two sides are closer than they have been in years to reaching an agreement, although what is currently on the table appears to be little more than a memorandum of understanding rather than a comprehensive settlement. More strikingly, the leaked details indicate that Iran has not offered major concessions beyond those it had already accepted under the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) negotiated by the Obama administration. If anything, Tehran enters these negotiations with additional leverage, most notably its demonstrated ability to influence global trade and energy flows through the Strait of Hormuz—an asset it appears unwilling to relinquish.

This raises an uncomfortable question: if the United States has ultimately returned to the negotiating table after a decade of sanctions, maximum pressure, military escalation, and war, what exactly did that decade achieve?

The answer requires revisiting a debate that has shaped American policy toward Iran for more than a decade. At its core were two competing assumptions. Barack Obama believed that Iran could be constrained, deterred, and gradually integrated into a more stable regional order, but not coerced into surrender. Donald Trump and his supporters believed that sufficient pressure could force Tehran into accepting a fundamentally better deal and potentially transform its behaviour altogether.

The events of the past decade—and especially the recent wars—suggest that Obama may have understood Iran better than his successors.

The Deal That Is Not Yet a Deal

One of the most striking aspects of the emerging US-Iran agreement is that it is being widely portrayed as a diplomatic breakthrough when, in reality, it appears to be little more than a framework for future negotiations.

Based on the information available so far, the two sides are not approaching a comprehensive settlement but rather a memorandum of understanding designed to halt further escalation and create political space for diplomacy. The proposed arrangement focuses on reopening the Strait of Hormuz, easing aspects of the economic confrontation, extending the ceasefire, and establishing a timetable—likely between 30 and 60 days—for negotiations on the core disputes that remain unresolved.

What is particularly revealing is that the most contentious issue—the future of Iran’s nuclear program—has effectively been postponed rather than resolved. While Washington continues to speak about limiting or dismantling key elements of Iran’s nuclear capabilities, Tehran insists that questions related to enrichment, stockpiles, and long-term restrictions remain subject to future negotiations. In other words, the agreement does not solve the nuclear dispute; it merely creates a process through which the dispute can continue to be managed.

The same applies to sanctions. Iran seeks the gradual lifting of sanctions and the release of frozen assets, while the United States continues to link economic relief to future compliance and verification measures. Both sides therefore remain committed to different visions of what a final agreement should look like.

Perhaps the most important difference between today’s negotiations and the 2015 JCPOA is the Strait of Hormuz. Unlike a decade ago, the current talks are taking place after Iran demonstrated its ability to disrupt one of the world’s most important maritime chokepoints. As a result, Hormuz has become a central bargaining chip rather than a peripheral issue. While the emerging framework reportedly envisages the reopening of shipping routes, Tehran appears determined to preserve its role as the primary regulator of maritime traffic through its territorial waters and is unlikely to surrender the leverage it acquired during the war.

This is why describing the current understanding as a breakthrough may be premature. The agreement does not resolve the fundamental disputes between the two countries. It merely postpones them. The central questions—uranium enrichment, sanctions relief, missile capabilities, regional influence, and long-term security guarantees—remain largely unanswered.

More importantly, the broad outlines of the emerging framework do not appear dramatically different from what Iran had already accepted under the 2015 nuclear agreement. If anything, Tehran now enters negotiations with additional leverage that it did not possess a decade ago. This raises an uncomfortable question for advocates of maximum pressure: after years of sanctions, assassinations, economic warfare, and two major military confrontations, is Washington ultimately returning to a negotiating position not fundamentally different from the one it abandoned in 2018?

In that sense, the emerging document is less a peace agreement than a recognition by both sides that neither achieved enough on the battlefield to impose its preferred outcome. The war may be over, but the negotiation over its meaning and consequences has only just begun.

Obama’s Iran Doctrine: Managing Reality, Not Chasing Fantasy

At the heart of Barack Obama’s Iran policy was a simple but often misunderstood assumption: Iran was not a problem that could be eliminated. It was a reality that had to be managed.

For decades, American policy toward Iran oscillated between containment and confrontation, often driven by the hope that sufficient pressure would either transform the regime’s behavior or eventually bring about its collapse. Obama rejected both assumptions. He understood that Iran was not a temporary challenge but a permanent regional power with deep historical roots, a large population, significant military capabilities, and extensive political and security networks across the Middle East.

This did not mean that the Obama administration viewed Iran as benign. On the contrary, his administration remained deeply critical of Iran’s regional activities, missile program, and support for armed groups across the region. But he also recognized the limits of American power. Regime change was unrealistic, military confrontation was costly and unpredictable, and efforts to force Iran into surrender were more likely to produce escalation than compliance.

Obama’s central insight was that diplomacy is not built on trust. It is built on interests, incentives, and verification. The purpose of negotiations was not to turn Iran into an ally, but to constrain its most destabilizing activities and reduce the risk of war. In this sense, diplomacy was not an alternative to containment; it was a tool of containment.

This logic was most clearly reflected in the JCPOA. The agreement did not seek to resolve every dispute between Washington and Tehran. It focused on a specific objective: preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon while creating a more stable environment in which other regional disputes could be managed. The agreement accepted the reality of the Iranian state while attempting to shape its behavior through a combination of restrictions, inspections, incentives, and deterrence.

The same logic extended to Obama’s broader regional vision. He repeatedly argued that Iran and its regional rivals, particularly Saudi Arabia, would eventually have to find a way to coexist and “share the neighborhood.” The alternative was an endless cycle of proxy wars, sectarian competition, and regional instability. While this idea was heavily criticized at the time, later developments—including the Chinese-brokered rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia in 2023—suggested that some form of regional accommodation was not only possible but perhaps inevitable.

Obama did not negotiate because he trusted Iran. He negotiated because he understood Iran. He understood that sustainable policy begins with reality rather than wishful thinking. The objective was never to make Iran disappear. It was to limit its capacity to threaten regional stability while avoiding another costly war in the Middle East.

The central question explored in the rest of this article is whether the decade that followed proved him right.

What the JCPOA Actually Achieved

Much of the debate surrounding the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) has been driven by politics rather than outcomes. Supporters often portrayed it as a pathway toward a broader transformation of US-Iran relations, while critics condemned it as a dangerous concession to Tehran. Lost in this political battle was a simpler question: did the agreement achieve the objectives it was designed to achieve? And is the United States in a better position now, a decade after withdrawing from it?

The answer is largely yes to the first and no to the second.

The JCPOA significantly reduced Iran’s uranium enrichment activities, dramatically cut its stockpile of enriched uranium, imposed strict limits on key elements of the nuclear program, and established one of the most intrusive inspection regimes ever negotiated. As a result, Iran’s nuclear breakout time—the period required to produce sufficient fissile material for a nuclear weapon—was extended substantially, reducing the immediate risk of a nuclear crisis.

Just as importantly, the agreement lowered the likelihood of a military confrontation. Before the JCPOA, discussions of preventive strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities had become increasingly common in Washington and Tel Aviv. The agreement did not eliminate tensions between Iran and its adversaries, but it created a mechanism for managing one of the most dangerous dimensions of the conflict through diplomacy rather than war.

This is where many critics misunderstood the purpose of the deal. The JCPOA was never intended to solve every problem between Iran and the West. It was not designed to address Iran’s missile program, regional alliances, domestic politics, or ideological disputes with the United States. Its objective was narrower but strategically important: to remove the nuclear issue as an immediate source of confrontation and create space for addressing other disputes through political and diplomatic means.

In effect, the agreement sought to compartmentalize the most urgent threat while preventing it from consuming the entire relationship. It recognized that solving every disagreement simultaneously was impossible, but that managing the most dangerous one was both achievable and necessary.

The irony is that many of the concessions currently being discussed between Washington and Tehran closely resemble arrangements that Iran had already accepted under the JCPOA. After years of maximum pressure, sanctions, assassinations, and war, the United States appears to be seeking limitations on Iran’s nuclear activities that are not fundamentally different from those negotiated by the Obama administration more than a decade ago.

The JCPOA did not create peace, nor did it transform Iran. But it accomplished what it was designed to accomplish: it constrained Iran’s nuclear program, increased transparency, reduced the risk of war, and created diplomatic space for managing a difficult relationship. Judged by those objectives rather than by ambitions it never claimed to fulfil, the agreement was far more successful than many of its critics were willing to acknowledge.

From Engagement to Confrontation: The War That Already Tested

The fundamental difference between Obama’s approach and Trump’s approach to Iran was not merely tactical; it reflected two competing visions of how the United States should manage a rising regional power.

Obama’s strategy was based on engagement, containment, and gradual accommodation. He believed that Iran was a permanent feature of the Middle Eastern landscape and that regional stability would ultimately require a framework in which Iran and its rivals could coexist. This logic was reflected in his controversial argument that Iran and Saudi Arabia would eventually have to “share the neighborhood” rather than pursue endless proxy wars across the region.

At the time, critics dismissed this vision as naïve. Yet developments in the years that followed suggested otherwise. The Chinese-brokered rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia in 2023 demonstrated that regional powers themselves increasingly recognized the unsustainability of permanent confrontation. Ironically, the regional accommodation that Obama had envisioned eventually emerged, but under Chinese rather than American sponsorship.

By abandoning diplomacy, Washington not only lost the nuclear agreement; it also surrendered the opportunity to shape the region’s evolving balance of power. The vacuum was gradually filled by others, particularly China, which positioned itself as a mediator while the United States increasingly defined its policy through pressure and confrontation.

Trump’s alternative was built on a different assumption: that sufficient pressure could force Iran into accepting a fundamentally better deal. The objectives were ambitious. Washington sought to end uranium enrichment, restrict Iran’s missile program, roll back its regional influence, weaken its alliance network, and potentially transform the behavior of the regime itself. Economic sanctions, diplomatic isolation, targeted assassinations, military strikes, and eventually direct military confrontation became the primary instruments for achieving these goals.

The central question, however, is not whether pressure was applied. It undoubtedly was. The question is whether it worked.

The answer was ultimately provided not by diplomats or analysts but by war itself.

The recent wars became the ultimate test of the maximum-pressure strategy. For years, advocates argued that increasing economic and military pressure would eventually force Iran to capitulate or fundamentally alter its behavior. Yet despite unprecedented sanctions, the assassination of senior military leaders, repeated military strikes, diplomatic isolation, and two major military confrontations, Iran proved far more resilient than many in Washington anticipated.

The regime survived. The missile program survived. Iran’s nuclear capabilities expanded far beyond the limitations imposed by the JCPOA. Its regional networks remained largely intact. It developed new strategic leverage through its demonstrated ability to disrupt maritime traffic in the Strait of Hormuz. Most importantly, rather than abandoning its allies, Iran emerged from the conflict with a stronger commitment to coordinating and integrating its regional network.

In many respects, the war produced outcomes directly opposite to those envisioned by advocates of maximum pressure. Instead of isolating Iran, it reinforced Tehran’s perception that its security depended on stronger deterrence, closer coordination with its allies, and the preservation of capabilities that it had previously been willing to limit through negotiations.

War tested the assumptions of maximum pressure in a way no academic debate could. The results suggest that while pressure was capable of inflicting significant costs on Iran, it was far less successful in compelling surrender or producing the strategic transformation that its advocates promised.

The irony is difficult to ignore. The strategy designed to obtain a better agreement than Obama’s ultimately led Washington back to negotiations, but now with an Iran that is more experienced, more suspicious, more resilient, less flexible and in possession of leverage that it did not have a decade earlier.

The Strategic Costs of Proving Obama Wrong

The greatest irony of the past decade is not simply that Trump ended up validating Obama’s approach to Iran. It is that, in trying to disprove it, he may have made the challenge facing future American administrations significantly more difficult.

Obama’s central argument was that Iran could be constrained but not coerced into surrender. Trump rejected that premise. By withdrawing from the JCPOA, launching the maximum-pressure campaign, pursuing economic warfare, and eventually engaging in direct military confrontation, he sought to prove that sufficient pressure could force Tehran into accepting a fundamentally better deal and perhaps even transform the strategic balance of the region.

Yet after years of sanctions, assassinations, diplomatic isolation, and two wars, Washington has found itself returning to the same place Obama began: negotiations with Iran.

The difference is that the circumstances have changed dramatically.

Iran today is much closer to nuclear weapons capability than it was under the JCPOA. It possesses larger stockpiles of enriched uranium, more advanced nuclear expertise, and stronger incentives to preserve and expand those capabilities. The argument inside Tehran that nuclear latency provides the ultimate guarantee against future attacks has become far more persuasive than it was a decade ago.

At the same time, Iran is less trusting of American commitments. From Tehran’s perspective, it complied with an internationally verified agreement only to watch Washington abandon it unilaterally. Any future negotiation will therefore face a profound credibility deficit that did not exist in 2015.

The regional environment has also shifted. Instead of weakening Iran’s position, years of confrontation accelerated the emergence of a more multipolar Middle East. Traditional American partners have increasingly diversified their relationships with China, Russia, and regional powers. Washington no longer enjoys the uncontested influence it once possessed, while Beijing has demonstrated an ability to play diplomatic roles that were once considered exclusively American.

The costs are not limited to diplomacy. American influence in the region has become more contested, its military presence more vulnerable, and its network of regional partnerships less cohesive than during the Obama years. Meanwhile, Iran has demonstrated new forms of leverage, most notably through the Strait of Hormuz and its ability to impose costs on regional and global actors during periods of crisis.

This is what makes the outcome so paradoxical. The strategy designed to strengthen America’s bargaining position may have weakened it. The policy intended to isolate Iran may have encouraged Tehran to become more self-reliant, more resilient, and more determined to preserve the very capabilities Washington sought to eliminate.

Most importantly, Trump may have narrowed the range of options available to his successors. Future administrations will likely face a more capable Iran, a more fragmented regional order, and a United States with fewer sources of leverage than it possessed when the JCPOA was first signed.

Obama’s insight was that reality imposes limits on power. The past decade suggests that those limits were far more enduring than Trump’s strategy assumed.

The destination was the same negotiating table. The difference is that Washington returned with fewer allies, less influence, and a more challenging Iran than the one it left behind.

This was not simply a matter of political rhetoric. Rather, deception and secrecy seemed to form an integral part of Trump’s approach to both warfare and negotiation. Different messages were directed at different audiences: Iran, American voters, regional allies, financial markets, and the broader international community. Some statements sought to conceal intentions, others to increase pressure on Tehran, reassure domestic constituencies, maintain coalition support, or create uncertainty among adversaries. In this sense, misinformation functioned not as an accidental by-product of the conflict, but as a deliberate strategic tool.

Such practices are hardly unique in the history of war. Governments have long justified deception as a military necessity. Yet the Iran conflict offers a particularly revealing case study because deception was not confined to the battlefield. It became a central feature of diplomacy, public communication, and political management. The boundary between negotiation and propaganda, between strategic ambiguity and outright falsehood, became increasingly blurred.

^{CNN montage of all the times Trump announced deals with Iran, 39 times since the beginning of the conflict.}

This article examines Trump’s politics of lies during the Iran war and the negotiations that accompanied it. It seeks to understand how deception was used as a method of war and diplomacy, what political and military objectives it was intended to achieve, and how it shaped the trajectory of the conflict itself. More importantly, it explores the consequences of governing through misinformation: whether such tactics strengthened America’s position, altered Iran’s calculations, or ultimately contributed to outcomes very different from those originally intended. In doing so, the article argues that understanding the politics of lies is essential not only for understanding this conflict, but also for understanding how modern wars are increasingly fought through the manipulation of information as much as through the use of military force.

Understanding the Politics of Lying: David Wise’s Framework for Analysis

David Wise’s seminal work, The Politics of Lying: Government Deception, Secrecy, and Power, offers a conceptual framework for understanding the relationship between political power, secrecy, and deception during wartime. Writing in the aftermath of the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal, Wise challenged the assumption that government deception is merely the result of individual dishonesty or political misconduct. Instead, he argued that lying often becomes embedded within the machinery of state power itself, particularly during periods of conflict, national crisis, and geopolitical competition.

For Wise, government deception operates through a spectrum of practices ranging from secrecy and selective disclosure to outright falsehood. Political leaders rarely present lies as lies. Rather, information is carefully managed, facts are selectively released, inconvenient realities are concealed, and narratives are constructed to shape public understanding of events. In this sense, the objective is not simply to hide the truth but to manufacture a version of reality that advances political objectives.

A key insight in Wise’s analysis is that governments frequently justify deception as a necessity. Leaders may argue that secrecy is needed to protect military operations, preserve diplomatic flexibility, maintain public morale, reassure allies, avoid economic panic, or confuse adversaries. In many cases, these objectives are not entirely illegitimate. The problem emerges when temporary secrecy evolves into a systematic method of governance and when political leaders begin treating public perception as something to be managed rather than informed.

Wise further argues that deception often creates a self-reinforcing cycle. Initial distortions generate new distortions to protect earlier claims. Governments become increasingly invested in defending narratives that may no longer correspond to reality. As a result, policymakers can become trapped by their own propaganda, making decisions based on politically useful narratives rather than accurate assessments of facts on the ground. In such circumstances, deception ceases to be merely a communication strategy and becomes a governing strategy.

This framework provides a useful lens through which to examine Donald Trump’s conduct during the Iran war and the negotiations that accompanied it. The purpose here is not to determine whether every inaccurate statement was intentionally false or whether every act of secrecy was unjustified. Rather, the focus is on identifying broader patterns of information management: shifting war objectives, contradictory public messaging, selective presentation of facts, and the use of narrative as a tool for military and diplomatic leverage.

Viewed through Wise’s framework, the central question is not whether deception occurred—deception has accompanied virtually every major war in modern history. The more important question is how deception was used, whom it was intended to influence, what objectives it sought to achieve, and whether it ultimately strengthened or weakened the strategic position of the United States.

Lies, Deception, and the Strategy of Uncertainty

From the outset of the conflict, Donald Trump’s public messaging toward Iran was marked by contradiction, ambiguity, and constant shifts in tone. At various moments he spoke of peace, diplomacy, and negotiations, while simultaneously threatening regime change, military escalation, and devastating retaliation. To many observers, these inconsistencies appeared chaotic. Yet viewed through the framework of political deception, they may have served a strategic purpose.

1- Managing the Enemy through Deception: One of the primary functions of deception in warfare is to create uncertainty within the adversary’s decision-making process. An enemy that cannot accurately assess intentions, capabilities, or future actions is more likely to make mistakes, delay decisions, or offer concessions. In this sense, uncertainty becomes a weapon in itself.

Throughout the war, Trump appeared to pursue several objectives simultaneously. He sought to conceal American intentions, keep Iranian leaders uncertain about Washington’s next move, increase pressure on Tehran during negotiations, and potentially widen divisions among different factions within the Iranian political establishment. If Iranian leaders could not determine whether Washington was genuinely seeking an agreement, preparing for regime change, or planning another military strike, they would be forced to devote significant resources to managing uncertainty rather than pursuing a coherent response.

This strategy was visible in the administration’s mixed messaging. At times, negotiations were presented as progressing positively; at other moments, officials suggested that diplomacy was failing and military options were imminent. Similarly, Trump alternated between claiming that the United States was not seeking regime change and making statements that implied the opposite. Military signalling followed a similar pattern, with threats of escalation frequently accompanied by calls for talks and de-escalation.

Whether these contradictions reflected deliberate strategy or internal divisions within the administration is ultimately less important than their practical effect. They created an environment in which uncertainty itself became part of the American pressure campaign against Iran. In the logic of the politics of lying, confusion is not necessarily a failure of communication. It can be the intended outcome.

2- Keeping Allies in Line, Containing Rivals: Trump’s information strategy was not directed solely at Iran. Like all major wartime leaders, he was simultaneously communicating with multiple audiences whose interests often diverged from one another.

Israel wanted stronger American commitments and greater military involvement. Gulf states sought protection but feared the economic consequences of prolonged conflict. European governments generally preferred de-escalation and diplomacy. China and Russia watched closely for opportunities to exploit American missteps while protecting their own interests. Each audience required a different message.

This helps explain why Trump’s rhetoric often appeared inconsistent. Statements that were intended to reassure Israel could alarm European allies. Messages designed to pressure Iran could unsettle Gulf states. Signals directed at Beijing or Moscow could complicate negotiations elsewhere. As a result, the administration frequently balanced competing narratives rather than maintaining a single coherent one.

In this context, deception and strategic ambiguity served several functions. They helped maintain coalition support by allowing different actors to interpret American intentions in different ways. They prevented allies from acting independently when Washington wished to retain control over escalation. They also projected strength without necessarily committing the United States to a specific course of action.

The result was a parallel battlefield that existed alongside the military one. The struggle was not only over territory, military assets, or diplomatic concessions. It was also over perceptions, expectations, and strategic calculations. In many respects, the narrative battlefield became almost as important as the military battlefield itself.

3- Dealing with Domestic Politics: The most difficult audience Trump had to manage may have been the American public.

The Iran conflict exposed a fundamental contradiction within Trump’s political coalition. On one side stood supporters who favored a strong alignment with Israel and expected Washington to confront Iran aggressively. On the other stood many America First voters who had supported Trump precisely because he promised to avoid costly foreign wars and reduce American involvement in the Middle East.

Reconciling these positions required a delicate balancing act. Trump needed to appear strong without appearing reckless. He needed to support Israel without becoming trapped in another open-ended regional conflict. He needed to threaten military action while simultaneously presenting himself as a peacemaker.

These competing pressures generated a stream of contradictory messages. Trump repeatedly spoke about his desire for peace while authorizing military operations. He claimed that negotiations were making progress while warning of devastating consequences if talks failed. He celebrated military successes while insisting that he wanted to end the conflict as quickly as possible. At various points he portrayed the war as both unavoidable and unnecessary, both a demonstration of strength and a means of achieving peace.

Such contradictions are often interpreted as inconsistency. Yet from the perspective of domestic political management, they served an important purpose. Different messages resonated with different constituencies. Supporters of military pressure heard determination and strength. Opponents of another Middle Eastern war heard promises of diplomacy and restraint.

This does not necessarily mean that every statement was intentionally deceptive. However, it does suggest that many of Trump’s messages were designed less to provide strategic clarity than to satisfy multiple domestic audiences simultaneously. In doing so, political communication became an extension of political management, with narrative often taking precedence over coherence.

The consequence was a wartime information environment in which truth, perception, negotiation, and political survival became increasingly intertwined. As David Wise warned decades ago, the danger of such a system is that leaders may eventually find themselves governing not through reality, but through the narratives they create to manage it.

Trump’s Politics of Lies: Winning the Battle, Losing the War

Tactical Successes: A balanced assessment requires acknowledging that Trump’s strategy was not without achievements. Measured against short-term military, economic, and diplomatic objectives, the administration was able to secure a number of tactical successes.

First, the United States and Israel succeeded in inflicting substantial military damage on Iran through two surprise wars that caught Tehran at moments of relative vulnerability. Key military figures were eliminated, infrastructure was damaged, parts of the nuclear and missile programs suffered setbacks, and the Iranian state was forced to divert significant resources toward recovery and defence.

Second, the war reinforced existing economic pressure on Iran via a surprising sea blockade. Even before the conflict, Tehran was operating under extensive sanctions. The war increased uncertainty, disrupted trade, complicated foreign investment, and imposed additional costs on an already strained economy.

Third, the conflict generated diplomatic pressure. Iran found itself forced to engage simultaneously with multiple crises: military confrontation, economic disruption, international scrutiny, and concerns about the security of its regional allies. This created conditions under which Washington believed Tehran might eventually accept concessions it had previously rejected.

Finally, the combination of military action, sanctions, and diplomatic pressure provided Trump with short-term leverage at the negotiating table. The administration hoped that demonstrating a willingness to use force would strengthen America’s bargaining position and convince Iranian leaders that compromise was preferable to continued confrontation.

Viewed narrowly, these were real achievements. The problem is that tactical success and strategic success are not necessarily the same thing.

Strategic Failure: The more important question is whether the war achieved its larger strategic objectives. Here the picture becomes far less favorable for Washington.

The most obvious reality is that Iran survived. Despite the extensive damage inflicted by the war, the Iranian state remained intact. The political system survived, the security apparatus survived, and the leadership ultimately maintained control. If one of the underlying assumptions behind the pressure campaign was that military force could trigger internal collapse or regime change, that objective clearly failed.

More importantly, some of Iran’s most important sources of leverage not only survived but gained new strategic significance.

The missile program, despite suffering damage, remained operational and emerged from the war with renewed political legitimacy inside Iran. The conflict reinforced the argument among Iranian decision-makers that missile capabilities constitute an indispensable deterrent against future attacks. Rather than weakening political support for the program, the war strengthened it.

The nuclear program underwent a similar transformation. Before the conflict, Tehran had shown willingness to negotiate limits on enrichment and other aspects of the program. After the war, however, the nuclear issue became increasingly connected to questions of national survival and deterrence. Voices advocating greater nuclear capability gained influence, while confidence in diplomatic guarantees declined. The result was that the program acquired greater strategic value than it possessed before the war.

Perhaps the most significant development was the emergence of the Strait of Hormuz as a powerful new source of leverage. Before the conflict, the strait represented a theoretical threat. After the war, it became an active strategic instrument capable of influencing global energy markets, international trade, and diplomatic calculations. Ironically, a war intended to reduce Iran’s leverage helped create an additional lever that did not previously exist in practical terms.

The war also failed to fragment Iran’s regional alliance network. On the contrary, it appears to have accelerated coordination among Tehran and its allies. As argued earlier, Iran increasingly concluded that separate fronts create separate defeats. The result was a shift toward the doctrine of the unity of fronts, a strategic adaptation that may ultimately make the Axis of Resistance more integrated than before.

Beyond these developments lies an equally important consequence: the erosion of American credibility. From Tehran’s perspective, the war confirmed long-standing suspicions that negotiations can coexist with military pressure and that agreements may not provide meaningful security guarantees. This perception has complicated future diplomacy and made it less likely that Iran will accept terms it previously considered negotiable.

The irony is striking. Before the war, Iran was actively seeking to avoid military confrontation and appeared willing to make significant concessions in order to do so. After experiencing the war and surviving it, Iranian leaders appear less fearful of confrontation and less willing to compromise. The conflict demonstrated to Tehran that while war is costly, it is survivable. Moreover, Iran emerged from the experience with additional leverage while retaining much of the leverage it already possessed.

This creates a paradox at the heart of Trump’s strategy. The administration may have succeeded in weakening Iran materially while simultaneously strengthening it strategically. The pressure campaign was designed to force Tehran into accepting a better deal for Washington. Instead, it may have produced the opposite effect: a more resilient, more confident, and more stubborn Iran that is now less willing to make concessions and more capable of demanding terms closer to its own preferences.

In that sense, the ultimate measure of success may not be the damage inflicted during the war, but the diplomatic landscape that emerged afterward. By that standard, the conflict appears to have left Washington negotiating with an Iran that is materially weaker yet strategically stronger than before.

The Cost of Lying: Losing Credibility and Damaging Trust

One of the most significant consequences of political deception is the erosion of credibility. Throughout the Iran war, the Trump administration repeatedly shifted its public positions regarding negotiations, military objectives, ceasefire conditions, and the future relationship with Tehran. At various moments, Washington presented diplomacy as the preferred path forward, while simultaneously escalating military pressure or introducing new demands. Statements regarding regime change, the nuclear program, sanctions relief, and military intentions often appeared contradictory, not only to outside observers but also to the parties directly involved in negotiations.

From a short-term perspective, such ambiguity may create leverage. From a long-term perspective, however, it creates skepticism. Once an adversary concludes that public commitments may not reflect actual intentions, every proposal becomes suspect and every diplomatic initiative is viewed through the lens of strategic manipulation.

This appears to have been one of the most important consequences of the Iran conflict. Even if Washington genuinely sought a negotiated settlement at various stages, Iranian leaders increasingly had reason to question whether negotiations were being pursued as a path toward compromise or merely as another instrument of pressure. The result was a gradual collapse of confidence in the diplomatic process itself.

The problem is not unique to this conflict. Diplomacy depends on a minimum level of predictability. States do not need to trust one another completely, but they must believe that agreements, commitments, and understandings have some value. Without that foundation, negotiations become increasingly performative. Meetings continue, messages are exchanged, and proposals are circulated, but the underlying purpose shifts. Rather than seeking a mutually acceptable outcome, each side uses negotiations to gain time, improve its military position, influence public opinion, or manage international pressure.

At that point, diplomacy ceases to function as a mechanism for ending conflict. Instead, it becomes another arena of conflict.

This dynamic became increasingly visible during the Iran war. Negotiations were frequently accompanied by military escalation, new sanctions, public threats, and shifting demands. Rather than reducing tensions, diplomacy often appeared to mirror the logic of the battlefield. Each side sought advantage rather than resolution. Diplomatic initiatives became tactical manoeuvres rather than genuine efforts to build a sustainable settlement.

The irony is that deception, when used excessively, can undermine the very objectives it seeks to achieve. A leader may gain short-term leverage by keeping adversaries uncertain, but if uncertainty evolves into complete distrust, negotiations become vastly more difficult. The adversary stops asking what concessions are required and begins asking whether any agreement is worth trusting at all.

This is precisely where diplomacy risks becoming a continuation of war by other means. Instead of creating pathways out of conflict, negotiations become part of the conflict itself. Each side approaches the table not to resolve disputes but to score points, shape narratives, and position itself for the next round of confrontation.

In the case of the Iran war, the damage may extend far beyond the immediate conflict. By weakening mutual trust and reducing confidence in diplomatic commitments, the politics of lying may have made future agreements harder to reach and more difficult to sustain. The tragedy is that while deception can help governments manage a war, it can simultaneously destroy the trust required to bring that war to an end.

David Wise argued that government deception is often justified as a necessary instrument of power. Leaders conceal information, manipulate narratives, and selectively disclose facts in order to gain strategic advantages, protect state interests, and manage crises. Yet Wise also warned that deception carries its own dangers. The more governments rely on manufactured realities, the greater the risk that they become trapped by them. Political narratives may shape perceptions, but they cannot indefinitely alter underlying realities.

The Iran war offers a powerful illustration of this dilemma. Throughout the conflict, the Trump administration employed deception, ambiguity, and shifting narratives as tools of both warfare and negotiation. These tactics were designed to pressure Iran, reassure allies, manage domestic audiences, and maintain strategic flexibility. In many respects, they achieved their immediate objectives. They created uncertainty, generated leverage, and helped Washington navigate a highly complex conflict.

But tactical success does not automatically translate into strategic success.

Recent developments, namely the 7 October event and the direct war on Iran, however, suggest that this era may be coming to an end

The End of an Era

The first signs emerged during negotiations over a ceasefire following the US-Israeli war on Iran. Tehran insisted that any ceasefire arrangement must extend beyond Iran itself and include Lebanon. Israel refused, arguing that it would not accept an end to hostilities without permanently neutralising what it sees as Iranian and allied threats across the region. In response, Iran suspended negotiations with Washington and restored restrictions in the Strait of Hormuz, signalling that regional files could no longer be treated separately.

The pattern became even clearer in Lebanon. A ceasefire was eventually reached, but it quickly unravelled as Israel resumed military operations. When Israeli leaders sought to escalate further through strikes on Beirut, Tehran reportedly warned that any major attack on Lebanon would trigger retaliation against northern Israel. Following a reportedly tense intervention by President Donald Trump, Israel halted its planned escalation. Yet Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu authorised a more limited strike on Beirut, apparently testing both Iranian resolve and American willingness to restrain Israel. This time, Iran followed through on its warning, responding not only against northern Israel but also targeting areas deeper inside the country.

A similar pattern has emerged in the Gulf. Rather than treating attacks on Iranian facilities as isolated incidents, Tehran has increasingly responded by targeting assets linked to the broader American military presence in the region, whether naval deployments, military bases, or commercial shipping associated with the US and its allies. The message is becoming increasingly clear: attacks on one front will no longer remain confined to that front.

Taken together, these developments suggest that Iran is moving away from its longstanding doctrine of strategic patience and separated battlefields. In its place, a new doctrine appears to be emerging—one based on the unity of fronts, where pressure on any member of the alliance can trigger responses from the wider network.

This shift carries profound implications. For years, Iran managed the Axis of Resistance through a strategy that compartmentalised conflicts and limited escalation. The recent war appears to have convinced Tehran that such an approach leaves individual allies vulnerable to being defeated one by one. The emerging alternative is a doctrine of collective deterrence, in which the security of each front becomes tied to the security of all. If this interpretation is correct, it may represent one of the most significant changes in Middle Eastern deterrence since the emergence of the Axis of Resistance itself—and it is likely to shape the future of conflict across the region for years to come.

Israel’s Perspective After 7 October

The 7 October attack represented a profound strategic shock for Israel. Beyond its immediate human and security consequences, it challenged one of the core assumptions underlying Israeli deterrence: that the threats posed by Iran’s regional allies could be contained through limited military operations, intelligence superiority, and periodic rounds of escalation. The scale and sophistication of the Hamas operation convinced many Israeli decision-makers that the existing approach had failed.

As a result, Israel gradually shifted from a strategy of indirect and limited confrontation with individual members of the Axis of Resistance toward a broader and more open campaign aimed at the axis as a whole. What began as a war against Hamas soon expanded into a confrontation with Hezbollah, the Houthis, Iraqi groups, and eventually Iran itself. In this sense, Israel’s strategic transformation contributed directly to the parallel transformation now occurring within Iran’s deterrence doctrine.

From the Israeli perspective, living under the constant threat of a coordinated network stretching from Gaza to Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, and Iran became increasingly unacceptable after 7 October. Israeli leaders concluded that the vulnerability exposed on that day could not be addressed through containment alone. Instead, they sought to fundamentally degrade the military capabilities of the axis and, if possible, dismantle its most important components.

This explains the scale of the military campaigns that followed. In Gaza and southern Lebanon, Israel pursued operations that went far beyond traditional military engagements. Faced with the prospect of high casualties in ground warfare, Israel increasingly relied on overwhelming air power, large-scale destruction of urban areas, and extensive bombardment of civilian infrastructure. The objective was not merely to punish or deter, but to permanently destroy the social base of Hamas and Hezbollah as military and political actors so they will not be able to rebuild again. The human cost of these campaigns generated intense international criticism, with many experts and observers arguing that aspects of the operations approached or crossed the threshold of genocide.

Yet despite the immense damage inflicted on both Hamas and Hezbollah, neither organization disappeared. Both remained capable of fighting, rebuilding, and maintaining political relevance. As a result, Israeli strategy evolved further. If the peripheral fronts could not be eliminated decisively, attention would inevitably shift toward the center of the network: Iran itself.

This led to the unprecedented direct confrontation between Israel and Iran. For the first time, the two states moved beyond covert operations, proxy warfare, and shadow conflict into open military exchanges. In doing so, both sides entered a new strategic reality. Israel and Iran are now directly exposed to one another in ways that did not previously exist.

Under these conditions, neither side can afford to absorb a major strike without responding. Doing so would establish a new deterrence threshold that could shape future conflicts for years to come. From Israel’s perspective, failing to respond to Iranian attacks would invite further escalation and reinforce the perception that Iran and its allies can act with impunity. From Iran’s perspective, failing to retaliate would weaken its credibility, not only with Israel but also with its regional allies and adversaries.

At the heart of the conflict lies a fundamental strategic dilemma. Israel believes that unless Iran abandons or significantly weakens its regional alliance network, the threat of another 7 October—or a larger coordinated attack—will remain. Iran, meanwhile, sees the axis as its primary line of defence against Israeli and American military pressure, as Iran itself will be next if it allows Israel eliminate them. Neither side can easily compromise on these positions.

This logic helps explain Israel’s insistence on responding to Iranian strikes, including retaliatory operations conducted only hours after Iranian attacks. It also explains why further Iranian responses remain likely. The conflict is no longer only about individual incidents; it is about establishing the rules of engagement that will govern the next phase of the Middle East’s strategic order. As long as those rules remain contested, the cycle of action and reaction is likely to continue.

Trump’s Strategic Dilemma

The strategic dilemma between Iran and Israel now places President Donald Trump at a critical crossroads. The emerging doctrine of the “unity of fronts” means that any future confrontation is increasingly unlikely to remain limited to a single battlefield. An attack on Hezbollah, for example, may trigger a response from Iran; an attack on Iran may provoke actions across Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, the Gulf, the Strait of Hormuz or even Bab al-Mandab. This leaves Washington with a difficult choice: either distance itself from Israel’s expanding military objectives or become increasingly drawn into another direct confrontation with Iran.

Neither option is attractive.

On one hand, abandoning Israel at a moment of heightened tension would carry significant political costs for Trump, particularly among segments of his traditional support base and within the broader pro-Israel establishment in Washington. On the other hand, deeper military involvement risks dragging the United States into a third round of war with Iran, despite the fact that the previous rounds failed to achieve their core objectives. The Iranian government remains in power, its regional networks remain operational despite the damages, and Tehran has emerged with new sources of leverage, particularly through its ability to disrupt maritime trade and energy flows.

The timing further complicates Trump’s calculations. Domestically, the United States is entering a politically sensitive period. The FIFA World Cup, which Washington hopes to showcase as a symbol of stability and global leadership, requires a relatively calm international environment. At the same time, the midterm elections are approaching, and opposition to another Middle Eastern war is growing within both the House of Representatives and Congress. While the political establishment remains divided on many issues, there is increasing skepticism regarding the costs and benefits of deeper military entanglement in the region.

Internationally, the economic consequences are becoming harder to ignore. Continued disruption in the Strait of Hormuz threatens global energy markets, while the possibility of instability extending to the Bab al-Mandib Strait raises concerns about a broader shock to international trade. Higher energy prices, rising shipping costs, and uncertainty across global markets create pressures not only on American allies but also on the US economy itself.

This leaves Trump facing a strategic reality that many American presidents have confronted in the Middle East: military escalation is often easier to initiate than to conclude. Every additional step toward confrontation increases the risk of a wider regional conflict, yet every step toward restraint risks being portrayed as weakness by allies and domestic critics.

The result is a narrowing set of options. Trump may still seek a diplomatic arrangement that freezes the conflict and restores stability to critical maritime routes. But if Israel continues to pursue a strategy aimed at permanently eliminating Iranian and allied capabilities, and if Iran continues to respond through its new doctrine of interconnected fronts, Washington may find itself increasingly pulled toward a conflict it neither planned nor fully controls.

In that sense, the future of the war may depend less on Tehran or Tel Aviv than on whether Trump decides that preserving regional stability serves American interests better than pursuing an open-ended confrontation whose costs are becoming increasingly difficult to predict.

The Day Iran Abandoned the Separate Fronts Strategy

The Gaza war marked a decisive turning point in Iran’s regional strategy. What began as another round of confrontation between Israel and one member of the Axis of Resistance gradually evolved into a much broader conflict that, from Tehran’s perspective, was no longer about Gaza, Hezbollah, or even Iran’s nuclear program alone. Instead, it came to be seen as a coordinated effort to dismantle the entire axis and ultimately weaken—or even transform—the Iranian state itself.

For decades, Iran had relied on a strategy of strategic patience and separate fronts. The underlying logic was that each member of the axis would largely confront its own challenges while benefiting from varying degrees of Iranian support. This approach allowed Tehran to avoid direct war with Israel or the United States while preserving a network of regional allies that provided strategic depth and deterrence.

The events that followed 7 October fundamentally challenged that logic.

The assassination of key military and political leaders across the region, the expansion of Israeli military operations into multiple countries, and eventually the direct US-Israeli war against Iran all reinforced a growing perception in Tehran that the conflict was no longer directed at individual members of the axis. Rather, it was directed at the entire network as a single strategic entity. From the Iranian perspective, Hamas, Hezbollah, Iraqi groups, the Houthis, and Iran itself were no longer being treated as separate actors, but as different fronts in one war.

This perception intensified as Israeli operations expanded beyond Gaza and Lebanon and increasingly targeted Iranian interests directly. Tehran concluded that the objective was not merely to degrade the capabilities of individual allies, but to create a regional environment in which Iran would be isolated, weakened, and ultimately unable to sustain its network of influence. In the most extreme interpretation within Iranian strategic circles, the war was increasingly viewed as an attempt at regime change—or at least the creation of a weakened and dysfunctional Iranian state incapable of managing itself not to mention projecting power beyond its borders.

Under such circumstances, strategic patience became increasingly difficult to sustain.

Faced with what it perceived as an existential threat, Iran and its allies began to move toward a different strategic framework. Rather than allowing each front to fight independently, they increasingly coordinated their responses and prepared for the possibility of a wider regional confrontation. For the first time, Tehran demonstrated a willingness to employ tools that it had long held in reserve, most notably the disruption of shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. The message was clear: if the conflict expanded, the costs would no longer be confined to a single battlefield.

At the heart of this shift lies a simple but powerful conclusion: separate fronts create separate defeats. Tehran appears to have concluded that allowing Israel and the United States to confront each member of the axis individually enables them to weaken the network piece by piece. The answer, therefore, is collective deterrence. Under this emerging doctrine, pressure on one front is increasingly treated as pressure on all fronts.

This transformation is now reshaping Iran’s broader deterrence strategy. It includes a renewed emphasis on strengthening missile capabilities, preserving and potentially expanding nuclear capabilities, deepening coordination among regional allies, and integrating strategic chokepoints such as the Strait of Hormuz—and potentially the Bab al-Mandab Strait—into the deterrence equation.

Ironically, a war intended to weaken Iran may have accelerated the consolidation of the very forces it sought to dismantle. Instead of fragmenting the Axis of Resistance, the conflict appears to be pushing it toward greater integration, coordination, and collective action. Whether this new doctrine succeeds remains uncertain, but its emergence is already changing the strategic landscape of the Middle East and redefining the rules of future conflict.

The Future of Conflict

The emergence of the unity of fronts doctrine is likely to reshape the future of conflict in the Middle East in profound ways. The most immediate consequence will be the growing interconnection of wars across the region. Conflicts that were once largely contained within national borders are increasingly becoming regional in scope, with developments on one front rapidly affecting multiple others.

Under the old model, a confrontation in Gaza could remain largely confined to Gaza, while clashes in Lebanon or Iraq could be managed separately. The emerging doctrine challenges this assumption. If Iran and its allies increasingly treat attacks on one member of the alliance as attacks on the entire network, the distinction between local and regional conflicts becomes far less meaningful. Future wars are therefore likely to involve multiple fronts from the outset, even when they begin as limited confrontations.

This creates a paradox. On one hand, the risks of escalation become significantly higher. Any military action now carries a greater chance of triggering responses across several theaters simultaneously, raising the possibility of wider regional wars. On the other hand, the very prospect of such escalation may strengthen deterrence. If decision-makers in Tel Aviv, Washington, or elsewhere understand that attacking one front could ignite several others, they may become more cautious about initiating conflict in the first place.

Whether this new doctrine ultimately prevents war or produces larger wars remains uncertain. Much will depend on the role of the United States. If Washington continues to intervene directly, as it did during the recent war with Iran, Tehran is likely to treat the United States as an active participant in any future confrontation and respond accordingly. In that scenario, the risks of regional escalation would increase dramatically.

If, however, the United States chooses to maintain greater distance and avoid direct military involvement, Israel may find itself facing a more complex strategic environment. Iran and its allies would remain intact, while the costs and risks of military action against them would continue to rise. This could force Israel to reconsider whether military solutions alone can provide long-term security.

At its core, the region is entering a period of deterrence reconstruction. Both Israel and Iran are attempting to establish new rules of engagement after the old ones collapsed. Israel seeks a deterrence framework that permanently reduces the threat posed by Iran and its regional allies. Iran seeks a deterrence framework that prevents future attacks by making any confrontation too costly for its adversaries.

The challenge is that these two visions are fundamentally incompatible. Israel’s preferred outcome requires weakening or dismantling the Axis of Resistance, while Iran’s preferred outcome requires preserving and strengthening it. As a result, the two sides are not merely negotiating the boundaries of deterrence; they are competing to define entirely different regional orders.

For this reason, the current confrontation is unlikely to be the last chapter in the conflict. While temporary ceasefires and tactical understandings may emerge, the underlying strategic dispute remains unresolved. Both Israel and Iran are trying to establish a new deterrence equilibrium, yet their respective visions do not appear compatible enough to allow them to comfortably coexist. Until that contradiction is addressed, the region is likely to remain trapped between periods of uneasy calm and recurring confrontation, with each round helping to shape the next.

At the same time, Washington is once again reportedly seeking Chinese cooperation on Iran and the Hormuz crisis. But Trump himself said he doesn’t need Xi’s help on Iran. Beijing has consistently avoided directly aligning itself with the American pressure campaign against Tehran, limiting its role instead to calls for de-escalation and mediation between the two sides.

This raises a broader strategic question: could Beijing ultimately trade Tehran for a larger understanding with Washington?

The answer is likely more complicated than many assume. China may pressure Iran tactically in order to preserve regional stability and avoid uncontrolled escalation, but strategically it is unlikely to sacrifice Tehran. Iran is no longer merely a regional partner for Beijing; it has become part of China’s long-term geopolitical architecture stretching across energy security, Belt and Road connectivity, and the broader transition toward a multipolar international order. And the key question here is that does Trump at this stage really have anything in hand to offer to China in return of Iran?

What Could Trump Offer China?

At least theoretically, Washington still possesses a range of incentives it could place on the table in exchange for Chinese cooperation on Iran. These include tariff relief, easing technology restrictions, loosening semiconductor controls, and expanding trade and investment opportunities. In previous years, such offers may have carried significant weight in Beijing.

But the situation today looks very different.

Many of these incentives were already discussed or partially offered during Trump’s meeting with Xi Jinping in Busan last October. More importantly, Trump no longer appears to be negotiating from a position of clear strength. His tariff confrontation with China failed to produce the strategic concessions Washington had hoped for, and the US economy is in no position to sustain another prolonged economic confrontation with Beijing while simultaneously absorbing the costs of the Iran war.

In reality, Trump now needs economic stability from China more than China needs concessions from Trump.

The contrast with Trump’s previous visits to Beijing is striking. During earlier phases of US–China engagement, Beijing went out of its way to flatter Trump politically while announcing massive purchases of American goods. Today, however, the balance appears less favorable to Washington. Stung by the political and economic consequences of the Iran conflict, Trump is seeking quick economic and diplomatic wins at a moment when China has gained additional leverage.

The same applies to strategic incentives. Washington could theoretically offer reduced pressure in the Indo-Pacific, de-escalation over Taiwan, or a broader stabilization framework before the US elections. But ironically, much of this strategic relief has already been delivered to China by the Iran war itself. During the conflict, the United States was forced to redeploy significant military assets from the Indo-Pacific toward the Middle East, easing pressure on Beijing and giving China greater room for maneuver in its immediate sphere of influence.

Even the Taiwan dynamic appears to be gradually shifting in China’s favor. Recent visits by key Taiwanese opposition figures to Beijing suggest growing political currents inside Taiwan advocating reduced confrontation and greater engagement with China, particularly as American overstretch become more visible unsustanble across the Indo-Pacific.

Diplomatically, Trump may also hope to offer Xi Jinping international prestige by recognizing China as a global mediator and involving Beijing in a broader framework on Iran and Hormuz. But China already enjoys many of these benefits without directly aligning itself with Washington. Beijing has successfully positioned itself as a responsible global actor calling for stability and negotiations, while avoiding the costs and risks of direct military involvement.

This is the core problem facing Washington: Trump may believe Iran is negotiable within a broader US–China bargain, but Beijing may increasingly see the current geopolitical environment as one in which time and strategic momentum are already moving in China’s favor.

China Has Benefited From the Iran War

Despite the risks and instability created by the conflict, the Iran war has also generated significant strategic advantages for China. While Beijing publicly calls for de-escalation and stability, the broader geopolitical consequences of the war have largely worked in its favor.

The first and perhaps most important advantage is American strategic overstretch. The war forced Washington to redirect major military, intelligence, and diplomatic resources away from Asia and toward the Middle East. Assets originally positioned to contain China in the Indo-Pacific were suddenly needed in the Gulf and surrounding waters. This created breathing space for Beijing at a critical moment in its long-term competition with the United States.

For China, every aircraft carrier moved toward the Middle East is one less focused on Taiwan and the Pacific.

The conflict has also reinforced a broader perception of American overextension. The United States now appears increasingly trapped in simultaneous crises across multiple regions, raising questions among allies and rivals alike about Washington’s ability to sustain long-term strategic focus. China, by contrast, has benefited from appearing patient, stable, and economically focused while avoiding direct military entanglement.

Economically, the war has also opened opportunities for Beijing. Instability in global energy markets increases China’s leverage as the world’s largest energy importer and a central trading hub. The crisis has accelerated discussions around yuan-based energy trade and alternative financial mechanisms outside the US dollar system. Gulf states, already deepening economic ties with China, are increasingly viewing Beijing not merely as a customer but as a long-term strategic economic partner.

At the same time, China has strengthened its diplomatic position. Unlike Washington, Beijing has maintained working relations with virtually all major actors in the region — Iran, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, and even Israel. This allows China to position itself as a credible mediator rather than a partisan actor. The 2023 Saudi-Iran normalization agreement already established Beijing as a rising diplomatic force in the Middle East, and the current conflict is likely to deepen that trend rather than reverse it.

As US military involvement expands and Washington becomes increasingly identified with the conflict itself, China gains by appearing as the actor advocating negotiations, stability, and regional dialogue.

The broader strategic reality is difficult to ignore: every month Washington is consumed by Middle Eastern conflict is a month Beijing gains strategic space elsewhere.

At the diplomatic level, the war has provided China with great oppurtunity to move further with institutionalizing its growing role in the region through a broader security vision. During his April meeting with the UAE Crown Prince, President Xi Jinping proposed a four-point framework for Middle East stability centered on peaceful coexistence, respect for sovereignty, adherence to international law, and balancing security with development. The proposal reflects Beijing’s long-term strategy of presenting itself not as a military hegemon, but as a stabilizing power advocating regional dialogue and cooperative security arrangements. Importantly, Iran responded positively to this approach. In conversations with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi welcomed China’s efforts to de-escalate tensions and expressed hope that Beijing would continue playing an active role in promoting peace and protecting regional stability. China’s coordination with Pakistan and Gulf states around ceasefire efforts and negotiations further demonstrates that Beijing is gradually positioning itself at the center of an emerging diplomatic architecture in the Middle East—one increasingly shaped less by direct military dominance and more by mediation, economic integration, and strategic balance.

Why China Is Unlikely to Abandon Iran

Despite growing speculation about a possible US–China understanding over Iran, there are strong structural reasons why Beijing is unlikely to sacrifice Tehran in exchange for short-term tactical gains with Washington. For China, Iran is not simply another regional partner that can be traded away during negotiations. It occupies a much deeper place within Beijing’s long-term geopolitical thinking.

The first reason is geography. Iran sits at the heart of several strategic corridors connected to China’s Belt and Road Initiative. It links the Gulf to Central Asia, the Caucasus, and wider West Asia, while also providing overland access routes that reduce dependence on vulnerable maritime chokepoints controlled or influenced by the United States. From Beijing’s perspective, Iran is one of the key land bridges in the broader Eurasian architecture China has been attempting to build over the last decade.

Energy security is another major factor. Although China imports energy from multiple Gulf states, Iran remains an important long-term supplier with vast untapped potential. More importantly, Beijing’s strategy is based on diversification. China does not want its energy security dependent on a single bloc of countries or on routes vulnerable to American pressure. Maintaining strong ties with Iran gives Beijing additional flexibility and leverage in global energy politics.

There is also a broader strategic dimension. China fundamentally opposes the American model of regime change and coercive geopolitical restructuring. Beijing sees the collapse or isolation of Iran not simply as a regional issue, but as part of a wider US-led order that seeks to weaken independent regional powers and maintain unipolar dominance. Preserving Iran therefore aligns with China’s larger vision of a multipolar international system in which regional powers maintain strategic autonomy rather than operate under direct Western influence.

Perhaps most importantly, there is the question of strategic trust. China has spent years presenting itself to the Global South as a reliable alternative to the West — a partner focused on stability, development, and non-interference rather than abandonment and pressure. If Beijing were seen as “selling out” Iran under American pressure, other states across Asia, Africa, and the Middle East could begin questioning the reliability of Chinese partnerships more broadly.

For China, Iran is not merely an ally — it is a geopolitical node in a larger Eurasian strategy. Sacrificing Tehran may buy Beijing temporary tactical advantages with Washington, but it would risk undermining the very architecture of influence China has spent years constructing.

Bottom Line

Trump arrived in Beijing with far fewer cards than he had initially hoped. Much of what Washington could theoretically offer China — economic concessions, reduced pressure, strategic breathing space, and diplomatic recognition — had already been effectively handed to Beijing as a consequence of the Iran war itself. The conflict diverted American attention and military resources away from Asia, weakened Trump politically at home, increased global economic uncertainty, and strengthened China’s relative geopolitical position.

In this context, China is likely to continue pursuing a cautious balancing strategy. Beijing will probably pressure Iran privately to avoid uncontrolled escalation, encourage reasonable compromise with Washington, and avoid direct confrontation with the United States. Stability remains important for China’s economic and strategic interests.

But there are also clear limits to how far Beijing is willing to go.

More importantly, it is increasingly unclear what meaningful victory Trump can realistically achieve at this stage. Anything short of Iran’s full surrender would eventually bring negotiations back to options that were already available before the war — whether through the 2015 nuclear agreement, the 2025 negotiations, or the 2026 Islamabad talks. All of these pathways were previously rejected by Trump himself. Returning to any version of them now would be difficult to present as a strategic victory for Washington after the political, military, and economic costs of the war.

China is unlikely to abandon Tehran, support efforts to dismantle the Iranian state, or leave Iran isolated diplomatically inside the UN Security Council. Nor is Beijing likely to leave Iran strategically defenseless ahead of any potential future confrontation. Even if China avoids openly militarizing its support, it has strong incentives to ensure that Iran remains stable, functional, and capable of resisting complete American dominance in the region.

This means Trump is unlikely to return from Beijing with meaningful Chinese concessions on Iran. If anything, China may walk away from the negotiations having secured additional economic or strategic advantages without fundamentally changing its position toward Tehran.

For Iran, this creates the conditions for a long-term attritional contest rather than a decisive confrontation. Time increasingly appears to favor Tehran. Trump, meanwhile, faces mounting pressure at home and abroad as the midterm elections approach, while Iran continues adapting to the conflict environment rather than collapsing under it.

The practical outcome is likely to be the continuation of China’s indirect but significant support for Iran — including intelligence cooperation, the supply of components relevant to Iran’s missile and drone programs, and continued purchases of Iranian oil. Together, these channels provide Tehran with important economic and strategic backing against any potential third round of war.

What Actually Happened?

When the United States and Israel launched military operations against Iran in late February 2026, the stated objectives were twofold: to degrade Iran’s nuclear and missile capabilities, and to either force regime change or compel Tehran to come to the negotiating table from a position of weakness.

The operation achieved part of its goal. Strikes on Iranian leadership, nuclear and missile facilities, and industrial and civil infrastructure inflicted real damage — setbacks that Iran will take years to fully recover from. But the campaign produced an unintended consequence that now sits at the center of the crisis: it handed Iran a third card, arguably as powerful as the other two that survived the strikes despite the damage they sustained.

Iran’s ability to close — or threaten to close — the narrow waterway through which roughly 20% of the world’s seaborne oil passes had always existed on paper. What changed after the strikes was the political and strategic logic of actually using it. With its nuclear program damaged and its missile arsenal degraded, Tehran had every incentive to activate the one form of leverage that military airstrikes cannot destroy: geography.

Trump’s response was the blockade — a naval cordon announced on April 13 targeting all ships entering or leaving Iranian ports. The logic was straightforward: if Iran was going to weaponize the strait, the US would weaponize Iran’s access to global trade. The goal was to pressure Tehran into abandoning its grip on Hormuz and returning to negotiations from a weakened position.

Whether that logic holds is the central question of the crisis unfolding right now.

Iran’s Response and Counter-Moves

Tehran’s answer was swift and unambiguous. Iran refused to treat the blockade as pressure to be absorbed — it treated it as a red line. Iranian parliamentary speaker and chief negotiator Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf put it plainly on state television: negotiations under coercion were off the table, and a second round of talks in Islamabad would not happen as long as the US naval blockade of Iranian ports remained in place.

Iran then did what it had threatened. It closed the strait again.

After a brief and fragile reopening, Iranian forces fired on ships attempting to transit the waterway, forcing vessels to turn back. Two Indian-flagged tankers came under fire from IRGC gunboats. A container ship reported damage from a rocket attack off Oman. Major shipping firms — Maersk, CMA CGM, Hapag-Lloyd — suspended transits entirely. The message from Tehran was consistent and deliberate: the strait does not open while Iran remains blockaded.

The standoff now has a logic of its own. Both sides have stated positions they cannot easily walk back from without appearing to capitulate. Washington refuses to lift the blockade until a deal is signed. Tehran refuses to negotiate until the blockade is lifted.

The real question is not who is right, but who blinks first — and how long each side can sustain the cost of not blinking. A frozen conflict is possible, but it is not free. Every day the strait remains effectively closed, the pressure mounts — not just on Iran, but on global energy markets, on Asian importers, on Gulf states, and on Washington’s own allies. That accumulated pressure has a way of forcing outcomes that neither side explicitly chose.

Are Iranians Ships passing through the Blockade

The blockade is real, but its reach remains contested. The US has intercepted a number of vessels bound for or departing Iranian ports, and in one significant escalation, the USS Spruance fired on and seized the Iranian-flagged cargo ship Touska in the Gulf of Oman, with US Marines taking custody of the vessel and its crew. Iranian army in return did the same thing with two ships trying to pass Hormuz.

Yet at the same time, other ships have continued to move. Whether this reflects the practical limitations of controlling vast stretches of open water in the Arabian Sea, or whether Washington is deliberately applying pressure on a graduated scale — tightening incrementally rather than all at once — remains an open question.

According to the vessel-tracking platform Vortexa, at least 34 oil tankers carrying Iranian oil have bypassed the U.S. blockade since 13 April 2026.

During this period, at least 19 Iran-linked tankers have exited the Gulf, while at least 15 others have entered the Gulf from the Arabian Sea heading toward Iran. It has been confirmed that at least six of the departing vessels were carrying Iranian crude oil, amounting to approximately 10.7 million barrels.

Iranian oil, which is typically under sanctions, is sold at a discount to Brent crude. Assuming a $10 discount, this volume would represent revenues of approximately $910 million.

There are currently 21 U.S. warships in the region, with seven more en route, and more than a dozen are involved in the U.S. naval blockade of Iranian ports.

Iran’s Alternatives: How Tehran Is Working Around the Blockade

What is clear is that Iran has been here before. Sanctions on shipping companies, efforts to choke off oil exports, restrictions on importing sensitive materials from China — none of these are new. Over years of operating under maximum pressure, Iran has built a set of workarounds that are neither elegant nor foolproof, but have proven resilient enough to keep the economy functioning at a diminished but sustainable level. Here is what those alternatives look like today.

1- The Shadow Fleet

Iran has developed an extensive network of tankers that operate outside normal tracking and regulatory systems. These vessels disable AIS transponders, conduct ship-to-ship oil transfers in open water to disguise origin, and operate under shell companies registered in jurisdictions with minimal oversight. The US has made repeated efforts to identify and sanction these networks, but enforcement has been imperfect. Iran is not Venezuela — the scale, the geography, and the depth of its logistics networks make a complete interdiction unlikely. Exports may decline under sustained pressure, but a full halt is a different challenge altogether.

2- Bureaucratic Circumvention and the Iraq Channel

Even during previous sanctions regimes, shipping firms found ways to continue operating — restructuring company ownership, changing documentation, rotating vessel flags. Iran has also long used Iraq as a transit buffer: goods purchased by Iraqi companies, delivered to Iraqi ports or borders, and then moved overland into Iran. This channel has been one of Tehran’s most reliable financial and commercial lifelines, partly sustained through Iran’s exports of electricity and natural gas to Iraq, which create a natural barter and offset mechanism. Washington appears aware of this. Just recently, Iraq’s central bank was suspended from dollar access pending a review of whether those flows were being used to benefit Iran — a targeted move aimed directly at closing this channel.

3- The Overland Alternative: Belt and Road and Beyond

Perhaps Iran’s most strategically significant preparation for exactly this kind of scenario is its investment in overland connectivity. Railway links developed under China’s Belt and Road Initiative now connect Iran to Chinese markets via Central Asia. The Caspian Sea shipping route provides access to Russia and onward to Chinese partners. A trucking transit corridor linking Iran to China via Afghanistan is reportedly in advanced planning stages, with a railway connection to follow. The gradual normalization of relations between both Iran and China and the Taliban government in Kabul has been a deliberate part of this architecture — building the political foundation for a logistics corridor that bypasses maritime chokepoints entirely.

Bottom Line: The Sustainability Question

The deeper issue may not be whether Iran can be fully blockaded, but whether the United States can sustain the attempt. Maintaining effective control over international waters at this scale carries enormous operational and financial costs. Washington’s regional basing capacity has weakened. Domestic political pressures are mounting, with the 250th anniversary of independence in July, midterm elections in November, and the broader debate over how long an undeclared maritime war can continue without congressional engagement. A potential Trump visit to China — if it proceeds — adds another layer of diplomatic complexity to a policy that depends on Beijing’s quiet non-cooperation. A blockade that cannot be made total, and cannot be sustained indefinitely, is ultimately a pressure tactic — not a strategy.

Introduction: A War That Backfired

The war inflicted severe damage on Iran. Estimates suggest losses of around $270 billion, including widespread destruction of infrastructure. Key sites were hit, including parts of the Bushehr nuclear facility, the South Pars gas field, major bridges, factories, and public infrastructure. The human and institutional costs have also been significant, with 36 universities and over 900 schools affected, in addition to broader damage across industrial and civilian sectors.

Yet despite this scale of destruction, the war has also produced an unexpected outcome. What was intended as a campaign to weaken Iran’s nuclear and missile capabilities and reduce its regional influence has, in important ways, had the opposite effect.

Iran emerges from the conflict materially damaged but strategically repositioned. The war has handed the regime something arguably more valuable than what it lost: new sources of leverage, renewed internal cohesion, and a strengthened narrative of resistance that extends beyond its borders.

The war did not dismantle Iran—it reconfigured and, in some ways, revived it.

Iran After the War: Legitimacy Recovery

Prior to the war, the regime’s legitimacy was arguably at its lowest point in its history. The country had witnessed nationwide protests, which were met with severe repression, resulting in the deaths of an estimated 4,000 to 6,000 people, including hundreds of security forces killed in clashes with some armed protesters. At the same time, the Iranian diaspora was mobilising across major Western capitals, calling for regime change. Some Western governments had begun to downgrade diplomatic relations, expelling ambassador or reducing diplomatic presence. Media narratives increasingly framed the regime as being in its final phase, with growing certainty that it was approaching collapse.

The war fundamentally altered this trajectory.

There are still probably a large majority of people critical of the regime, but the trajectory has changed, and the regime has an opportunity to work on it.

External conflict introduced a unifying threat, shifting the internal dynamic from fragmentation to consolidation. What had been a period defined by internal pressure and dissent was reframed into a survival narrative, in which the state positioned itself as the defender of national sovereignty.

This shift was visible both inside and outside Iran. Domestically, public space saw a noticeable transformation, with anti-government protests diminishing and being replaced by expressions of support framed around national defence. Internationally, diaspora mobilisation also shifted, with protests increasingly focusing on opposition to the war rather than direct calls for regime change. Media discourse, which had previously emphasised regime fragility, began to adjust to the realities of wartime resilience.

At the same time, the targeted killing of senior leadership figures—including high-ranking military commanders and the Supreme Leader—had an unintended effect. Rather than triggering collapse, these losses contributed to a process of symbolic consolidation, with key figures reframed as martyrs. This, in turn, generated a degree of renewed legitimacy among segments of the population, including some who had previously been critical of the regime.

The war itself appeared, at least in part, aligned with a regime-change logic, targeting the upper layers of leadership in the expectation that decapitation would weaken the system and potentially trigger internal unrest. Instead, the outcome suggests a different dynamic. The removal of senior figures has led to a form of internal restructuring, bringing forward a younger generation of leadership. This emerging cohort appears more ideologically rigid in external confrontation, particularly toward Israel and the United States, while in some areas showing greater flexibility on certain domestic social issues.

In contrast to the previous leadership—often characterised by strategic caution and calibrated responses—the new leadership has demonstrated a willingness to adopt a more direct “reciprocity” or escalation-based approach, signalling retaliation at equal or higher levels. This shift has reinforced the regime’s image as resolute under pressure, further strengthening its wartime narrative.

In this sense, what was intended as a strategy to weaken or even destabilise the regime has, paradoxically, contributed to its reconfiguration and partial revitalisation. The assumption that removing the top layer of leadership would drive the population toward uprising appears, at least in the short term, to have produced the opposite effect: greater internal cohesion and renewed political legitimacy under the pressure of war.

The Axis Reconfigured: Unity of Fronts

During the Gaza war, Iran’s regional network—often referred to as the “axis”—appeared to suffer significant setbacks. Israeli operations targeted key figures, including the killing of senior leaders such as Hassan Nasrallah, alongside hundreds of operatives through coordinated attacks and sustained strikes on infrastructure in Lebanon and Yemen. In Iraq, US operations also placed pressure on affiliated militias. Taken together, these developments created a widespread perception that the axis had been strategically weakened, leading to a period of relative calm that lasted close to a year, with many concluding that its influence was in decline.

This perception was reinforced at the domestic level. The inability of these actors to decisively counter Israeli actions led to questions about their effectiveness, weakening their standing among segments of their own constituencies.

At the time, Iran’s broader strategy was based on a degree of separation between fronts, with each component of the axis expected to manage its own theatre independently. The assumption was that decentralisation provided resilience.

The recent war, however, has altered this logic. What emerged instead is a shared understanding that the conflict is not confined to a single front, but represents a broader, an existential confrontation affecting the entire network. In response, the axis appears to have shifted toward a strategy of “unity of fronts”—not necessarily through immediate full-scale mobilisation, but through coordinated, gradual engagement across multiple theatres.

This shift is already visible. Hezbollah has engaged more directly, Iraqi militias have increased their level of involvement—albeit selectively—and the Houthis have signalled readiness to escalate further if the conflict continues. Rather than acting in isolation, these groups are increasingly operating within a loosely coordinated framework, calibrated to escalate in stages.

The earlier period of relative ceasefire also played an unexpected role. Instead of weakening the axis, it provided time for reorganisation and recalibration, while Israel’s continued military posture and expansionist signals contributed to a broader regional perception that the conflict was not moving toward resolution. This, in turn, helped restore a degree of social and political support for these actors under a renewed “resistance” narrative.

As a result, the war has reframed the conflict itself—from a series of localised confrontations into a regional struggle. The axis is no longer seen as fragmented or reactive, but as part of a more cohesive political and strategic alignment.

The key shift is this: the axis has moved from fragmentation to coordination. What appeared as weakness may, in retrospect, have been a period of tactical restraint and preparation for a broader confrontation.

Nuclear Capability: From Liability to Leverage

Before the war, Iran’s nuclear program was primarily framed as a liability—the central justification for sustained pressure, sanctions, and the threat of military action. At the same time, there was a window for diplomacy. Negotiations had reached a point where Iran signalled willingness to make significant concessions: temporarily halting enrichment, limiting it to very low levels thereafter, reducing its stockpile of highly enriched material, and accepting international monitoring mechanisms.

Yet this opening was not taken. Instead, it was interpreted by some as a sign of weakness, reinforcing the belief that increased pressure—or even war—could force a more decisive outcome, including potential regime collapse.

The war has fundamentally altered that calculation.

Iran’s nuclear program is no longer simply a source of vulnerability—it has become a core bargaining instrument. The experience of war, particularly following a period of negotiation, has reinforced Tehran’s demand for credible guarantees and recognition of its capabilities as part of any future agreement. In this sense, the nuclear issue has shifted from being a constraint imposed on Iran to a lever it can actively use in negotiations.

This creates two possible trajectories. The first is a return to negotiations, but on revised terms. Any agreement now is unlikely to be less favourable than what Iran was previously willing to accept, and would likely involve tangible concessions such as sanctions relief in exchange for limits on the program. Such an outcome would represent a strategic gain for Iran, as the war would have failed to achieve its original objective while strengthening Tehran’s negotiating position.

The second scenario is the absence of a deal—arguably the more likely outcome. In this case, Iran may use the time and strategic space created by the conflict to advance its nuclear capabilities further, potentially moving closer to weaponisation as a form of deterrence. The internal debate on this issue has already shifted, with increasing pressure within Iran to reconsider previous constraints in light of repeated military confrontations.

The key insight is clear: the war has increased—not reduced—Iran’s negotiating power.

Missile Program: Expansion and Boosting Deterrence

Despite sustained strikes during the war, Iran has retained its missile capabilities and continued to use them as a central tool of deterrence. Far from being neutralised, the missile program has demonstrated both operational resilience and strategic value, reinforcing its role not only as a military asset but also as a psychological instrument of deterrence.

Before the war, Iran had at times signalled a willingness to limit the range of its missile program, often referenced around the 2,000-kilometre threshold. The conflict, however, has fundamentally altered this posture. During the war, Iran expanded its capabilities, reportedly extending ranges toward approximately 4,000 kilometres, with the potential to reach strategic targets such as Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. At the same time, advancements in air defence and anti-aircraft systems enabled Iran to challenge high-end aerial platforms, including various fighter jets, further strengthening its deterrence profile. Although it is still in its beginning level but due to the fact that they realised their defence system is their weakness and they already started developing it, we should expect some more advanced progress in this field.

This experience is likely to have a lasting impact on Iran’s strategic thinking. The missile program proved to be one of the most effective and immediately deployable tools of deterrence during the conflict—unlike nuclear capability, which remains constrained by political, legal, and strategic considerations. As a result, Tehran is unlikely to accept future limitations on its missile development. On the contrary, the trajectory points toward further expansion and refinement, both in range and precision.

In this sense, the war has reinforced a clear conclusion for Iran’s leadership: missiles are not just weapons—they are the backbone of its deterrence strategy.

Hormuz: From Threat to Strategic Weapon

Ironically, while the United States and Israel aimed to weaken Iran’s nuclear and missile capabilities, the conflict has handed Tehran a far more immediate and powerful tool: effective control over the Strait of Hormuz.

For decades, Hormuz was treated as a theoretical threat—a card Iran could play but rarely did. The war has transformed it into active leverage. What was once a deterrent in rhetoric has now become a central instrument of strategy.

The impact has been global. Roughly 20% of the world’s oil supply passes through the strait, and disruptions during the conflict triggered one of the largest energy shocks in modern history, affecting markets, shipping routes, and economic stability far beyond the region. In this sense, Hormuz has moved from being a regional chokepoint to a global pressure mechanism.

The key strategic insight is striking:

in attempting to contain Iran’s nuclear potential, the war has instead provided it with a “weapon of mass disruption.” Unlike nuclear capability—which is politically constrained and difficult to operationalise—Hormuz offers Iran a tool that is immediately usable, globally impactful, and difficult to neutralise without significant escalation.

This marks a profound shift in the balance of leverage. Iran is no longer relying solely on military deterrence; it now holds influence over:

• energy flows

• global markets

• the economic stability of its adversaries and partners alike

In this context, Hormuz becomes more than a tactical advantage—it is a strategic breakthrough. It allows Iran to exert pressure not only on its direct adversaries, but on the broader international system, particularly energy-dependent economies.

In many ways, Hormuz represents Iran’s “Suez moment” for the United States—a chokepoint that does not demonstrate control, but rather exposes the limits of external power in managing critical global arteries.

Therefore, it is very unlikely that Iran will give up on this card during the negotiations, at least until it is ensured that it will not be targeted, and such confidence will not emerge soon due to the lack of trust after two wars.

Bottom Line: A War Tested and Failed

For years, Iran sought to avoid a direct confrontation. But now that the war has taken place, the strategic landscape has shifted. The conflict tested Iran’s capabilities, its deterrence, and its internal resilience. It also tested the ability of the United States and Israel to impose decisive outcomes. The result, at least so far, suggests that the war did not deliver what it promised.

Iran entered the war with significant constraints, yet it did not exhaust its capacity. Reports indicate that only a portion of its missile stockpile—around 2,000—was used, while more advanced systems, including the 2-ton Khorramshahr missile, were reportedly held in reserve. At the same time, Iran retains the ability to replenish missiles and drones relatively quickly and at low cost, sustaining its operational capacity over time.

This has important implications for how the conflict is now understood in Tehran. The war has reduced—not increased—the perceived risks of confrontation. Rather than viewing war as an existential threat, Iran increasingly frames it as a manageable war of attrition, where time and endurance shift the balance.

By contrast, prolonged conflict places growing pressure on the other side. The United States and Israel face economic costs, security strain, and political timelines, including electoral cycles that limit their tolerance for extended engagements. In such conditions, endurance becomes a decisive factor.

The key conclusion is simple: the war was meant to break Iran—but instead, it tested the limits of force and exposed its own constraints.

This intervention was quickly met with a political response. Former President Donald Trump dismissed the Pope as “a very liberal person,” accusing him of misunderstanding the realities of security and conflict.

It is not unusual for a religious figure to criticise war and call for peace. However, Trump’s reaction was unusually sharp, raising broader questions about the boundaries of freedom of expression and religious voice within political discourse in the West.

Yet the more significant issue lies beyond this exchange: the moral responsibilities in political engagement. Has politics become a purely Machiavellian arena, detached from ethical considerations? Or do those who engage in politics—whether as leaders, commentators, or analysts—still carry a responsibility to uphold moral integrity?

The Crisis of Ethics in Political Discourse

This is not a leftist argument about the “failure of the West,” but about a deeper transformation within political discourse itself—one marked by the erosion of moral consistency and the selective application of values.

In A Secular Age, Charles Taylor explains how Western societies gradually moved away from religious frameworks across multiple layers—social, cultural, and political. As traditional religious authority declined, it was not replaced by a moral vacuum, but by a new ethical architecture rooted in liberal values: democracy, human rights, equality, and justice. These became the normative foundation of modern Western politics, offering a secular but principled basis for public life.

What we are witnessing today, however, suggests a more troubling shift. It is not simply a continuation of liberal politics, but a movement toward a valueless politics—a space where politics is no longer anchored in either religious ethics or consistent liberal principles. In this emerging environment, values are no longer guiding action; they are increasingly instrumentalised, invoked selectively when convenient and disregarded when they constrain power.

This trend becomes particularly visible in moments of war. When political leaders justify actions that involve deliberate civilian harm, openly support policies widely described as collective punishment or even genocide, threaten the destruction of entire societies, or reduce strategic objectives to material gains such as control over resources—while simultaneously invoking neither religious restraint nor liberal norms—it signals a profound ethical dislocation. The issue is not simply disagreement over policy, but the absence of a stable moral framework guiding political action.

The concern, therefore, is not ideological but structural: ethics are no longer functioning as constraints, but as tools. And when political discourse reaches a point where neither religious morality nor liberal values provides meaningful limits, it suggests the emergence of a far more dangerous landscape—one in which power operates with diminishing accountability to any consistent ethical standard.

Analysis vs Advocacy: Where Is the Moral Line?

The problem is not that analysts or commentators take positions. In complex conflicts, complete detachment is neither realistic nor always desirable. The real issue is whether there remains a clear boundary between analysis and advocacy—a boundary that, increasingly, appears to be eroding.

In principle, analysis seeks to explain, contextualise, and question. It is grounded in evidence, open to complexity, and willing to challenge assumptions—including its own. Advocacy, by contrast, aims to persuade, mobilise, and defend a position. It simplifies reality, prioritises messaging, and often aligns itself with a particular political objective.

What we are witnessing today is a growing convergence between the two. Many political commentators and analysts are drifting away from analytical integrity toward narrative alignment—selectively presenting facts, amplifying partial truths, and at times engaging in disinformation, conspiratorial framing, or openly pro-unjust-war narratives. This is not always driven by ideology alone, but also by structural pressures: maintaining access to political circles, avoiding professional consequences, and navigating an environment where dissenting views can carry reputational or even legal risks.

In parts of the West, there is a rising tendency to regulate speech under broad and sometimes contested categories such as “hate speech,” which, in certain contexts, creates a chilling effect. While the intent may be to protect communities, the outcome can also discourage critical analysis, pushing commentators toward self-censorship or alignment with dominant narratives to avoid being marginalised, deplatformed, or penalised.

The result is a discourse where analysis increasingly resembles advocacy, and where the line between informing the public and shaping opinion becomes blurred. This does not mean that all commentary is compromised, but it does suggest a systemic drift that weakens the credibility of public debate.

The key point is simple: taking a position is not the problem—losing analytical integrity is. When explanation turns into justification, and questioning gives way to messaging, analysis ceases to serve the public and instead becomes part of the machinery of persuasion.

Political Narratives and the Ethics of Responsibility

Political commentators and public voices play a decisive role in shaping how wars are understood. They do not merely describe events—they frame them. Through their language, emphasis, and interpretation, they influence how audiences perceive legitimacy, responsibility, and necessity. In this sense, commentary becomes part of the conflict itself.

Political voices have the power to shape public perception, legitimise policies, and normalise violence. This often operates through three key mechanisms. First is narrative construction—selecting which facts matter, which contexts are highlighted, and which are ignored. Second is emotional mobilisation, where fear, outrage, or moral urgency are invoked to align public sentiment with particular political positions. Third is the simplification of complex realities, reducing multi-layered conflicts into binary frameworks of good versus evil, security versus threat, or civilisation versus chaos.

The problem arises when commentary moves beyond explanation into justification of illegitimate violence. At that point, it ceases to inform and begins to persuade in a one-directional manner toward an unethical direction. The line between analysis and propaganda is crossed when the purpose of discourse is no longer to understand reality, but to legitimise predetermined outcomes, leading to illegitimate violence and mass killing of innocents.

This is where the question of responsibility becomes unavoidable. Ethics in political engagement is not optional—it is both a professional duty and a public obligation. Those who operate within political and intellectual spaces carry different forms of responsibility. Politicians hold the responsibility of power, as their decisions directly shape lives and outcomes. Commentators hold the responsibility of influence, as they shape how those decisions are understood and accepted. Academics and researchers hold the responsibility of truth, grounded in evidence, integrity, and critical inquiry.

When these responsibilities are neglected, the consequences extend beyond poor analysis. They contribute to a political environment in which violence can be justified, complexity can be erased, and accountability can be weakened. In times of war, maintaining ethical standards in discourse is not a luxury—it is a necessity for preserving both public trust and the integrity of political life.

Political commentators have blood on their hands

When political commentators abandon integrity and help justify illegitimate wars and mass killing, they are no longer observers—they become participants. By shaping narratives that normalise violence, silence dissent, or obscure reality, they contribute to the conditions that allow such actions to continue. In doing so, they share responsibility—not only for the discourse, but for the human consequences of the wars they help legitimise.

For years, Beijing maintained a cautious distance from direct involvement in regional conflicts, focusing instead on trade, energy, and economic partnerships. Yet this moment suggests a potential shift. The question is no longer whether China has the capacity to engage, but whether it is willing to move beyond economics and play a central role in shaping the security architecture of major international conflicts.

If so, the implications are significant. It would mark a gradual relocation of diplomatic authority away from Western-led frameworks toward a more multipolar order. For the Global South, this presents an alternative model of conflict resolution, less tied to traditional power centres and ideological conditions. For the United States, it signals the erosion of its long-standing dominance over high-stakes diplomacy. And for China, it represents both an opportunity to expand its influence and a test of its ability to manage the risks that come with it.

This may therefore be more than a tactical diplomatic development. It could represent an early stage in a broader reordering of global power, one in which mediation, guarantees, and conflict resolution are no longer defined primarily in Washington, but increasingly negotiated in Beijing.

From Non-Interference to Strategic Engagement

China’s evolving role in international conflicts did not emerge overnight. It reflects a gradual shift from strict adherence to non-interference toward a more flexible model of selective, interest-driven engagement.

Phase 1: Passive Economic Power

For decades, Beijing’s foreign policy was anchored in the principle of non-interference. China prioritised trade, investment, and energy security, particularly across the Global South, while deliberately avoiding entanglement in political disputes or security crises. Stability mattered, but primarily as a condition for economic continuity, not as a domain for active intervention.

Phase 2: Selective Political Engagement

Over time, however, China began to recognise that protecting its expanding global interests required a more proactive approach. In Sudan and Darfur during the 2000s, Beijing used its leverage to encourage Khartoum to accept UN peacekeeping forces, an early sign that it was willing to engage politically when its economic stakes were threatened. Similarly, during the Rohingya crisis, China played a mediating role between Myanmar and Bangladesh, aiming to contain regional instability without imposing political conditions.

Phase 3: Diplomatic Breakthrough

This gradual evolution culminated in the 2023 Saudi–Iran agreement, brokered by Beijing. The deal marked a significant diplomatic milestone, demonstrating China’s ability to mediate between major regional rivals and deliver tangible outcomes. It was, in effect, a proof of concept: China could translate economic influence into geopolitical leverage.

The underlying shift is subtle but important. China is not abandoning its non-interference doctrine; it is redefining it. What emerges is a model of influence without intrusion: engaging strategically where interests are at stake, while avoiding ideological pressure or direct involvement in domestic political systems.

This approach is closely tied to China’s broader self-perception as a distinct civilisational power, often framed as a “world unto itself.” Rather than disengaging from the international system, Beijing is increasingly seeking to reshape it in ways that align with its interests and security priorities. What may appear as restraint is, in practice, a form of selective engagement, one that expands China’s role globally while preserving the core principles that define its foreign policy.

China’s Mediation Model: Pragmatism Over Ideology

China’s growing role in conflict mediation is shaped by a distinct approach that differs markedly from Western diplomatic frameworks. Rather than grounding its engagement in normative agendas, Beijing operates through a pragmatic model designed to reduce friction and maximise acceptance among conflicting parties.

1. State-Centric Diplomacy

China’s diplomacy prioritises engagement with state actors and ruling authorities rather than societies or opposition movements. This approach reflects a clear preference for working with existing power structures, treating sovereignty and regime stability as the primary entry points for negotiation. By focusing on governments rather than internal political dynamics, Beijing avoids becoming entangled in domestic legitimacy debates.

2. Economics as Leverage

Economic interdependence is central to China’s mediation strategy. Through trade, investment, and infrastructure projects—particularly under the Belt and Road Initiative—Beijing builds long-term relationships that can later be leveraged in times of crisis. Stability, in this context, is not just a political goal but an economic necessity, making mediation a natural extension of China’s global economic footprint.

3. Non-Ideological Engagement

Unlike Western approaches that often link diplomacy to democracy, governance reforms, or human rights, China deliberately avoids attaching political conditions to its mediation efforts. This non-ideological stance makes it more acceptable to a wide range of regimes, particularly those wary of external pressure on internal affairs.

4. Non-Hegemonic Approach

China presents itself not as a dominant power imposing outcomes, but as a facilitator of dialogue. Its engagement is framed as cooperative rather than coercive, allowing parties to retain agency in negotiations. This reduces resistance and creates space for compromise, particularly in conflicts where external pressure has historically hardened positions.

What is often criticised as a normative weakness may, in practice, be China’s greatest diplomatic strength. By lowering ideological barriers and minimising political intrusion, Beijing is able to build trust with regimes and enable agreements in contexts where Western frameworks—often perceived as intrusive or prescriptive—tend to stall.

Why China Can Mediate This War

China’s potential role in mediating the current conflict is not accidental; it is rooted in a unique strategic position that few global powers currently possess. Its advantage lies not only in having interests across all sides of the conflict, but in being perceived as less politically intrusive and less ideologically threatening, allowing it to engage actors that would otherwise resist external involvement.

1. Cross-Camp Connectivity

China maintains deep and functional relationships across all major parties involved in the conflict.

With Iran, Beijing has developed a comprehensive strategic partnership that serves as a crucial economic lifeline for Tehran under sanctions. China remains Iran’s largest trading partner, reportedly purchasing the vast majority of its oil exports through formal and informal channels, while advancing long-term infrastructure cooperation under the 25-year strategic agreement signed in 2021. Beyond economics, both countries share an interest in limiting U.S. dominance in the region.

At the same time, China has built extensive ties with Gulf states. Saudi Arabia is its largest oil supplier and a central partner in energy, petrochemicals, and infrastructure, with tens of billions of dollars invested in projects linked to economic diversification. The United Arab Emirates plays a complementary role as a logistical and commercial hub for Chinese trade, while broader engagement across the Gulf Cooperation Council reflects a deepening economic and technological presence.

China also maintains significant economic relations with Israel, where it is among the country’s largest trading partners, with bilateral trade exceeding $20 billion annually. Chinese investment spans infrastructure, technology, and innovation sectors, including major projects in transport and high-tech industries. Although these ties face increasing geopolitical constraints, they nonetheless position China as a stakeholder with interests on all sides.

Taken together, this cross-camp connectivity places China in a rare position: it is one of the few actors not widely perceived as an existential threat by any party in the conflict.

2. Stability as Strategic Necessity

For China, mediation is not simply a diplomatic ambition; it is an economic imperative. The Middle East sits at the heart of China’s energy security, supplying a significant share of its oil imports. At the same time, the region is a critical corridor for the Belt and Road Initiative, linking Asia to Europe and Africa through maritime and land-based trade routes.

Prolonged instability—whether through disruption of energy flows, threats to shipping lanes, or damage to infrastructure—directly undermines China’s economic architecture. In this sense, promoting stability is not optional; it is essential to safeguarding China’s global economic model.

3. A Vacuum in Global Leadership

China’s opportunity also stems from a broader shift in global power dynamics. The United States is widely seen in this conflict not as a neutral broker but as a direct party, limiting its credibility as a mediator. Meanwhile, Europe remains politically fragmented and strategically marginalised, unable to play a decisive role.

This creates a diplomatic vacuum, one that China is increasingly positioned to fill. Its engagement is driven not only by ambition, but by the absence of credible alternatives.

In this context, China’s advantage is not simply that it has interests with all sides. It is that it combines those interests with a diplomatic posture that is perceived as less intrusive, less ideological, and more adaptable, allowing it to operate in spaces where other powers face resistance.

Implications: Toward a Multipolar Diplomatic Order

China’s potential role in mediating the Iran war carries implications that extend far beyond the immediate conflict. It points to a broader transformation in how diplomacy is conducted, who holds authority, and where legitimacy is increasingly located.

First, it signals the gradual decline of the United States’ monopoly over high-stakes diplomacy. For decades, Washington has positioned itself as the primary broker of major international agreements. Yet its deep involvement in this conflict has constrained its ability to act as a neutral mediator, opening space for alternative actors to step in.

Second, the emergence of China as a potential security guarantor introduces a new model of diplomatic engagement. Unlike traditional Western frameworks that rely on alliances and political conditionality, China’s approach emphasises economic leverage, political flexibility, and negotiated stability. This raises the prospect of multiple guarantors operating within the same international system, rather than a single dominant power shaping outcomes.

Third, this shift has important consequences for the Global South. Many states that have long operated on the margins of Western-led diplomacy may now find greater room to manoeuvre, engaging with alternative centres of power that offer different terms of cooperation. This could strengthen efforts toward strategic autonomy and diversify diplomatic options in times of crisis.

Finally, the conflict highlights a deeper shift in legitimacy: the question is no longer simply who has power, but who is trusted to broker peace. If China can deliver tangible outcomes without imposing ideological conditions, it may increasingly be seen as a credible mediator in regions where Western interventions have struggled to produce lasting stability.

If China succeeds, future conflicts may no longer look first to Washington—but to Beijing.

A War Beyond the Middle East

The US–Israel war on Iran should not be understood as a purely regional conflict. It is unfolding within a broader landscape of intensifying global power competition, where the United States and its allies are increasingly confronting China, Russia, and a range of rising actors across the Global South. The war reflects a wider pattern of pressure and contestation, from actions in Latin America, including moves against Venezuela and threats toward Cuba, to economic confrontation with China and ongoing tensions with Russia.

In this context, the Global South is far from a passive observer. It is economically exposed to energy shocks, politically engaged in global alignments, and strategically affected by shifting power balances. Decisions made in Washington, Tehran, or Tel Aviv are already reverberating across Africa, Asia, and Latin America, through markets, diplomacy, and security calculations.

The core argument of this article is that the outcome of this war will extend far beyond the battlefield. It will reshape how Global South states understand sovereignty, security, economic independence, and international alignment in an increasingly multipolar world, where reliance on a single global power is no longer seen as either stable or sufficient.

Nuclear Sovereignty

The Iran case brings a fundamental question back to the center of global politics: do Global South states have the right to nuclear technology, including enrichment? Across much of the Global South, the issue is no longer seen purely through the lens of non-proliferation, but as one of technological sovereignty and unequal power. Nuclear capabilities appear to be governed by selective rules, permitted for some states while restricted or punished in others.

The current war introduces a dual, and contradictory, dynamic.

On one hand, the attack on Iran sends a powerful signal that even negotiated states can be targeted, reinforcing the belief that compliance does not guarantee security. This perception is likely to encourage countries with existing nuclear infrastructure, such as Brazil and others, to consider moving closer to latent or actual nuclear deterrence, seeing it as the ultimate guarantee of sovereignty and survival.

On the other hand, if Iran were to be significantly weakened or defeated, it could establish a new precedent: that states approaching the nuclear threshold will be stopped before reaching it. Such an outcome would reinforce a stricter global order aimed at preventing enrichment capabilities from ever translating into strategic leverage.

This creates a double-edged dynamic. The same war that incentivises some Global South states to pursue nuclear capability as protection may simultaneously strengthen a system designed to deny them that very possibility. The result is a more unstable and contested nuclear order, where the line between deterrence and prohibition becomes increasingly blurred.

Economic Independence vs. Structural Dependency

The war is exposing a central vulnerability across the Global South: deep structural dependence on global systems they do not control. As conflict disrupts energy flows and trade routes, many countries are already feeling the consequences through energy price shocks, rising inflation, and supply chain disruptions. For economies with limited buffers, these external shocks quickly translate into domestic instability.

In this context, Iran presents a controversial but instructive case. Decades of sanctions have forced it to develop a model of economic survival under pressure, reducing dependence on Western systems, building parallel trade and financial networks, and adapting to constraints through domestic production and alternative partnerships. While costly and imperfect, this model has demonstrated a degree of resilience that is increasingly attracting attention in parts of the Global South.

The broader shift now underway is a growing interest in economic self-reliance and diversification away from Western-dominated systems. This includes efforts to trade in non-dollar currencies, expand South–South economic ties, and reduce exposure to sanctions-based pressure.

Recent U.S. economic policies have further accelerated this shift. The extensive use of sanctions, tariffs, and coercive economic measures, alongside increasingly transactional and at times humiliating treatment of partners, has raised concerns about the reliability of the existing global economic order. The perceived selective application, or disregard, of international law has reinforced these anxieties. As a result, many countries, not only in the Global South but also among U.S. allies in Europe, are increasingly seeking to diversify their partnerships and reduce strategic dependence, investing more seriously in economic self-reliance and alternative networks to hedge against future pressure.

At the same time, the war highlights a deeper structural issue: the monopoly of advanced technologies, from global finance systems to artificial intelligence and energy infrastructure, remains largely concentrated in the West. This imbalance reinforces dependency and limits the strategic autonomy of Global South states.

As a result, there is a growing push toward alternative technological and economic ecosystems, often led or supported by China and, to a lesser extent, Russia. Whether through digital infrastructure, payment systems, or energy cooperation, these alternatives are increasingly seen not just as economic options, but as tools for strategic independence in an uncertain global order.

Security Lessons: The Failure of International Guarantees

One of the clearest lessons emerging from the war is that international law and negotiated agreements do not necessarily guarantee protection. For many states in the Global South, this reinforces a long-standing concern: that the global security architecture is unevenly applied and politically contingent.

The Iran case is particularly instructive. Despite entering into a negotiated agreement and engaging in diplomatic processes, Iran has still become the target of military action. This sequence sends a powerful message to other states: compliance and negotiation do not ensure security if geopolitical interests shift.

The implication is a growing move toward self-help security models. Rather than relying on international guarantees or external protection, states are increasingly investing in their own deterrent capabilities. This includes missile programs, drone warfare, cyber capabilities, and other forms of asymmetric power that can raise the cost of external intervention.

This shift also reflects a broader erosion of trust in Western-led security frameworks, which are now often perceived as selective in both enforcement and protection. As a result, many countries in the Global South are recalibrating their security strategies, not around international norms alone, but around credible deterrence and strategic autonomy.

The key question going forward is whether this moment marks a temporary crisis of confidence, or a more permanent turning point: the gradual decline of trust in global security guarantees and the rise of a more fragmented, self-reliant security order.

The Rise of Alternative Alliances

The war is accelerating a set of trends that were already underway across the Global South, pushing many states to rethink their alliances and reduce dependence on Western-centered systems. Among the most visible shifts is the growing momentum behind de-dollarisation, as countries seek to conduct trade in alternative currencies to shield themselves from financial pressure and sanctions. At the same time, the expansion of BRICS+ and the deepening of South–South cooperation reflect a broader effort to build parallel economic and political platforms.

In this emerging landscape, China has positioned itself as a central economic anchor, both as the largest trading partner for many Global South countries and as a provider of infrastructure, investment, and alternative financial mechanisms. Beijing has also increasingly taken on a diplomatic mediation role, presenting itself as a stabilising actor capable of engaging with all sides.

Russia, meanwhile, continues to play a complementary role as a security partner and energy coordinator, particularly through frameworks like OPEC+ and its expanding defense ties with a number of states in the Global South.

Faced with these options, many countries are not choosing full alignment with any single power. Instead, they are adopting a strategy of balancing rather than aligning, seeking to maximise autonomy by engaging multiple partners simultaneously.

The long-term implication is the possible emergence of new security and economic blocs operating partially outside Western control. While these blocs may remain fluid and loosely structured, they signal a gradual shift toward a more multipolar order, in which the Global South is not just a participant, but an active architect of alternative global arrangements.

The Legitimacy Crisis of the Global Order

The war is deepening a growing perception across the Global South that the current international order is neither neutral nor consistently rules-based. Instead, it appears increasingly shaped by selective application of international law and uneven respect for sovereignty, depending on geopolitical alignment rather than universal principles.

This perception is not new, but the present conflict has reinforced it in a highly visible way. When rules seem to apply differently to different actors, the credibility of the system itself comes into question. For many in the Global South, this raises a fundamental concern: whether international norms are binding frameworks or simply flexible tools of power.

The result is a gradual but significant erosion of trust in Western-led institutions, including diplomatic, legal, and financial systems that have long underpinned the global order. At the same time, this environment is strengthening anti-hegemonic narratives, which argue that the current system is designed to preserve the dominance of a small group of powerful states rather than ensure fairness or stability.

Increasingly, countries in the Global South are beginning to view the global order not as a genuinely rules-based system, but as a hierarchical structure, where power determines outcomes more than law. This shift in perception is critical, as it shapes how states engage with international institutions, form alliances, and define their own strategic futures in an evolving multipolar world.

Iran and the Strategic Empowerment of the Global South

Beyond its immediate military objectives, Iran is also using the war as an opportunity to reshape its role within the Global South, positioning itself not only as a resisting state, but as a provider of strategic leverage to selected partners.

One clear example is the management of the Strait of Hormuz. Rather than a total and indiscriminate closure, Iran has adopted a selective approach, allowing passage for countries it considers neutral or friendly. Reports indicate that India and China have been granted access, even in periods of disruption, while access for adversaries has been restricted . This selective opening reflects a deliberate strategy: to reward Global South partners and reinforce alternative economic networks, even among countries like India that maintain close ties with Israel and the United States. 

This approach transforms control over energy routes into a geopolitical tool of alignment, strengthening ties with emerging powers while challenging Western dominance over global trade flows.

At the same time, China and Russia are broadly aligned with Iran’s resistance, seeing in this conflict an opportunity to accelerate a shift in global power. While neither has engaged directly in combat, both have provided varying degrees of intelligence, logistical, and material support, helping Iran sustain its defensive capacity without triggering full-scale escalation . In parallel, economic cooperation, particularly in energy and alternative financial systems, continues to deepen, reinforcing a shared interest in weakening Western leverage.

For China, the conflict also reinforces long-term strategic goals, including reducing dependence on Western-controlled energy systems and potentially expanding alternatives such as non-dollar energy trade . Russia, meanwhile, benefits from shifts in global energy markets and the weakening of Western influence.

Taken together, these dynamics suggest that Iran is not only defending itself, it is actively contributing to a broader realignment within the Global South. By leveraging geography, energy, and strategic partnerships, Tehran is helping to shape a moment where resistance to Western pressure becomes a shared political and economic project, with implications that extend far beyond the Middle East.

Bottom Line: A Turning Point for the Global South

The Iran war is not just another conflict in the Middle East, it is a structural moment with far-reaching consequences for the global order. It is reshaping how states, particularly in the Global South, understand power, survival, sovereignty, and autonomy in an increasingly contested international system.

At its core, the war presents two contrasting scenarios with global implications.

If Iran were to collapse or be forced into surrender, it would likely reinforce U.S. hegemony and send a clear signal that resistance to the current global order carries overwhelming costs. Such an outcome would strengthen deterrence against other Global South states seeking strategic autonomy, particularly in areas like nuclear capability, independent foreign policy, or economic divergence from Western systems. In this scenario, the message would be clear: the limits of autonomy are defined by dominant powers.

Alternatively, if Iran resists and survives, the implications could be very different. It would demonstrate that sustained resistance, even under intense military and economic pressure, is possible. This outcome would likely empower Global South states, reinforcing trends toward strategic independence, diversified alliances, and the pursuit of self-reliance in security and economic policy. It would also accelerate the shift toward a more multipolar world, where power is more distributed and contested.

The key question, therefore, is not only about the outcome of the war itself, but about its broader legacy: Will the Global South move toward a more unified and independent geopolitical identity, or remain fragmented within competing power blocs shaped by external forces?