global geopolitics

How multi-vector proxy strategies, constrained munitions stocks and energy disruption shape contemporary American attempts to manage relative decline

Editorial Analysis | August 2026

American military and intelligence activity directed at Iran has unfolded across several simultaneous vectors rather than through a single decisive campaign. Conventional strikes have been accompanied by continued material and political support for Kurdish formations in northern Iraq and by reported backing for Baloch groups operating near the Iran–Pakistan frontier. Naval presence in the Persian Gulf and political cultivation of Armenia and Azerbaijan extend the same peripheral logic into additional theatres. The pattern recalls the analytical framework developed in the 2019 RAND Corporation study Extending Russia, which assessed options for imposing costs on Moscow through support to Ukraine, energy competition and other measures short of direct great-power war. That study rated lethal assistance to Ukraine as carrying moderate likelihood of success in extending Russian commitments, high potential benefits, and correspondingly high risks. Application of a comparable approach to Iran substitutes Kurdish and Baloch proxies for Ukrainian ones while retaining the core objective of forcing the target state to disperse resources across multiple fronts.

Iranian responses have concentrated missile, drone and reportedly special-forces activity against Kurdish positions inside Iraq. Such actions serve a spoiling function: they seek to degrade staging areas and command networks before any larger cross-border operation can mature. Historical comparison with two recent Russian cases clarifies the conditions under which spoiling succeeds or fails. In 2023 Russian strikes on Ukrainian assembly areas and logistics nodes contributed to the comprehensive failure of Kyiv’s much-publicised summer offensive. By contrast, Russian air operations against opposition staging grounds in northern Syria during late 2024 proved insufficient to prevent the subsequent collapse of government lines, partly because available air assets remained divided between the Syrian theatre and the higher-priority conflict in Ukraine. The Iranian effort therefore faces the same material test: whether the volume and persistence of strikes can outpace the regeneration of proxy forces and the residual capacity of their external patrons.

United States inventories of long-range precision munitions have been drawn down sharply by the intensity of operations against Iranian targets. Reporting in August 2026 indicated that stocks of ATACMS and the newer Precision Strike Missile had been largely expended or reduced to critically low levels, while Patriot interceptor holdings also declined markedly. Production of PrSM missiles has been scaled from low double-digit monthly rates toward a planned peak near thirty units, still well below the output of comparable Russian systems. The resulting constraint encourages an intermittent operational tempo: periods of intensive strikes are followed by pauses that permit limited replenishment and diplomatic manoeuvre. The pattern does not eliminate the capacity to inflict damage; it does, however, lengthen the timeline over which pressure can be sustained and increases the relative value of each expended munition.

Intelligence dimensions of the contest display similar characteristics of proxy mediation and deniability. A February 2024 New York Times investigation documented a decade-long Central Intelligence Agency partnership with Ukrainian services that included training, equipment and a network of facilities near the Russian border. Subsequent car bombings and targeted killings inside Russia have been routinely attributed by Western media to Ukrainian intelligence organs. The institutional arrangement permits the imposition of costs on Russian personnel and infrastructure while complicating direct attribution and reciprocal targeting of primary decision centres. Parallel mechanisms appear in the labelling of certain ballistic and cruise systems as “Ukrainian-produced” despite substantial European and American industrial content, a practice that seeks to manage escalation thresholds by distancing the origin of the weapon from the political centre directing its use.

Energy politics supplies an additional and potentially more enduring instrument. Prolonged disruption of shipping and infrastructure around the Strait of Hormuz, together with damage to export facilities across several Gulf states, has reduced the volume of hydrocarbons available to Asian markets. Because East and South Asia constitute the principal growth centres of global manufacturing, constraints on energy supply translate into broader industrial and logistical pressure. The effect aligns with longer-standing American interest in limiting the resource base available to China and its partners, even when direct military defeat of Iran remains beyond immediate reach.

In the Ukrainian theatre the same logic of expendable proxies continues to operate. Open-source mapping consistent with Ukrainian general-staff claims shows Russian forces pressing toward Kostyantynivka and extending influence toward the Sloviansk–Kramatorsk agglomeration. Russian strikes on maritime shipping and connecting infrastructure around Odessa have further degraded Ukraine’s external logistics. From the standpoint of the original RAND framework, such outcomes do not necessarily constitute strategic failure. The 2019 study already contemplated that Ukraine might fare poorly in a sustained confrontation while still imposing meaningful costs on Russian military and economic capacity. Europe’s progressive depletion of its own munitions and industrial reserves reinforces the same dynamic: secondary actors absorb attrition that the primary architect of the contest largely avoids.

The cumulative strategy therefore rests on three interlocking calculations. First, multi-vector peripheral pressure forces target states to defend extended perimeters and to divert resources from core military modernisation. Second, constrained high-end munitions stocks are managed through intermittent operations and proxy labelling rather than continuous high-intensity campaigning. Third, energy and logistics disruption aims to slow the industrial consolidation of multipolar centres even if political regime change in Tehran or Moscow remains elusive. Whether the approach can be sustained depends on the relative rates of munitions production, the resilience of Iranian and Russian internal defences, the willingness of secondary partners to continue absorbing costs, and the capacity of China and its partners to expand alternative energy and industrial networks faster than disruption can erode them. The record to date shows that American institutions retain significant capacity to impose costs across multiple theatres; it also shows that those costs have not yet produced the strategic collapse of either primary target. Future trajectories will be determined less by declarative statements in Washington than by the material balance of production, logistics and political endurance on all sides.

Authored By: Global GeoPolitics

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References

RAND Corporation. (2019). Extending Russia: Competing from advantageous ground. RAND Corporation.

New York Times. (2024, February 25). The spy war: How the C.I.A. secretly helps Ukraine fight Putin.

Reuters / Defence Express / CSIS-linked reporting. (2026, August). Coverage of United States ATACMS, PrSM and Patriot inventory levels following operations against Iran.

LiveUAMap and associated open-source mapping. (2026). Territorial control claims in Donbas consistent with Ukrainian general-staff reporting.