Research & Commentary Results

The American-Israeli campaign against Iran that began in February 2026 resulted in a regional conflict its authors never intended. The war’s chief product is not what the United States and Israel destroyed, though that was significant, but what Iran proved: that it holds a strategic lever over its neighbors, the world economy, and the US.

The major wars Iran fights become the prism through which its leaders interpret future threats and opportunities. For four decades, Iranian foreign policy has reflected lessons learned from the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-88. Similarly, the US-Israeli wars of 2025 and 2026 will shape how Tehran thinks about deterrence, diplomacy, regional relationships, and the use of military power.

It has become a commonplace for Americans to describe our current war with Iran as stuck in a kind of limbo, neither full war nor real peace. We’re not the only ones. Iraq finds itself caught in a limbo of its own, and like our own muddled state of affairs, theirs too is one largely — but not solely — of our devising.

Six months after the war began, Iran is neither collapsing nor returning to the order that existed before Israel and the US struck on February 28. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was killed, senior commanders and scientists were assassinated, and military, energy, and nuclear infrastructure were hit hard. The state kept functioning anyway. What that survival has obscured is how much shifted underneath it.

There may be no near-term resolution to the conflict between the United States, Israel, and Iran. The cease-fire and memorandum of understanding (MoU) signed on June 18  have broken down, there is little diplomatic engagement, and new flare-ups in early September indicate a further round of escalation. Gulf states may have no choice but to protect their assets and populations while trying to deter Iran by finding mechanisms of both containment and accommodation.

Across the Gulf, views differ widely on how the Iran war can and should end, and what the region will look like once it does. Yet on the crisis over the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, the view is near-unanimous that a repeat is not only possible but likely. That expectation, more than any single incident over the past year, is becoming a major driver of decision-making in industry and policy circles alike.

When Iranian drones struck two Amazon Web Services data centers in the UAE on March 1, 2026, and damaged a third in Bahrain the same morning, many thought this could spell the end of the Gulf’s AI ambitions. Whatever the intent, the attacks highlighted the new reality that data centers have now become targets in inter-state wars.

When President Donald Trump ordered US forces into war against Iran, the administration’s ambitions reached well beyond Tehran’s nuclear program. Trump openly encouraged Iranians to topple their government. Israeli leaders spoke of reshaping the Middle East. The war’s architects got their wish — only not in the way they intended.

Egypt, which is not party to the war on Iran, has become a target as well as an intermediary in the conflict. As a result, the war has affected Egypt’s future calculations, particularly in three major areas: its economy, its security, and its regional alliances. 

The conventional framing of China’s role in the Middle East in policy discourse centers on a familiar question: what challenge does Beijing pose to US primacy? The answer is often framed as a largely linear story in which expanding economic influence gradually translates into geopolitical leverage.  Yet this view captures only part of the reality.

Europe did not choose the war with Iran, and most European governments still resist describing themselves as participants in it. But six months of military basing, missile-defense drawdowns, energy shocks, sanctions pressure and planning for possible migration crisis have made that distance harder to sustain.

As Washington scrambled to contain the consequences of the Houthis’ dramatic advance along Yemen’s Red Sea coast last week, US Vice President JD Vance confirmed US media reports that the Trump administration was “engaged in direct conversations with the Houthis.”

The consequences of the war with Iran are now showing up far beyond the Middle East. U.S. Patriot missile stocks in Europe are reportedly “beyond critical,” with the U.S. having burned through roughly 65% of its Patriot interceptor inventory during the conflict, while the Pentagon is extending Middle East deployments into 2027 and maintaining roughly 50,000 troops in the region, alongside 19 warships and other assets.

Turkey has become a major player in Africa, with a particularly strong footprint in the Horn. While economic and energy interests’ matter, one sector now stands at the center of Ankara’s regional activism: defense.

Japan’s Foreign Minister Motegi Toshimitsu phoned his Iranian counterpart, Abbas Araghchi, on Sept. 8, 2026, to express concern over the de facto closure of the Strait of Hormuz. It was reportedly the ninth such phone call between the pair since March.