The US-Israel war against Iran has evolved into a contest where the decisive variables are geography-driven economic coercion, coalition legitimacy, munitions endurance and the political economy of Gulf energy and not simply the number of targets struck inside Iran. Across expert commentary and the ground pattern of events, five findings are now coherent: the Levant casualty ledger is dominated by the Israel-Palestine, Lebanon, Syrian and now Iran violence cycle, with Israel far outpacing it’s adversaries in human casualties and suffering: statistically, it emerges as the single cause of instability in the middle east; geography routinely triumphs over hard power; empires often begin declining while still militarily strong through coalition breakup and economic strain; and Gulf security structures are likely to be rewired toward conditional basing, autonomy and hedging as the costs of hosting are externalised onto Gulf societies and infrastructure.
A central lesson of strategic history is that geography routinely outperforms hard military power. Superiority in military capability does not automatically translate into strategic outcomes when the weaker side can weaponise geography. Though the US learned this repeatedly in Vietnam and Afghanistan, where decisive battlefield advantage did not produce decisive political outcomes because the wars were governed by geography-enabled endurance, sanctuary and the weaker side’s ability to outlast the hegemon’s patience. It has not perhaps internalised it.
In the maritime domain, chokepoints such as Hormuz demonstrate the same logic: a narrow corridor can impose strategic costs that high-end strike capability cannot remove, because it forces third parties (insurers, shippers, importers, central banks) into the conflict’s cost calculus. In the present war, Iran’s geography offers precisely this leverage. Tehran cannot match US-Israeli airpower, but it can force the conflict to be adjudicated in the Gulf’s shipping lanes, energy nodes and insurance markets, where the war’s price is paid by the entire international economy. The conflict’s drift toward maritime/energy coercion is therefore not an accident; it is the predictable expression of geography’s veto over purely kinetic concepts of victory.
For decades, US Middle East strategy largely “worked” on its own terms because it rested on a coherent bargain: forward basing + maritime control + partner regimes delivered predictable energy flows supported by the petro dollar, suppressed hostile domination of the Gulf and enabled rapid crisis response at acceptable cost. From the Carter Doctrine era through post-9/11, Washington could underwrite Israeli military superiority, key sea lanes, deter challengers and project power while its Gulf allies accepted US leadership because alternatives looked worse. Yet the returns are now diminishing, not because the US suddenly lacks capability, but because the strategic environment has changed—the rules-based global order, established after World War II has broken down; borders are no longer inviolable; coalitions are weaker; the global economic order is in disarray; and China’s rise has shifted the centre of gravity to the Asia Pacific.
Further, the US domestic tolerance for open-ended enforcement has narrowed. The result is a widening gap between who pays the marginal costs (Gulf hosts and energy-importing allies facing price shocks) and who authorises escalatory decisions (Washington and Jerusalem). This gap is precisely what makes the present conflict strategically corrosive: it turns a once-efficient system of primacy into an arrangement with higher blowback and declining coalition consent.
Historical empires rarely collapse at a single moment; they enter a phase where dominance becomes expensive and brittle. The most relevant decline episodes are not those where the hegemon suddenly became militarily weak, but those where military strength remained formidable while strategic position eroded through coalition breakup, legitimacy loss and economic strain. The durable lesson is that empires typically lose the ability to command outcomes before they lose the ability to win battles. In the current war, the “imperial inflexion” risk for Washington is not battlefield defeat. It is strategic corrosion: rising costs, widening allied dissent, and an end-state that becomes politically unsustainable even if tactically manageable.
The recently published US National Defence Strategy had indicated de-prioritisation of the Middle East, with emphasis being on homeland defence and China deterrence. The sudden declaration of war on Iran, when nuclear negotiations were reportedly to conclude satisfactorily, gives credence to the claim that the war had been thrust upon it. And now, one of the most consequential developments is the visible divergence between US and Israeli war aims. Reuters reported that US DNI Tulsi Gabbard told Congress that US and Israeli objectives are “not the same”. This matters because wars with mismatched end-states drift. If one partner seeks bounded capability denial while the other seeks irreversible political destabilisation, the conflict tends to continue until either the coalition fractures or the weaker side’s leverage is neutralised.
Israel’s attack on Iranian energy infrastructure underscores why the Gulf is alarmed—it is tied to regional and global energy stability as attacks and retaliation in this sector propagate systemic risk well beyond the battlefield. This produces a strategic paradox for the Gulf states. While the US bases were sold as protection, in this war, they have functioned as tripwires that attract strikes, forcing Gulf rulers to pay for decisions taken in Washington and Jerusalem.
The “basing buys security” bargain appears compromised when escalation decisions are made without broad consultation, and the costs land locally. The Gulf states are absorbing the war’s sharpest second-order costs: direct retaliation risk, economic disruption and domestic political exposure. Analysts note that Gulf capitals tried to stay out of the war, yet are now becoming the battlefield’s “front line” because Iran’s most effective counter is to punish US hosts and energy chokepoints—making their territory and infrastructure a coercive target set.
The conflict is creating a textbook opportunity for Russia and China. They can harvest strategic distraction, learning and legitimacy erosion without direct military exposure. In this sense, the war accelerates a key feature of the emerging order: challengers gain by forcing the US to spend resources and political capital in secondary theatres while they posture as would-be mediators and defenders of “stability.” The “capitalisation” is therefore more likely to be incremental and structural, undermining US coalition cohesion and narrative authority, rather than dramatic “replacement” events.
The most likely postwar Gulf architecture will not be the expulsion of the US forces, but a renegotiated bargain. Iran has little incentive to accept dictated terms. While the society is not clearly revolting against the regime, it still holds the “Houthi” card; wartime nationalism is being mobilised, and it still has coercive economic levers. When the war looks like a sovereignty/civilisation/existential fight, nothing is off the table, and the more Iran looks like Vietnam/Afghanistan—endure, escalate asymmetrically and wait for coalition fatigue. The most plausible near-term trajectory is neither a quick victory nor a negotiated peace. It is a meandering coercive war with bounded kinetic strikes alongside persistent maritime/energy pressure and piecemeal deconfliction initiatives designed to reduce global economic fallout rather than resolve the underlying conflict. Signals already point to this as corridor proposals, joint statements focused on shipping, and rising pressure from noncombatant stakeholders to stabilise energy flows even while the fighting continues.
(The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of THE WEEK.)
