The structural logic driving the United States and Israel toward conflict with Iran
The present confrontation between the United States, Israel, and Iran reflects a long-running project of coercion, containment, and eventual removal of a non-compliant regional power whose position obstructs Western strategic dominance across Eurasia. The current phase combines overt military signalling, economic strangulation, internal destabilisation, and legal exceptionalism, applied with diminishing restraint and rising escalation risks.
Iran occupies a territorial, demographic, and economic position that places it beyond comparison with peripheral states previously subjected to regime change. The country controls a landmass larger than several major European states combined, borders the Persian Gulf, Central Asia, the Caucasus, and Mesopotamia, and sits astride energy corridors linking Asia to Europe. Iran holds among the world’s largest proven oil and natural gas reserves, alongside substantial mineral wealth, agricultural capacity, and internal industrial infrastructure. These structural attributes explain why Iran has been treated not as a policy problem but as a strategic obstacle by Washington and its allies.
The confrontation intensified following the reimposition of comprehensive United States sanctions after withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. Former United States Secretary of State Mike Pompeo stated during a 2020 interview with former acting CIA director Michael Morell that the purpose of sanctions was not behavioural change by the Iranian state but pressure on the Iranian population to force political change. The admission clarified that economic warfare targeted civilian welfare as a deliberate instrument, rather than diplomatic leverage, aligning with a broader doctrine of induced internal collapse.
Sanctions achieved measurable economic damage, including inflation, currency devaluation, reduced access to medicine, and contraction of household purchasing power. Independent economists and sanctions scholars, including Richard Nephew, have acknowledged that comprehensive sanctions primarily degrade civilian conditions before altering elite decision-making. Economic hardship consequently became a driver of public protest, rooted in material grievances rather than ideological mobilisation.
Protests that emerged across Iranian cities reflected legitimate economic anger, yet subsequent developments followed a pattern familiar from earlier regime change campaigns. Reports from Iranian provincial centres indicated the appearance of small, coordinated groups operating near sensitive infrastructure, security installations, and administrative buildings. These groups employed incendiary devices, bladed weapons, and firearms, diverging sharply from spontaneous protest behaviour. Iranian intelligence services announced arrests of organisers operating encrypted communication channels that provided instructions for weapon construction and riot coordination.
Israeli and Western officials have repeatedly acknowledged covert involvement in Iranian internal affairs. Mike Pompeo publicly celebrated the presence of Israeli intelligence operatives among Iranian protesters, an extraordinary disclosure that removed plausible deniability from foreign interference claims. Israeli media outlets similarly reported intelligence participation in protest coordination, financial support, and information operations. Such admissions reinforce assessments by analysts including Glen Diesen that internal destabilisation forms a core pillar of Western strategy toward non-aligned states.
The failure of sustained internal collapse forced a strategic recalibration. Israeli analysts writing in Hebrew-language security journals conceded that protest movements failed to fracture Iran’s governing structures or generate elite defections. China and Russia maintained diplomatic and economic engagement with Tehran, while regional states declined to participate in escalation. This environment increased pressure for direct military action to restore deterrence dominance.
A decisive escalation signal occurred with the forcible seizure of the Venezuelan president and his transfer abroad under narcotics charges. The operation demonstrated abandonment of established norms protecting sitting heads of state, signalling that formal sovereignty no longer constrains United States action against adversarial governments. Strategic analysts including Alfred de Zayas have argued that such acts erode the foundational premises of international law, replacing rule-based order with discretionary enforcement.
The pattern linking Venezuela, Ukraine, Syria, Lebanon, and Iran aligns with an indirect containment strategy long described by realist and geopolitical analysts as the preferred method against peer and near-peer powers. Zbigniew Brzezinski argued in The Grand Chessboard that Eurasian control depends upon preventing rival powers from consolidating energy, transport, and security autonomy, favouring pressure on peripheral states over direct confrontation. John Mearsheimer has repeatedly stated that great powers avoid direct war when costs are prohibitive, instead weakening adversaries by targeting allies, supply lines, and regional anchors, a model visible in Ukraine’s use as a proxy against Russia. Analysts such as Andrew Korybko describe Venezuela as an early case of hybrid warfare aimed at severing Chinese energy access and Russian financial reach without engaging either state militarily. Syria and Lebanon function as forward positions within Iran’s regional deterrence network, whose erosion reduces strategic depth while isolating Tehran incrementally. Iran represents the keystone within this architecture, linking Chinese energy security, Russian southern stability, and resistance to Israeli military dominance. Historical precedent supports this approach, including Cold War campaigns against Third World alignment states supplying the Soviet bloc, where coups, sanctions, and proxy conflicts substituted for direct superpower war. The strategy reflects recognition that war against China or Russia risks catastrophic escalation, while dismantling their partners achieves comparable outcomes through cumulative attrition rather than decisive battle.
Public rhetoric from the United States presidency has directly connected domestic unrest in Iran to the prospect of renewed military strikes, removing ambiguity about the instrumental use of protests as justification for force. Donald Trump publicly declared during the unrest that “Iran is looking at FREEDOM, perhaps like never before. The USA stands ready to help,” a statement issued while senior officials briefed him on strike options against targets inside Tehran. The timing matters, because protests began after currency collapse and food price inflation, conditions long associated with sanctions pressure, yet were immediately reframed as a human rights emergency requiring external intervention. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi responded that Washington was “pursuing the same measures by encouraging certain individuals to create chaos and riots,” rejecting the premise that unrest.
Against this backdrop, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu conducted an unannounced meeting at Mar-a-Lago with former United States President Donald Trump outside formal diplomatic channels. Historically, such meetings precede operational coordination rather than exploratory diplomacy. Israeli security cabinet deliberations subsequently approved plans for a new military operation targeting Iran, reportedly codenamed “Operation Iron Strike,” reflecting dissatisfaction with previous limited strikes and concern over restored Iranian missile capabilities.
The justification framework mirrors prior interventions. Iran’s ballistic missile programme has been characterised as inherently aggressive despite the absence of any treaty prohibiting missile development. International law permits sovereign states to pursue defensive deterrent capabilities unless explicitly constrained by agreement. Iran is not party to any missile prohibition treaty, while Israel maintains advanced missile forces and an undeclared nuclear arsenal outside the Non-Proliferation Treaty framework. Legal asymmetry functions as a political instrument rather than a normative principle.
Iranian deterrence capacity presents the central obstacle to unilateral military dominance. Israeli strategic doctrine depends upon escalation control and retaliation suppression. Iranian missile accuracy, drone integration, and distributed launch capacity undermine that doctrine by imposing credible costs. Retired United States Army Colonel Douglas Macgregor has warned that United States bases across the Persian Gulf fall within Iranian strike envelopes, rendering any conflict inherently regional rather than contained.
Iran’s Supreme National Defence Council publicly stated that pre-emptive action remains under consideration if threat indicators escalate beyond rhetorical signalling. The statement emphasised national sovereignty and deterrence readiness, framing escalation responsibility upon initiating actors. Such declarations align with classical deterrence theory articulated by scholars including Kenneth Waltz, who argued that deterrence stability depends upon credible retaliatory capability rather than ideological alignment.
Economic consequences of conflict would extend globally. Closure or disruption of the Strait of Hormuz would affect approximately one fifth of global oil shipments, generating immediate price shocks and inflationary pressure across Europe and Asia. Energy economists at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies have repeatedly warned that even temporary disruption would exceed the shock levels observed during previous Middle Eastern conflicts.
Military escalation also risks alliance fragmentation. European states face domestic political resistance to prolonged conflict, while Gulf monarchies increasingly prioritise economic diversification over regional war. China and Russia possess both diplomatic leverage and economic exposure, reducing incentives to support Western escalation. Such dynamics reduce the likelihood of a unified coalition, increasing operational burdens on United States forces already stretched across multiple theatres.
Iran’s strategic depth derives not only from military assets but from regional networks cultivated over decades. These networks function as deterrent multipliers rather than expansionist instruments, enabling response across multiple fronts if Iran itself is attacked. This reality undermines assumptions of limited engagement and complicates escalation management.
The trajectory toward confrontation reflects failure of coercive instruments rather than Iranian provocation. Sanctions failed to induce capitulation, protests failed to fracture governance, and diplomatic isolation failed to materialise. Military action thus appears not as last resort but as remaining option within an exhausted playbook.
Any attack on Iran would mark a decisive shift from pressure toward open conflict between major regional and global actors. The abandonment of restraint, legal symmetry, and diplomatic process indicates a system under strain, driven less by immediate threat than by declining tolerance for strategic autonomy outside Western control.
Authored By: Global GeoPolitics
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