What is clear at the time of writing: nothing has been formally signed, and on several points, Iran and the US appear to have different understandings of what the next steps actually look like.

Just take a look at what Trump posted on Friday, as details of the MoU’s terms started to emerge online:

1. What was agreed and what wasn’t

At its core: an end to hostilities across all fronts. Some reporting out of the US suggests the MoU includes an Iranian commitment not to fund terror groups abroad, the destruction and removal of enriched material, the dismantling of Iran’s wider nuclear program, the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, and the release of frozen Iranian assets and funds, contingent on their compliance with the deal. Other sources quoting Iranian-backed media claim that the US would, in addition to lifting the naval blockade, commit to not stationing any additional troops in the region. Several of these concessions, if true, would have been difficult to imagine even weeks ago.

And yet the MoU’s most revealing feature is not what it contains, but what it fails to include, namely the question of Iran’s nuclear programme.

That exact question, and the details around it, have animated years of sanctions, proxy warfare and now direct military confrontation. It has been deferred to a subsequent negotiation whose terms and 60-day timeline insert new ambiguities, new timelines and new space for disagreements to arise.

What has been announced, then, is not a peace deal. It is a diplomatic pause, one that pushes the hardest disagreements down the road rather than resolving them. And crucially, the document has not yet been signed.

2. Iran appears to emerge with subtle wins

Despite conflicting reports on what is and isn’t included in the MoU, the number of points appears to reflect the same number of points (14) that Iran had presented back in early May. This is significant because it suggests that Iran’s framework, at least in part, has prevailed throughout the last six weeks.

So with this in mind, it’s worth looking at what this deal affords Iran.

Consider the Strait of Hormuz. Iran may nominally relinquish active military control under the new terms within this MoU, but the Persian Gulf Strait Authority (the body Iran established to administer the waterway) will continue to exist. It may even continue to collect tolls. And that’s despite Trump claiming that the Strait of Hormuz will be open ‘immediately’ after the MoU’s signing, without tolls. The infrastructure, the institutional architecture, and the practical know-how of Iranian management of the Strait will not disappear. It will instead become a strategic precedent and a lever Iran can reach for more easily now.

The same logic applies along Iran’s southern coastline. Every military site struck during the conflict will be rebuilt. Iran will likely invest heavily in asymmetric capabilities in the region, the kind of dispersed, hard-to-target systems that proved so costly to confront during the war. Nothing in the MoU appears to prevent this. If anything, the ceasefire and the prospect of sanctions relief give Iran the financial resources to do it properly.

Most consequentially, Iran now has something it lacked before the ceasefire: breathing room. Time to reconstitute its nuclear capabilities, to establish new facts on the ground, to present any future negotiating partner — the United States, the UN, or even the Europeans — with a programme that has advanced during the pause.

3. The one variable that could unravel everything

One particular detail in the MoU may prove to be the most consequential.

The MoU itself presumably covers a cessation of hostilities on all fronts. From an Iranian - and presumably an American perspective too, now, this includes Lebanon.

Israel has already made clear it will not be party to the understanding. That is unsurprising, yet nonetheless significant. One of the primary reasons previous ceasefire attempts collapsed — and one of the proximate causes of renewed US-Iran exchanges in recent weeks — was Israel’s continued operations against Hezbollah in Lebanon. Those operations became a persistent source of escalation that neither Washington nor Tehran could fully contain.

The MoU now presumably asks Israel to stop its attacks in Lebanon.

Israel’s security establishment likely sees a dangerous compounding of threats: Iran’s nuclear programme deferred rather than dismantled, Hezbollah intact in Lebanon, and Israeli freedom of action in the north now cast as an obstacle to a peace process it was never invited to shape. And to top this off: Iran, weaker and more dangerous than ever, is now shaping the terms of an agreement with its primary ally.

How Israel responds to that, on the ground in Lebanon, may well determine whether the MoU survives long enough to be signed at all.

This dilemma — brought sharply into focus during the 12-day War in June 2025 and when Israel unilaterally launched a strike on Doha later that same year — compounded massively during the latest US-Iran war. The waves of Iranian drones and missiles targeting civilian and energy infrastructure were yet another thorn in the side of Gulf (in)security. And these attacks continue. Just last week, Iranian attack drones pounded into Kuwait’s international airport, killing a civilian and wounding many more.

The closure and maritime regulation of the Strait of Hormuz represented a different, yet equally unacceptable risk for a region that takes pride in its international trade portfolio, political stability, and its diverse financial and natural resource sectors.

For decades, Gulf security rested on a familiar bargain with Washington. The United States maintained bases, supplied weapons, protected sea lanes, and acted as the external guarantor of regional order. In return, Gulf states remained anchored inside a U.S.-led security system that served both local regime security and American strategic interests.

Yet, the US-Iran war has shown with the utmost clarity that the American military footprint in Gulf States has not provided sufficient deterrence. If anything, US deterrence failed in the Gulf because it was the US itself, not the Gulf States, that launched a war on Iran, shattering the illusion of deterrence in the first place.

Some would argue the Gulf region’s over-reliance on the United States for its security has become increasingly untenable, while others would question whether Washington can manage the escalation it has initiated, let alone take responsibility for the aftermath of a crisis that unfolds on their doorstep. Is US deterrence and its security umbrella no longer an umbrella if the US is the one who strikes first?

These arguments are easily understood and have merit on their own. Yet, realistically speaking, what other alternatives are there to US deterrence? And importantly, how might Gulf states move forward in this new normal?

The answer, as always, lies somewhere in between the lines.

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Gulf states aren’t revisionist powers seeking to overturn the American order; they simply have too much invested in it. In the same breath, the US isn’t letting go of any influence in the region. But nevertheless, Gulf States themselves face the task of pragmatically adjusting to a world where that order is becoming a less reliable guarantee.

There is a need for Gulf states to take a two-pronged approach: diversifying their strategic cooperation with stable, flexible partners in Europe and the wider region, while maintaining and balancing a US-centric deterrence layer as a ‘first line of defence’. Both these tracks should be complementary and support genuine strategic autonomy within and between GCC members.

Some of this is already underway. The Saudi-Iranian rapprochement, brokered by China in March 2023, was designed to lower immediate tensions and create space for Saudi Arabia’s domestic transformation agenda, including Vision 2030. Saudi Arabia’s mutual defence treaty with Pakistan points in a different direction: building security depth through a long-standing partner with military credibility and nuclear relevance. These moves do not amount to a replacement for the United States. They show that Gulf states are already widening their strategic options.

The challenge will be to find more of these options amongst themselves, and as a GCC group.

To that end, the region needs a more serious internal security conversation. Recognising that GCC states have (very) different risk tolerances and (very) unique strategic preferences, there is a need to create new understandings of what Gulf security looks like. It must be constructed from the inside out and from the bottom up. It should not lean on US deterrence, although this will remain critical; yet it might be more homegrown and shared. Greater investment in indigenous defence industrialisation, economic diversification and regional infrastructure projects that put the region’s sustainability in a post-carbon economy at the centre.

Few regions are better positioned to attempt this. Gulf states have the capital, infrastructure, and strategic ambition to make this a reality. And at the systemic level, the payoff could be immense. A more precise way of imagining this might be a Gulf that attains “positional autonomy”, where the goal isn’t to abandon the US or bandwagon with China, but to occupy a position from which either move remains possible, but where basic regional security is ensured anyway.

In this way, GCC states can remain inside the American security system while developing the strategic capacity to make that reality feel chosen rather than compelled.

The burning question: If it was in fact real, imminent, and not a deception, what was it about this particular formulation, this moment, that was different?

Trump has been signalling for weeks that a deal is close, so the obvious next question is, why now? Has the US blockade on Iran been quietly effective in convincing various hardliners on key points, or were the midterms getting too close for comfort among Republicans? Perhaps both…

Or, are we simply getting too ahead of ourselves?

Because, despite the echoes of ‘progress’, especially among GOP elites like J.D. Vance or Marco Rubio, there have been no open signs of concessions or offerings (from either side) critical enough to break the fundamental impasse on the nuclear issue and on the status of the Strait of Hormuz.

Trump, posting on Friday, reiterated his headline demands, stating that “Iran must agree that they will never have a Nuclear Weapon or Bomb... I will be meeting now, in the Situation Room, to make a final determination.” His final phrase indicates his ambition to retain control over whatever comes next. Yet at the time of writing, no determination appears to have been made public.

On the nuclear file, Iran has maintained its opposition to the transfer of its highly enriched uranium stockpiles. Trump, interestingly, not in contradiction, maintains it will be ‘destroyed’.

Yet, in the Strait of Hormuz, rather than wielding its leverage loosely and temporarily, Iran has moved to formalise its control by creating a new body, the Persian Gulf Strait Authority (PGSA), to regulate sea lanes and collect payments from ships passing through. The PGSA itself, what it represents, is a crystallisation and bureaucratisation of Iranian leverage at a time when it should be most ready to relinquish control.

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Facts on the ground — in the Hormuz Strait, in Southern Lebanon, where Israel has effectively re-launched its operations across the ‘yellow line’ — are moving at a pace that negotiators and mediators are having to account for in real time. And these facts are not working to stabilise the situation. They represent growing trust deficits that neither side appears to be willing or able to contain. Israel’s renewed offensive against Hezbollah, whether enabled by the US or not, is openly destabilising the current ceasefire within the central US-Iran theatre. Iran’s efforts to rope Oman into its toll system for Hormuz, and its repeated attacks on Gulf States (and US-initiated attacks too), represent credibility vacuums that are difficult to paper over.

In fact, the trust is now so low that Iran almost expects the US to walk away. Here’s what Iran’s Parliament Speaker Ghalibaf posted on Friday afternoon:

The gap between the two sides, although it may have reduced on paper, remains psychologically vast.

So, where does that leave us?

Iran’s position is one of continued resistance. And this extends beyond the political echelons, deep into IRGC territory. Iran’s Major General and close advisor to the Supreme Leader, Mohsen Rezaei, also noted on Friday that Iran will “…force America to end the naval blockade; either through negotiation, or in case of resistance, through direct action.”

If a 60-day MoU is indeed signed, key topics will likely be pushed down the track or deferred to a new round of talks. But such a deferral would only open the door for more ambiguity, and more time for either side to renege. The logic at play appears to be one of strategic perpetuity — a wait-and-see game played by two sides eager for an offramp, but internally paralysed to the point where taking a meaningful first step is politically suicidal.

Not just because the facts are in dispute (they always are), but because the facts mean entirely different things depending on where you stand. Each new development in the war appears to vindicate different sets of assumptions about how power works and who has the right to use it.

This week, rather than delve into the war itself, I’m going to examine the lenses through which the war is being read: five of them, each one internally coherent, each drawing on real evidence, and each largely impervious to the others.

Lens 1: The Iran war was necessary and had to happen

Held mainly by the US national security establishment, most Republicans, and a vast majority of the Israeli public, this lens is based on the idea that power and world order are organised around deterrence. Regimes that acquire nuclear weapons become undeterrable—they freeze the existing balance of power against you forever. Iran, in this frame, was not merely a regional irritant but an existential threat. The question was never whether to act, only when and how much it would cost—and not just financially. The assassination of Khamenei and the degradation of Iran’s nuclear and missile infrastructure were therefore the discharge of a strategic obligation that had been building for two decades.

This lens satisfies a deep need for agency in the face of what is perceived as a slow-moving catastrophe. Deterrence theory gives people a clean framework to operate in: strength prevents war, weakness invites the opposite. In this way, every concession to Iran in the past becomes evidence that the problem was caused by insufficient resolve. It also satisfies the psychological need, particularly acute after decades of perceived American decline and very real relative decline*, for the world to still be legible—for force to produce results, for threats to be containable. It requires the belief that American power, properly applied, still works.

Lens 2: Imperial repetition

Much of the Global South, most of the Muslim world, postcolonial academics, and a significant portion of the European left are calling the Iran war a repetition of past injustices. It’s seen as yet another chapter in a centuries-long story of Western powers (or their proxies) using overwhelming military force against non-Western states, invariably with a humanitarian or security justification that dissolves upon examination. Iraq and Libya come to mind.

The specific facts of the US-Iran war are almost secondary because the structure appears identical: a state in the global periphery that refuses alignment with the dominant order and is destroyed. Its destruction is then laundered through the language of nonproliferation, democracy, or global stability. This lens satisfies the need for dignity and recognition against a backdrop of accumulated grievance in a global system where rules are applied selectively.

Lens 3: A Churchillian imperative / righteous urgency

Pro-Trump MAGA, along with certain strands of European nationalist right, see Iran not only as a geopolitical adversary, but also as symbolic of a civilizational challenge, the idea that an anti-Western, anti-liberal model of governance can survive and threaten. According to Pew Research Center, 79% of Republican identifiers approved of Trump’s handling of the conflict, showing that support for the war is overwhelmingly bipartisan. For these cohorts, the January 2026 massacre of Iranian protesters mattered as social proof that the regime had to be ended, not negotiated with. The war is experienced as historically necessary, almost Churchillian: a moment where failing to act would have been a civilisational failure.

What makes it psychologically compelling is that it gives people a sense of historical agency, and a sense of living at a turning point; of being on the right side of something permanent. The emotional register is one of righteous urgency. It also provides a clean answer to the question of who we are by contrast: we are the people who defend freedom, even at cost.

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Lens 4: Proof of Multipolarity

Chinese and Russian strategic analysts, along with several Global South governments, and, interestingly, a growing number of Western realist scholars who have watched American strategic overreach accumulate over the decades.

What is unfolding in Iran is not simply a war over the regional balance of power or nuclear containment—it is an attempt to rupture the geographic core of an emerging multipolar order designed to bypass Western dominance. In Sir Halford Mackinder’s conception of the World Island, Iran is the geographic keystone connecting China’s Eurasian ambitions to Russia’s resource empire. Destroying it, or attempting to, is the US trying to prevent, by military force, a structural shift in the global order that it can no longer stop through economic or diplomatic means. The conflict is framed not only as a regional crisis but as a symptom of a declining unipolar order and the erosion of Western and particularly American legitimacy.

The multipolar lens is uniquely satisfying to the realist mind because it requires no moral judgment of any party. It operates purely at the level of structural forces: power distributions, alliance formations, supply chains, energy dependencies. It also offers a compelling explanation for why the war seems strategically confused: because it is…it’s a hegemon lashing out against a structural shift it cannot reverse militarily.

Lens 5: Humanitarian Globalism

The humanitarian lens is not politically neutral despite its claims to universality.
It tends to be amplified or suppressed depending on which bodies are being counted.

Yet all other lenses are ultimately abstractions layered over the concrete reality of human beings dying. The bombing of a primary school in Iran killed more than 175 female students. That fact is not geopolitically complicated. It is simply a fact about the world that demands a response, and the response of almost every major geopolitical actor, including ostensible allies, has been to absorb it into their strategic calculations and move on.

This cuts through every other narrative by appealing to a moral bedrock that most humans share, regardless of ideology: the protection of children and civilians. It also carries genuine epistemic humility: it does not claim to know who is winning or what the outcome will be; it simply insists that the cost is being paid in human terms.

Yet, this lens struggles with the question of political consequence. Documenting suffering, however accurate or powerful, has repeatedly failed to alter the conduct of powerful states. When confronted with its own impotence, humanitarian lenses face an identity crisis: if moral witness changes nothing, what is it for?

The Broader Pattern

What makes the war’s narrative landscape so genuinely contested is that each of these five lenses draws on evidence that is real. In the end, each is a theory of what matters most, and reflective of identity, political belonging, and moral self-understanding.

The Iran war produces narrative dissonance because the perceived balance of power is increasingly shaped by domestic political cohesion, public opinion, and media fragmentation within democratic societies, which (thankfully) still possess the power and agency to draw the endpoints of wars before they conclude militarily.

That is also why no amount of additional evidence resolves the dissonance. You would need to convince people not just that they are wrong, but that the thing they have built their sense of reality around is wrong.

* Relative decline—meaning compared to other countries’ growth. This does not mean America is actually in decline itself, because statistically speaking, it is not.
For those of you who are interested, I can highly recommend reading Aaron L. Friedberg’s book The Weary Titan: Britain and the Experience of Relative Decline, 1895-1905. Friedberg expertly maps Britain’s period of relative decline, looking at the statements’ own perceptions of their capabilities on hand. Friedberg does argue that America’s power will remain robust for some time to come.

Since then, it’s also been easier to frame this war as a sign that the US is struggling in its ‘pivot to Asia’ – a process supposedly underway since about 2011 when Obama first mentioned it. The premise of this ‘Pivot’ rests on the fairly simple assumption that great powers (like the US) naturally seek to check rising powers (China) in a world lacking higher powers or rules to stop them from doing so.

People also disagree on when this US ‘Pivot’ started, and indeed, whether it started at all.

But this week’s Trump-Xi meeting was a clear reminder that America is, of course, very interested in engaging more closely with its near-peer rival in the Pacific. The visit itself, as the Iran war pushes past eleven weeks, invites a fresh take on how American Grand Strategy is evolving in real time.

Because, if we look at what such a pivot would even entail, it will theoretically require two parallel processes to take place in close order:

1. An active increase in US engagement within the Indo-Pacific region, and

2. A winding down or notable reduction of America’s military footprint in Europe.

This second point is made on the assumption that states (even the US) operate in a world of finite resources, and strategic bandwidth cannot be meaningfully spread everywhere at once, or, at least, doing so would be a strategic mistake in and of itself.

Point 1 is perhaps the most challenging to prove. A one-off visit by President Trump to Beijing does little to suggest any structural shift in American policy in Asia. American engagement in the Indo-Pacific under Trump 2.0 has also been more selective, conditional and in some cases openly coercive — think about the tariffs.

Yet the sustained and increasing tempo of coordination on regional and maritime security with Japan, the Philippines, and other regional partners, such as Indonesia, demonstrates that the US remains laser-focused on maintaining its position of relative dominance in the Indo-Pacific.

The US-Iran war itself, rather than being an outlier in this frame, also affirms an Asian-centric approach. Iran, despite being a country in the Middle East, is also the gateway and geopolitical through-line to…. Beijing. The Strait of Hormuz is not just a Middle Eastern chokepoint — it is an Asian one too. The countries disproportionately affected by fuel shortages from the current crisis are overwhelmingly east of Tehran: China, Japan, South Korea, and India. American torpedoes sinking an Iranian warship off Sri Lanka’s coast and the mediation role Pakistan took on to secure a ceasefire reflect a wider geographic and diplomatic scope than the ‘Middle East or Gulf war’ framing allows. This is, in the Mackinder-Spykman tradition, precisely the rimland the US has sought to deny to any would-be heartland power — and today, that power is China.

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On point 2: The signs of American drawdown are much clearer to spot.
The active withdrawal of 5,000 US troops from Germany and the newly announced redeployment of US forces away from Poland and Eastern Europe can be seen as directly freeing up personnel and strategic bandwidth for a more flexible US foreign policy - one where Europe is no longer a strategic anchor, but rather an ever-stronger partner. In a similar vein, US THAAD missile interceptors redeployed from South Korea to support the Iran war suggest a more pan-Eurasian flexibility, where the traditional US Central Command boundaries blend into the US Indo-Pacific Command area of responsibility.

Seen together, these three processes make the case that America’s ‘Pivot to Asia’ is not only alive and well, but the Iran war may be its most kinetic expression yet.

Saudi Arabia, for one, informed the US it would not allow military aircraft to operate from Prince Sultan Airbase or cross Saudi airspace to support the operation. Kuwait followed suit shortly afterwards. Then, after a (likely tense) phone call between Trump and MBS failed to resolve the issue, the operation died. The logistical challenge of maintaining operations without the Saudi support was simply too great.

So, why did Saudi Arabia make this decision?

Regional dynamics within the Gulf are front and centre. And here’s why:

The growing Saudi-UAE split

Independent of the US-Iran war, a broader divergence of interests is taking shape between two of the region’s most important players: the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.

In 2015, Saudi and Emirati forces were coordinating airstrikes together against the Houthis. Fast forward to 2025, Saudi Arabia’s strikes on the UAE-backed STC and the group’s subsequent dissolution in 2026 marked an inflection point in the rivalry over spheres of influence in Yemen.

Following the October 7 terror attacks, Israel’s war in Gaza and Lebanon further accentuated the divide. Saudi Arabia has come to view Israel and its actions as a threat to regional security and therefore sees the UAE’s alignment as a destabilising and potentially encircling force. Israel’s unilateral strike on Qatar in 2025 created the conditions for Saudi Arabia to finalise a mutual defence treaty with Pakistan. This pact’s full significance—namely that Saudi Arabia has quietly built a parallel security architecture outside US patronage, with a nuclear dimension—reflects a step away from the type of thinking that would have supported Trump’s Project Freedom.

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But this growing split is not confined to the Middle East. As the civil war in Sudan got underway in 2023, the UAE began backing the RSF, which has relations with Israel, while Saudi Arabia backs the Government’s SAF. Then, in early 2026, Abu Dhabi’s decision to leave OPEC, though not wholly unexpected, became yet another thorn in their relationship, undermining Saudi Arabia’s ability to manage OPEC as an organisation.

Seen together, these fractures reveal a Saudi Arabia increasingly convinced that the UAE’s alignment with Israel represents not just a diplomatic divergence but a strategic threat. Allowing US military operations to launch from Saudi soil, in a war the UAE was actively seeking to escalate, would have amounted to Riyadh endorsing exactly the regional order it has been quietly working to resist.

The evolving Saudi-Iran relationship

Against this complex backdrop, the Saudi-Iranian relationship has also changed dynamics. Long opposed, these two countries have increasingly sought to manage underlying tension through structured dialogue and cautious diplomatic signalling.

During the Twelve-Day War in June 2025, Saudi Arabia condemned Israeli attacks on Iran as a violation of Iranian sovereignty. Iran, for its part, calibrated its retaliation to avoid directly implicating Saudi territory or assets. Almost a year later, Saudi diplomats remained active in Tehran, even as Iranian missiles and drones hunted US military equipment in Saudi territory.

That is the context in which Trump announced Project Freedom. And when MBS answered the phone, he was able to defend a carefully composed position: one that was equidistant from Washington’s war aims, insulated from potential Iranian retaliation, while resistant to the regional order the UAE was pursuing. Hosting the operation would have destroyed all three at once.

Trump 2.0 took that underlying frustration and weaponised it rhetorically, at times suggesting publicly that the American commitment to Article 5 security guarantees was conditional. This, of course, is the same rhetoric Trump credits for ‘making NATO great again’ and raising defence spending to 3.5% across the board.

But the Iran war changed the strategic landscape.

In fact, it did far more than that. It began to expose the fundamental disconnect between America’s theory of European autonomy and what European autonomy would actually be in practice.

The United States went to war with Iran without consulting European allies. And Europe’s response has been, to put it charitably, cautious. No European nations actively joined the offensive military action against Iran. But several nations, Britain, Germany, France, Portugal, and Greece, allowed American ships and planes to launch strikes, refuel, or rearm at military bases under their control. In other words, Europe provided the infrastructure for a war it publicly opposed.

But even this may be changing.

The Spanish position, rejecting the use of its military bases for operations against Iran, drew serious ire from US President Trump, who suggested that Spain be suspended from the alliance altogether.

In all this, one can’t help but notice that America is getting a taste of what genuine European autonomy looks like. And it isn’t quite what Washington had in mind.

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Because Europe is doing exactly what decades of American pressure prompted it to do: exercising independent judgment, declining wars of choice, cultivating its own strategic interests. Indeed, Europe has spent years speaking of ‘strategic autonomy,’ ‘European defence,’ and a more geopolitical Union.
And now that very autonomy is being put to the test in the Strait of Hormuz. As the US seeks international partners to form a new coalition (the Maritime Freedom Construct) to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, the Europeans are, once again, being asked to participate.

This time, the ask will be harder to refuse. Europe depends on this waterway far more than the United States, and with oil prices now at their highest since 2022, the question quietly circulating in European capitals is no longer whether the Strait’s effective closure affects European interests (it clearly does) but at what point that economic pain becomes severe enough to compel action.

Strategic autonomy, after all, has to serve collective European interests. The principled inaction that has defined Europe’s initial response to the US-Iran war may begin to shift in favour of a more proactive stance in the Persian Gulf, should push come to shove.

But regardless of how Europeans proceed in the coming weeks, the Iran war has exposed a much deeper rift than perhaps even the US was expecting, and it will likely define the next decade of transatlantic relations. The White House expected that a more self-sufficient Europe would be a more cooperative one, up to the tasks of the future, whether in the Middle East or the Pacific. It is discovering the opposite. European strategic autonomy, it turns out, is only convenient when it points in the same direction as American strategy.

This doesn’t make the transatlantic alliance dead in the water. Far from it. Instead, it evokes questions about the nature of allied cooperation, expectations, and sparks (very healthy) debate about what a new dynamic between Washington and its European allies might look like.

But just as 20% of the world’s energy flows through the Persian Gulf, so too does 90% of Iran’s imports and exports—particularly its crude oil—which underwrites a good portion of IRGC income. With the US blockade well into its second week, it’s time to assess where both sides are at.

There are two important timelines here, and both are ‘on the clock’:

1. the time it takes for Iran’s economy to buckle completely, and

2. the time it takes for the US to absorb and internalise international and (more importantly) domestic pressure on its continued confrontation with Iran, including any potential lapses in the ceasefire that may result from this situation.

Iran’s position

Iran continues to survive this blockade with a narrow set of buffers. These include its continued control of the Strait of Hormuz, as a source of income and as a threat that it can escalate if the situation worsens. Roughly 10% of its import needs can be rerouted through land-based corridors and Caspian Sea trade. Friendly states, China foremost among them, could theoretically deliver limited quantities of critical supplies. There have been no signs of this happening yet.

But even so, none of this would be enough. Iran’s fundamental problem is that it funds almost everything—IRGC operations, subsidies, regime stability—through oil exports. Compounding this is the political fragmentation at the top. Iran’s leadership has never been a monolith, but a deepening economic crisis will make coherent foreign policy harder to sustain. The risk of unilateral action by hardline factions, particularly within the IRGC, rises as institutional discipline erodes under unimaginable pressure.

The US position

Washington’s constraints operate on a relatively slower timeline. The Trump administration is approaching midterms and would prefer a deal to a prolonged confrontation. That’s unless the Iran war suddenly becomes a rallying point for voters (not ruling out anything this early). Public support for continued engagement (at least for now) is limited, which makes any decision to revisit kinetic operations politically costly unless the action can sufficiently justify itself. These are genuine pressures, and Tehran will be watching them carefully.

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But so far, the blockade is doing the work without requiring further military action. And as the economic damage to Iran continues to compound, it has the potential to do so faster than international pressure on the US can build and translate into a meaningful policy reversal. The US also retains the option to escalate militarily, not an immediate preference, but a credible backstop that constrains Iran’s own escalation calculus.

The strategic equation

So…

• Iran’s leverage is a function of (a) its economic/trade substitution capacity and (b) control of Hormuz, set against (c) its oil dependency that the blockade exploits completely.

• US resolve is a function of (a) strategic interest, offset by (b) political exposure that grows with time but has not yet reached a critical threshold.

The race is therefore between Iran’s treasury and America’s strategic and political patience. For now, the treasury is losing faster, and Trump seems at least mildly aware of this. The blockade, therefore, generates leverage against Iran faster than Tehran’s leverage over Hormuz or other escalations might be able to produce.

The big unknown

The (very critical) unknown factor here is whether Iran’s leadership (whether through fragmentation or otherwise) produces a ‘spoiler event’, i.e., a provocation that forces American re-escalation before the economic pressure fully takes hold. That would scramble the equation entirely, because it would shift the burden back onto Washington to justify continued military involvement at exactly the moment domestic politics are least hospitable to it. If the blockade continues to inflict damages of 400 million + per day, this becomes a likely scenario. With this in mind, the most dangerous moment in this confrontation may not be when Iran’s economy breaks, but when it decides it really has nothing left to lose.

Then came the US naval blockade of Iranian ports—which changed everything.

No longer were the US and Iran thinking and acting asymmetrically vis-à-vis one another; they began speaking the same ‘strategic language’. For the first time in the entire conflict, the US and Iran both began to exert the same kind of systemic leverage over the other.

Allow me to elaborate: For much of the conflict, Iran escalated horizontally, injecting itself into the global system as a variable that everyone needed to suddenly care about. It sought to sidestep US military pressure and continue to extract leverage through its geography in the Strait of Hormuz. Meanwhile, the US and Israel pursued a set of goals that were always only going to be achievable through negotiation and a political settlement: namely, curbing Iran’s nuclear programme and ending support for armed proxies across the region (among others).

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Yet with Iran unwilling to accept US military pressure as legitimate leverage, no amount of bombing was ever going to bring Tehran closer to a deal. That changed with the blockade, which turned Iran’s own geographic leverage against it. Not by targeting its military, which had already proven ineffective, but by threatening the economic systems on which Iran (and particularly the IRGC) depends.

The blockade changed the economic calculation for Tehran. It suddenly faced a potential cascade of critical events, including:

• A dramatic reduction of oil and gas exports—Iran’s main revenue driver, along with other key exports including petrochemicals, plastics and agricultural products.

• A critical shortage of food, medicine and industrial machinery (imports are of course also affected).

• Gasoline supply shortages would slowly grind the nation to a halt (Iran, despite being a major oil producer, doesn’t have the domestic refining capacity to support its own domestic fuel needs).

• With oil revenue potentially affected, IRGC soldiers’ paychecks would be at risk of evaporating, generating a loyalty problem.

All this culminated in a simple truth: the Iranian economy is its weak spot. And it’s also where the US has the most leverage. Even Trump appeared to realise this when he said: “The blockade is maybe more powerful than the bombing, if you want to know the truth”.

But the blockade did more than frame US leverage in terms that elites in Tehran could understand—it facilitated strategic symmetry on both sides, thus clarifying in a very Thucydidean way, their relative positions of American strength and Iranian weakness. Iran cannot exact the same price from the American economy, nor does it have the means to challenge the US blockade directly. Pakistani mediators likely capitalised on this new reality while the conditions allowed.

Iran, of course, still has options to respond should the blockade become untenable or talks break down. It could activate the Houthis in the Bab el Mandeb or restart hostilities in the Gulf, but (very importantly) these options do not solve the inherent problem that the US blockade has created for the Iranian economy at home. Moreover, the costs of their employment might well cause exactly the type of military escalation Iran cannot afford at this moment.

Zooming out for a second

This war has exposed the limits of asymmetric coercion—and what it actually takes to bring an adversary to the table.

For years, Western strategists have debated how to deal with states that deliberately operate outside their strategic framework: states and non-state actors that absorb military bombardment, disperse their assets, and survive by making themselves everyone’s problem. Iran perfected this. It couldn’t beat the US, but it didn’t need to. That was the original logic that underpinned the initial kinetic phase of the war.

Post-ceasefire, the US blockade appears to be eroding that logic. Not through superior firepower, but by finding the one domain where Iran couldn’t asymmetricise the contest: its own economy.

Both sides can now see, with unusual precision, what they have and what they don’t. That kind of mutual legibility is rare in conflicts like this, and it’s the only real foundation on which durable agreements get built. It’s also striking that Iran’s economy—the very vulnerability the blockade exposed—may become the central currency of any deal. Early signals from backchannel talks suggest exactly this: economic relief, releasing frozen assets, and dismantling sanctions regimes may be considered in exchange for a verified drawdown of Iran’s nuclear programme and perhaps even handing over Iran’s enriched uranium stockpiles.

Whether Washington and Tehran can convert that clarity into a deal is another question entirely. But the strategic conditions for one now exist in a way they simply didn’t before.

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Here’s what that might look like on the Iranian side:

• Iran’s assessment of the US position is shaped first and foremost by the belief that Washington retains both the capability and the willingness to rapidly escalate and restart hostilities, while simultaneously factoring in growing domestic political constraints that will intensify as the Midterm elections approach.

• Iran likely assesses that while it has absorbed enormous pressure, political assassinations, and broad military degradation, it has nevertheless held onto key strategic assets that actually strengthen its position now in any negotiation. This includes control over its enriched uranium stockpiles (likely still underground), its long-range missile capability, drones and most importantly, its ability to regulate the Strait of Hormuz.

• Given its past experience and fundamental trust deficit, Iran likely considers any renewed diplomatic push as a potential precursor to further military action by the United States further down the track. As such, it will treat any potential talks with the highest level of scrutiny, making use of its newfound control over shipping in the Persian Gulf as leverage going forward.

Taken together, Iran’s assessments of the current systemic environment inform a position of defiance and deep mistrust. Its position isn’t just a reflection of its current post-war reality, but a culmination of decades of resistance against coercive Western policies of isolation, economic sanctions, and ideological warfare.

The US assessment is quite different:

• The Trump administration’s assessment of Iran after over a month of kinetic conflict appears to be largely based on the objective military outcomes of the war. On this front, the US has brought enormous force to bear against the Iranians. The impact of these strikes — while much of it yet unseen given the ongoing internet blackout — is likely seen as deep and extensive.

• Therefore, the US likely assesses that Iran has been materially degraded to a point where this ceasefire was not only acceptable, but actually the preferred option for the IRGC elites in Tehran, who likely wanted to avoid the wholesale destruction of Iran’s energy infrastructure.

• The fact that new individuals are now populating the negotiating room is also likely considered a win by the White House. By demonstrating the capability and will to assassinate top Iranian military and political leadership, the US assesses that Iran’s remaining political elites understand the fact that should negotiations be unsuccessful, the war and these assassinations could continue.

• While the Trump Administration has focused on framing success around military objectives (think about Pete Hegseth’s Operation Epic Fury Press Conferences), it doesn’t mean that they are blissfully unaware of the strategic implications the war continues to have on global oil prices and the state of shipping in the Persian Gulf. Indeed, Iran intends to regulate marine traffic and is considering toll payments set at $1 per barrel of oil.

• It is this more realistic assessment of the strategic environment, anchored in a perception of military advantage, that leads Washington to interpret the ceasefire not as a stabilising moment, but as an opportunity to exert political leverage over Iran.

Against this backdrop, Iran’s 10-point proposal offered what both sides actually sought: a moment that could serve as a platform for discussion and mediation; a pause to reflect on the position and probe the flexibility of the other.

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But just because this moment has arrived, it doesn’t mean it’ll be used effectively, nor will it easily bring the sides into agreement. Pre-negotiation positions appear to be completely mismatched, not only in substance (this is to be expected), but also in the strategic frames through which leverage is communicated.

Iran is remaining firm on its right to domestic enrichment; it has even introduced new language into its demands around its right to regulate shipping in the Strait of Hormuz — a demand that international oil executives were already querying nervously with the US administration.

Yet the US seeks to present itself as largely impervious to Iranian leverage (on the basis that, militarily, it perceives itself to have succeeded), and thus tends to deflect Iranian pressure over the Strait altogether. Trump, in particular, appears to operate on the assumption that third countries (NATO) can be pressured into securing the Hormuz shipping lanes. The resulting inability — or unwillingness — of the US to internalise strategic accountability means it continues to frame its leverage primarily in domains where it retains a clear advantage, namely military dominance. Iran, by contrast, understands that its leverage runs directly through the Hormuz Strait and its surviving proxies, and therefore calculates that it need not capitulate in the face of American demands absent a material shift in that balance.

As talks get underway this weekend in Islamabad, the gaps to be bridged are wide and complex. Both sides will want to demonstrate they’re serious about exercising their unique points of leverage. In this context, the task of the Pakistani mediators is not merely to reconcile substantive differences, but to sustain a form of strategic empathy for both sides — ensuring that each is able not only to hear the other’s demands, but to properly internalise the underlying logic of the other’s leverage and intent.

Seemingly unable or unwilling to chart an end to Operation Epic Fury just yet, Donald Trump said it was up to other nations to “build up some delayed courage” and reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Days later, the UK’s Prime Minister, Sir Kier Starmer, hosted 30 nations on a virtual call to discuss political and diplomatic efforts aimed at doing exactly that.

But how could these 30 nations, or any nation for that matter, go about opening the Strait of Hormuz?

The short and brutally honest answer is: they can’t.

Not unless the Iranians (and the Americans) are on board. Even the 30-odd nations speaking to Sir Starmer will readily agree that they’re not going to send ships into the Persian Gulf until after a ceasefire is reached. Even then, it’s doubtful as to who would actually show up. Parallel efforts to legitimise the use of force to open the Strait aren’t having an easy pathway at the United Nations Security Council either.

The problem here (for the US and its allies) is mainly a geographical one.

They can’t stop the IRGC from firing missiles or drones from the highly porous southern coastline fronting the Strait. This coastline, which is complemented by multiple islands and a long, horseshoe shape, allows Iran to spot every ship that approaches, giving them hours and hours to (a) determine each ship’s crew, owner and destination, and then (b) decide whether to let it through or not, and (c) take payment for safe passage, or (d) strike the vessel if an order is given.

Short of a long and intense ground invasion to root out all the covert command and control centres along this coastline, actually separating the IRGC from its de facto control over the Hormuz Strait is nearly impossible. Even if there was an assessment that all of Iran’s hard capabilities along the Strait had been neutralised, Iran would only need to hint, and no sane captain or insurance company would want to call their bluff.

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Opening the Strait of Hormuz will need a political settlement between Iran and the United States. This could be as simple as opening the Strait in exchange for a ceasefire. But nothing short of such an agreement that includes terms suitable to both sides will be successful in the near term. And both sides are clearly not yet ready for that discussion. Iran would likely put a high price on any agreement and lean further into its asymmetric edge during negotiations, for example, by seeking international recognition of its sovereignty over the Strait. In effect, the Iranians would play for time and double down. The United States, seeking to deny Iran the ability to dictate the terms of negotiation, will likely escalate and attempt to remove key points of Iranian leverage before any negotiation begins.

This is perhaps why the US has sought to distance itself from the Strait of Hormuz and deny its use as leverage by Iran. By consistently pointing out that the US does not use the Strait of Hormuz, it has attempted to remove it from the bilateral equation. Trump even went so far as to say that “in any event, the Strait will open up naturally” and made the (fair) point that Iran “needs the Hormuz Strait open” just as much (if not more) than anyone else.

While this is indeed true (Iran relies nearly entirely on oil exports to support itself), it’s also true that Iran is fighting what it perceives to be an existential war against the United States. So, while Trump’s calculus may be that Iran will eventually reduce pressure on the Strait to survive economically, this may well underestimate Iran’s willingness to use its number one point of leverage to the maximum effect.

All this boils down to a (not so simple) question — what runs out faster: Iranian ability to sustain control over the Strait of Hormuz and, along with it, internal control and economic viability as a state, or… US tolerance of international and domestic political pressure over high oil prices and the broader economic impact of the conflict around the world.

Reopening the Strait of Hormuz can be done; it just needs political will to collide in the right way at the right time. And neither the timing nor the method is visible yet.

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The prospect of US troops on the ground (literally anywhere) in Iran raises several uncomfortable questions that should be dealt with logically and realistically:

• First, given that out of roughly 40,000–50,000 total US troops in the region, only a small fraction (single-digit thousands) are organised, deployable ground combat forces suitable for entering and fighting inside Iran… so the question that naturally follows is: what would these forces be able to achieve short of very temporary occupation of some strategic sites in the Persian Gulf?

• Second, presuming the US does manage to occupy Kharg Island or any other significant touchpoint in the Persian Gulf, how long would it be before Iran manages to leverage its home turf advantage to inflict serious losses on occupying US troops?

• Leading on from that, given that the Iranians are well prepared and awaiting any US troops with drones, artillery and missiles… what kind of losses is the current Trump administration willing to accept in a midterms election year?

• Next, where will the 2,000 combat troops from the 82^nd Airborne Division (and potentially others arriving) be stationed? Presumably, they will be located somewhere in the region, but their location, easily tracked by Russian or Chinese radar, will surely be shared with the Iranians in advance.

• Finally, where will the amphibious ships like the USS Tripoli and USS Boxer, packed with marines, position themselves? Are these massive ships not sitting ducks if they enter or get close to the Persian Gulf?

Answering these questions in a way that doesn’t presume enormous risks not just for US troops, but for the entire region, appears impossible. Even if there are short-term military goals achievable with the forces deployed in recent days, how such gains would translate into sustainable strategic outcomes remains unclear.

This lack of clarity is not unusual. It hinges on military secrets that are deliberately left blank. But with so many questions needing answers, and with the goalposts shifting daily, there’s a growing chance that these US forces being deployed to the Middle East are either walking into a high-risk trap, or being positioned for a highly visible, symbolic operation designed to showcase a decisive win from which Trump can finally walk away victorious. Whether such an operation could actually provide a basis for an offramp is also an open question — and one that perhaps only the Iranians can answer. Either way, US troops in Iran represent a critical strategic gamble, and one that will carry consequences for the entire region.

The US-Iran war pushed Tehran to use its ultimate leverage: its de facto control over the Strait of Hormuz, stifling global supply of crude oil, raising costs and boosting oil revenue for oil-exporting nations not reliant on the embattled Strait.

Moscow has long been the target of US sanctions and, more recently, Trumpian ‘secondary’ tariffs. But now, its global isolation in energy markets appears to be fading as it re-emerges as the global supplier (alongside the US) of crude.

With supply shocks so severe, even Trump’s administration saw the benefit of allowing Indian importers to take advantage of Russian crude already floating at sea ( side note: India and Russia moved forward on rekindling energy ties anyway).

Russia’s re-entry into global oil markets, however temporary, runs directly counter to European and Ukrainian interests, which have consistently sought to limit Russian profit-making during wartime.

Facing this new reality, Ukraine moved to hit two of Russia’s largest Baltic oil export terminals at Primorsk and Ust-Luga, setting the facilities ablaze. These latest drone attacks, coupled with recent European operations targeting shadow fleet tankers, have halted at least 40% of Russia’s oil export capacity, according to Reuters.

It’s unclear to what extent these strikes will damage Russian profits in the near term, but if Ukraine can keep up this pressure on Russian export terminals and if Europe can get more comfortable taking shadow fleet tankers out of circulation, these efforts could further deepen the very fuel crisis the US is hoping to avoid — on purpose, thus creating short term leverage with both Washington and Moscow simultaneously.

Ukraine — now being courted for its anti-drone expertise — is no longer the only country fighting a war involving a great power. This new status comes with significant risks and strategic opportunities that should not be squandered by Ukraine and, by extension, Europe. The coalition of the willing — already a unique minilateral format — can work to use this situation to its advantage and gain further buy-in from the Americans on greater support in any future negotiation on Ukraine.

Ukraine-Saudi Defence Cooperation Agreement

Ukraine’s newfound leverage in the US-Iran war (however downplayed by Trump) has already been put into practice at surprising speed and intensity.

Following a week of intense talks between Ukrainian and Saudi officials, culminating in a visit by Ukrainian President Zelensky on Friday, the two nations signed a historic defence cooperation agreement.

Drone warfare has already changed the math in Ukraine, and the two countries with the most practical experience and know-how on asymmetric drone warfare are unsurprisingly: Russia and Ukraine.

But Ukraine can do more than share experience on how to shoot down Iranian Shahed drones. They can build lasting coalitions and trust with other middle powers, chief among them Saudi Arabia, but others in the Gulf, too.

Final thought: Modern wars are interconnected systems. And by connecting the dots between energy shocks, asymmetric warfare, and geopolitical leverage, Ukraine (in similar ways to Iran) is demonstrating that survival depends on the ability of a state to turn instability into opportunity through strategic asymmetry and build coalitions with others that believe in you.

One particular post on Wednesday caught my eye. In the aftermath of an Israeli strike on Iran’s South Pars Gas Field, Iran’s most critical gas reservoir, Trump (true to his personal style), posted this (don’t feel obliged to read it all, but then again, please do, because it’s important):

Got that? Ok. Trump did a few things at once here:

1. He publicly distanced the US (and Qatar) from the Israeli strike: “The United States knew nothing about this”.

2. He also used the Israeli strike as a means of generating direct leverage over Israel’s own decision-making on this specific issue: “NO MORE ATTACKS WILL BE MADE BY ISRAEL pertaining to this extremely important […] Field”.

3. He then warned Iran against further strikes on Qatar’s LNG infrastructure, framing it as a red line: “…unless Iran unwisely decides to attack […] Qatar”.

4. He attached a specific and severe threat to his red line: the US (with or without Israel) would “massively blow up the entirety of [Iran’s] South Pars Gas Field”.

Put together, Trump’s cascade-style messaging shows a strained attempt to control escalation while leveraging an Israeli strike he likely approved, or at least knew about beforehand, despite claiming the opposite (this according to Axios), to deter further attacks on Qatar by threatening overwhelming retaliation, (gasps for breath) while at the same time, publicly distancing the US to give Iran a contained and specific off-ramp and avoid further escalation.

In other words, Trump is trying to use the Israeli strike as a bargaining chip: making Iran think the US could hit back really hard if Qatar is attacked again, while publicly acting like he wasn’t involved, giving Iran a way to step back without losing face and avoiding a free-for-all on gas facilities in the Gulf.

But this logic ultimately sits on an escalatory ladder of its own: if Iran strikes Qatar’s gas infrastructure again, Trump will be forced to choose between following through on his threat to devastate Iran’s domestic energy sector, triggering a massive escalation and price hike, or backing down and undermining the credibility of American deterrence.

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Last week, I wrote about how Iran’s asymmetric response to US strikes demonstrates a form of ‘in-war deterrence’. In that Briefing, the central idea was that Iran was seeking to compel de-escalation through targeting economic and energy vulnerabilities across the Gulf, raising the costs of continued US action while signalling its readiness to prolong the conflict, effectively forcing Washington to weigh political, economic, and strategic consequences before deciding how far to escalate further.

This week, Trump’s tactics appear to mirror Iran’s asymmetric approach, but with a twist: rather than striking Iran’s LNG infrastructure directly and using the markets as leverage, the US is relying on Israeli action and its own escalation cycle to impose conditional red lines, threatening future costs rather than immediately inflicting them.

The US is building a framework of threats and consequences around perceived Iranian responses, framing Israeli strikes in a way that Iran must interpret as both a deterrent and a potential trigger for massive escalation.

Both sides now find themselves in an escalation cycle driven in large part by public messaging: Iran signals through attacks on Gulf energy and regulating global shipping, seeking to raise costs and compel de-escalation; Trump, meanwhile, is sending signals as public threats tied to specific red lines, aiming to shape Iranian behaviour, but in turn, sets up an escalation ladder that needs to be taken down or ignored, or climbed.

The US-Iran war is being increasingly defined not just by the strikes themselves, but by who can impose credible costs and signal consequences most effectively, turning public messaging and social media into a battlefield in its own right.

In many ways, he’s right. The US is superior in almost every measure: firepower, logistics, technology, mass and tempo. But this does not explain where we are today. Two weeks in, the initial goals of Operation Epic Fury remain elusive at best, and not only is Iran’s leadership seemingly uninterested in negotiations, but they are actively calling for further escalation in the Strait of Hormuz.

The US has been engaging Iran where it has an outright advantage — through its conventional military power. Meanwhile, Iran, from its position of relative inferiority, has diversified its response to include not just conventional attacks on US assets across the region, but a decidedly unconventional approach targeting regional energy flows and commercial interests.

Oil tankers and storage facilities ablaze in the Hormuz Strait are emblematic of Iran’s asymmetric response, which operates indirectly against American vulnerabilities, exerting influence and imposing costs through economic sabotage.

In pursuing this strategy, Iran is doing two things at once:

1. raising the cost of US military action by imposing an overwhelming economic burden on the US, its Gulf and Arab allies, as well as countries in the wider region.

2. indicating its readiness to continue such efforts via protraction, thus dragging out the conflict far longer than political elites in Washington might tolerate.

Both elements represent a form of “in-war deterrence”. Iran is seeking to deter the US from further escalation and simultaneously compel de-escalation. Every time that senior IRGC officials say that they will ‘not negotiate’, they are only pressing this asymmetric edge, knowing that Trump is against his own clock as midterms loom on the horizon, and as energy flows through Hormuz remains a trickle at best.

But can Iran win a war of attrition with the US? The answer isn’t so simple. An all-out conventional war against two technologically superior nuclear-armed adversaries (the US and Israel) is largely unwinnable. But that’s not how this war is being fought. Barring a popular revolution and/or elite defection in Tehran, Iran’s strategy shows that the regime’s medium-term survival may be largely guaranteed, not by engaging the US head-to-head, but by engaging it asymmetrically.

The idea itself is not overly complicated either. Iran just needs to hold on for long enough, avoid internal unrest, and hold a quarter of the world’s energy supply hostage to complicate American goals and timelines.

This does not bode well for Trump and Netanyahu, who were reportedly counting on Ali Khamenei’s assassination as being the trigger event that would destabilise the regime and its institutions. Yet so far, no groups appear to be able or willing to depose the current regime, and Iran has a new Supreme Leader — apparently even more hardline than his late father. And with popular opinion within the US already ill disposed toward this conflict, the off-ramps for Trump won’t come easily, nor will the Iranians be willing to hand him one so soon.

For Iran, mere survival of the regime in Tehran can be spun as success, negating US storytelling. For the US, success is more elusive and politically sensitive. Trump’s success in Iran will be defined post-factum and be framed to domestic audiences as a win, no matter the cost or tangible outcome on the ground.

Even if Trump unilaterally calls off the operation, claiming it a success, this would by no means guarantee the IRGC’s compliance, let alone its appetite for a ceasefire.
The audacious assassination of their leader, having galvanised hardline factions, may have forced Iran’s theocracy into a new and dangerous position.

It’s unlikely that the Trump administration can sustain the political and economic fallout for longer than the Iranian regime can survive in guerrilla warfare mode.
So the question then becomes: at what point, or with what trigger, will the Trump team be able to begin reaching out to mediators?

For Trump, unilaterally claiming an end to the war before securing a pathway towards negotiations through backchannels would seem foolish, as this would allow Iran to dictate terms and even hunker down and prolong the confrontation.

Despite the prospect of negotiations feeling distant, diplomacy will ultimately hinge on a shift in either Iranian or American posture. This could be something that can be mirrored by either side, like limiting or halting strikes on energy infrastructure. Tangible moves like this could open the door for states like Qatar, Oman, Turkey or even Switzerland to begin setting up good offices as both sides seek to limit further damage to either their own economies or, indeed, political survival.

Some sources point towards Kurdish groups in western Iran as potentially playing a role. But this idea alone opens up complex questions, like: which groups might take part? And with what support and legitimacy would they operate? And whether their own objectives align with a coherent post-regime vision for Iran, or would it simply open another front in an already fragile state? And if this is indeed the plan, why is planning for this only shaping up now?

With these questions in mind, and considering the regime’s current weakness, it’s worth examining the broader regional ramifications of this war, and what it means for regional players from the Gulf to Russia and even China.

The Immediate Region

A wounded and politically fragile Iran automatically creates an enormous power vacuum in its immediate region. Groups loyal to the regime, while feeling compelled to act in some way to defend Iran on one hand, also understand their already precarious position has become more existential with the death of Iran’s Supreme Leader.

Gulf and Arab States, as they seek to stabilise energy markets and ensure trade routes remain open, may move to exploit the power vacuum to their own advantage — by moving quickly and decisively to roll back Iranian influence where it is most exposed.

In Yemen, this could mean that Saudi Arabia calculates that a weakened Tehran reduces both the resupply capacity and strategic depth of the Houthis. Riyadh may see a narrowing window to either force a decisive military outcome or impose a political settlement on its own terms, one that fragments Houthi authority, empowers rival Yemeni factions, and secures its southern border once and for all. Whether through intensified airpower, expanded outreach to tribes, or economic leverage, the objective would be to convert Iran’s distraction into strategic closure on the Arabian Peninsula.

In Iraq, fearing growing internal unrest, Gulf capitals, along with Washington, could deepen financial and political backing for nationalist blocs that seek to dilute the power of Iran-backed militias, while quietly encouraging the consolidation of the Iraqi state over paramilitary actors.

In Lebanon, the picture is less certain and more volatile. With Hezbollah’s in-kind retaliations for US-Israeli strikes on Iran, Israeli airstrikes and ground incursions widening inside Lebanon, and a clear split emerging between the government and Hezbollah/IRGC groups, the situation may soon get a lot worse before it gets better. Ultimately, the government will seek to take advantage of the situation by clamping down where it can on Hezbollah’s legal room to manoeuvre, and boot the IRGC from the country.

Looking at the medium to long-term picture, the situation in the Gulf will depend on what transpires in Iran and the US posture in the region. If a transitional government ever comes to power in Tehran, countries like the United Arab Emirates and Qatar may pursue a more technocratic strategy: positioning themselves as economic intermediaries, ready to channel reconstruction capital, reopen trade corridors, and shape post-sanctions commercial architecture before Western firms fully return.

Southeast Europe

The US‑Iran war is already forcing Southeast European states to take stock of their own strategic responsibilities as the conflict touches key bases and alliances. Greece and Cyprus have moved beyond abstract concerns and into defensive action, with Athens deploying advanced air and naval assets to Cyprus in response to Iranian drone and missile threats and activating emergency evacuation planning for civilians and nationals in the region. This is shaping up as a test of Greek military readiness and political will to protect both national territory and broader NATO interests amid spill‑over from the Middle East conflict.

Turkey, as a NATO member with critical airbases and radar infrastructure, is navigating an uneasy balance. Ankara has not granted use of its territory for offensive operations but is reinforcing airspace monitoring and border defence as Iranian strikes brush against its zones of interest while keeping diplomatic channels open to avoid confrontation with Tehran. For Turkey, any involvement or empowerment of Kurdish groups in the region would likely present a red line.

European powers beyond the immediate sub-region are also stepping up in a defensive capacity. France is reinforcing the region with warships and missile‑defence systems, Spain is deploying a frigate to bolster Eastern Mediterranean security, and a multi‑national EU naval presence is forming around Cyprus to deter further escalation without formally joining the US‑led war effort. These moves reflect a broader reckoning in Western Europe about strategic autonomy and collective defence roles as the conflict’s effects extend into Southern Europe’s air and sea space.

Russia and Central Asia

The US‑Iran war is already reaching the Caucasus and Central Asia, forcing states to define how far they will defend sovereignty as the conflict spreads north. Azerbaijan has moved from theory to confrontation, condemning Iranian drone strikes on Nakhchivan that damaged the airport and injured civilians, signalling it will respond to protect its territory. This rare direct impact on a post-Soviet border highlights Baku’s readiness to confront any future incursions.

A future scenario in which Iran’s regime is weakened or undergoes transformational change would represent a major strategic setback for Russia and its Middle East agenda. Moscow has invested in a formal comprehensive strategic partnership with Tehran to deepen political, economic, and security cooperation, and Iran has been a key pillar of its regional positioning against Western influence in Syria, Iraq, and beyond. A weakened or transitional Iran would undermine that partnership, eroding Russia’s leverage and diminishing its ability to project influence alongside Tehran in regional diplomacy, energy ties, and security arrangements, at a moment when its resources are already stretched by the war in Ukraine.

China and the Indo-Pacific

In the short term, the US-Iran war will continue to cause disruptions to energy supplies and trade routes towards Asia, prompting Beijing to move swiftly to protect its economic interests at home. China is likely to deepen diplomatic engagement in order to secure maritime and overland energy corridors and reassure regional partners in the Gulf of its position on de-escalation.

In the medium to long-term, a hypothetically successful US effort to induce structural regime change in Tehran would represent a major strategic setback for China. Iran has long been a linchpin in what can be described as a Mackinder-style Eurasian dyad, where Moscow, Beijing, Pyongyang, and Tehran together constituted an (albeit loose) counterweight to Western influence in the Eurasian heartland. Removing or weakening Iran would fracture that axis, deprive China of a key partner securing energy routes and regional leverage, and diminish the cohesion of an anti-Western bloc, an indirect but significant strategic victory for Washington. While this outcome is far from assured, the very prospect is forcing Beijing to weigh proactive, multi-dimensional responses across trade, energy, and diplomacy to preserve its position of relative strength in the Indo-Pacific and wider Eurasia.

India’s Prime Minister Modi is the exception.

His visit to Tel Aviv comes days before the US and Israel launched major kinetic operations against the Iranian regime.

Before Modi’s arrival, Netanyahu floated the idea of a ‘Hexagon’ alliance within and around the Middle East — a (presumably six-sided) bulwark against Iran and its network of resistance groups, from Hezbollah in Lebanon to the Houthis of Yemen.

Modi’s visit was a chance for both nations to reinvigorate their multi-layered cooperation across AI, trade and the broader promise of IMEC: the India–Middle East–Europe Economic Corridor, which includes Israel’s port of Haifa at its centre. This corridor has the potential to link infrastructure, trade routes and strategic investment across multiple regions, underlining the broader economic dimension of the bilateral relationship.

But the prospect of a new system of alliances based around Israel (and one that includes nuclear-armed India) is what ultimately sent shockwaves across the Middle East.

An Israel-centric alliance must be understood against the backdrop of the Abraham Accords, the US-led diplomatic effort to normalise relations between Israel and its Arab neighbours. While the Abraham Accords constitute the political track towards normalisation, this proposed Hexagon Alliance would represent a distinct, parallel military layer, enhancing Israel’s deterrence posture against regional threats.

As the United States shifts burdens onto regional allies, Israel appears fully aware of what the new world order expects of it, and this new system of (potentially) interconnected alliances reflects this new strategic awareness.

So far, Netanyahu has only alluded to Israel, India, Greece and Cyprus as being part of this ‘hexagonal alliance structure’. Other Arab, African and Asian states may also be considered, but it’s unclear which nations would actually join. Recent reporting from Al Jazeera hinted that Ethiopia could be in the line-up. Meanwhile, Israel’s cooperation with Somaliland may also pave the way towards its inclusion, with Israel being the only nation recognising the territory as independent. Assuming Israel is one of the six hexagonal sides (as opposed to being dead-centre), only two would need to join for this to be a true hexagon.

What Netanyahu is actually envisaging would be strategically transformative.

If realised, it would combine two nuclear powers (India and Israel) and the highly capable army of Greece, a NATO member. These three alone would each contribute highly strategic access to the Indian Ocean, the Mediterranean and the Red Sea. African and or Central Asian participation would further amplify this map, complicating everything for Iran.

A Hexagonal alliance structure in the Middle East would also add a new dynamic to Israel’s traditional security partnership with the United States. While Israel relies heavily on US support, this (early) shift towards re-integrating itself within its region shows that while Iran remains the strategic priority for Israel, the latter’s profound regional isolation also remains (almost ironically) a barrier to its own security.
No doubt such an alliance would aim to ensure Israel’s reintegration into its greater region, allowing greater cooperation and perhaps even intelligence sharing with select partners.

No surprises about which countries are watching these developments cautiously: Iran, Pakistan, Turkey, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia stand on the opposite end of the spectrum. Amid American strategic uncertainty and the fallout from the war in Gaza, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan already inked their own mutual defence treaty last year. Meanwhile, Greece and Cyprus’ involvement creates problems for Turkey, while Pakistan remains firmly opposed to the very idea of India stepping into any overlapping Middle East-focused alignment.

What remains to be seen is whether the idea takes off or whether this remains at the level of ideas and aspirations.

But even as a concept, the Hexagon signals something deeper.

Middle Eastern security is no longer being imagined solely through Washington’s architecture, even as bombs fall across Iran. Regional and extra-regional powers alike are beginning to design parallel, flexible, overlapping, and in some cases, nuclear-backed. Whether formalised or not, the very articulation of such a structure reveals how fluid the region’s alignment patterns have become.

Thanks for reading along this week. I’ll be back soon with more — have a happy weekend.

First, we’ll take a look at what’s been happening in the OSINT world before diving into the diplomatic track. Then, we’ll look at some potential scenarios of an Iran-US/Israel escalation, looking specifically at what options the US has now.

Let’s get into it:

1. Current state of play: hard power build-up

Over the past few weeks, the US has augmented its naval presence in the region.
The USS Abraham Lincoln is sitting in the Arabian Sea, and the USS Gerald R. Ford passed through the Strait of Gibraltar on Friday, after conducting a ‘replenishment-at-sea’ west of the Strait:

On the same day, an uninterrupted flow of C-17 & C-5 Cargo planes was visible between Europe and the bases in the Middle East.

Across the entire week, flight maps frequently looked like this:

Source:

Some OSINT reporting shows over 107 US aerial refuelling tankers positioned across the CENTCOM area of responsibility, providing multiple offensive and defensive options across the entire Middle East region.

This significant commitment of forces to the region begs the question of what reasonable political off-ramps might look like now that we are…where we are.
Short of a massive and grand deal with Iran, offramps for the US at this stage look unlikely, but still not impossible. This depends on what Trump would be prepared to call a ‘win’.

2. Current state of play: The diplomatic track

A second round of indirect talks at the Omani consulate general in Geneva took place earlier in the week with no clear breakthrough. Despite tentative hints from the Iranian side that ‘guiding principles’ were agreed to, J.D. Vance appeared to walk back any sign of there being a positive outcome, saying that Trump’s red lines were not being taken into account.

On Friday, the Iranian foreign minister signalled that a 3-5 year pause in uranium enrichment could be considered as part of a potential deal. According to the New York Times, this would likely be in exchange for lifting US sanctions and allowing oil sales. Following this proposed pause, coinciding with Trump’s presidency, Iran would then join a regional consortium for civilian-grade enrichment, while its current stockpiles would be diluted under international inspection. However, this likely falls well short of US and Israeli demands that Iran completely dismantle enrichment. This also likely falls short of any grounds for de-escalation, and is unlikely to provide any room for a US offramp.

The hard reality: even if the US were to agree on a framework deal encompassing Iran’s nuclear enrichment programme, this still leaves the open question on Iran’s ballistic missiles and its proxies - items that have yet to make it onto any agenda between the two. This makes the broader prospect of a deal that Israel will be satisfied with improbable and the pathway to military confrontation almost guaranteed.

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3. Future Scenarios: What are the US’s options in Iran?

It’s important to note that Iran is not a peer competitor of the United States. Washington retains an overall decisive edge in every theatre, from land, sea, air, cyber, and even space. That said, Iran does have asymmetric capabilities that, if used effectively, could still inflict damage on US interests in the region and Israel itself.

With this in mind, and based on the above diplomatic and military developments, there are several options the US could aim for in the next few weeks:

A. Agree to a limited (nuclear-only) deal and empower Israel to strike Iran instead

Under this approach, the United States would pursue a narrowly scoped agreement with Iran focused solely on the nuclear program, while tacitly enabling Israel to conduct kinetic strikes against targets the deal does not address, most notably Iran’s ballistic missile capabilities.

In this scenario, Iran would almost certainly respond directly against Israel. However, the United States would position itself primarily in a defensive role, focused on protecting Israel from Iranian retaliation rather than conducting strikes itself.

Recent force posture adjustments support this logic. The deployment of additional U.S. fighter aircraft to bases in Jordan, along with the imminent arrival of the USS Gerald R. Ford carrier strike group in the Eastern Mediterranean, suggests preparations for a reinforced regional air and missile defence posture in the coming weeks.

B. Strike Iran’s ballistic missile capability directly and force a better negotiating position in the nuclear dimension

Targeted military strikes against Iran’s ballistic missile infrastructure would degrade its strategic capabilities and create leverage for a more favourable nuclear agreement, if diplomatic conditions allowed (big if). By focusing on missile sites rather than nuclear facilities, the United States would signal a willingness to use force selectively while keeping the broader nuclear framework intact. Iran would likely retaliate, potentially against US forces or regional partners, requiring careful defensive planning. But even with significant damage, Tehran could prioritise rebuilding capabilities, meaning this would create short-term leverage rather than a permanent solution. Any such campaign would need to be weighed against escalation risks and the potential for Iran to harden its negotiating position further if the strikes are seen as coercive rather than limited.

C. Targeting Iran’s Nuclear Program Directly

If a deal appears elusive and Iranian proposals insufficient, a second US strike could (again) disrupt key nuclear facilities. But if the first round in 2025 was inconclusive, then a second round would likely be similar. It’s nearly impossible to verify whether all enriched material could be located or destroyed, and the program’s scientific and technical knowledge would remain intact. Rather than ending Iran’s nuclear ambitions, a strike on its nuclear facilities would likely reinforce Tehran’s determination to continue in defiance. This risk helps explain why the United States remains (nominally) open to pursuing a deal on the nuclear issue, despite other key items remaining off the table.

D. Broad Military Campaign to Destabilise the Regime

This approach would use targeted strikes against key IRGC facilities, command centres, and critical economic infrastructure to weaken Iran’s power structures and generate internal pressure. The goal would be to destabilise the regime and create leverage over its leadership.

However, Iran’s leadership has no tolerance for existential threats, and any attack on these nodes would likely provoke a harsh, coordinated response, including through its regional proxies. The action could escalate into a broader regional conflict, carrying critical consequences for U.S. forces, allies, and global stability.

E. Target Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei

In theory, the United States could attempt a decapitation strike against Iran’s Supreme Leader to alter the country’s trajectory.

Such an action would be immediately perceived by Tehran as an existential threat, triggering a coordinated and potentially severe response from the regime. This could include direct attacks on U.S. forces, retaliation through regional proxies, and rapid escalation into a wider regional conflict. Even if successful in removing Khamenei, the political system and the IRGC would remain intact, meaning the underlying regime structures would endure. The strike could destabilise Iran in unpredictable ways, intensify anti-U.S. sentiment, and carry serious consequences for regional security and global stability.

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Rubio pitched an honest reset hinging on the historical depth of the transatlantic alliance. His speech, while almost conciliatory compared to J.D. Vance’s one year earlier, still sought to rescue Europe from itself. Rubio teased an emerging world where Europe (with America’s guidance) might come out stronger and healthier in the defence of shared challenges.

Wang pitched something else: a relationship built on rules and order, without bloc confrontation or a ‘country-first’ approach - words almost reminiscent of post-Cold War US administrations. Wang’s comments were well-calibrated, and he knew his audience well. He said that China and Europe were “partners, not rivals”, a phrase that differs from Europe’s own strategic outlook, which recognises China as an economic competitor and systemic rival, not a partner per se.

With its traditional ally rewiring a long-term relationship, and China offering an alternative, Europe finds itself in an interesting position.

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Only a few months ago, Nigeria began to feature in Trump’s Truth Social posts, where he warned the government of Nigeria that the US could intervene if the killing of Nigerian Christians was not addressed.

Trump’s rhetoric culminated in a Christmas Day strike against ISIS-affiliated militants in the country’s north west.

Groups like Boko Haram and the various splinter groups (JAS and ISWAP) have run wild and unimpeded in large parts of the country, taking advantage of weak governance and a profound lack of security. Nigeria suffers from a vast imbalance between the population (no fewer than 235 million) and the relatively few trained police officers able to do their job.

The religious dimension brings an added layer of complexity. Nigeria’s Muslim-majority north and Christian-dominant south present both a diverse, yet fractured reality on the ground. Attacks in recent years have affected Christians and Muslims, with some groups estimating that many thousands were killed in 2025 alone. This drawing intense criticism from the Trump administration and a clear rationale for further engagement - a move that appeals directly to his Christian voter base back home.

Since the December strikes, however, Washington appears to have shifted from rhetorical escalation to pragmatic coordination. The planned deployment of roughly 200 US personnel focused on training and intelligence sharing signals a more structured phase of cooperation. It also marks a pivot toward Nigeria as a central platform for maintaining American reach into the Sahel after losing access to bases in Niger.

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Africa remains only briefly mentioned in the 2025 US National Security Strategy. Yet the deployment demonstrates that Washington is not prepared to cede influence in West Africa. This is not an unprecedented military presence, nor does it represent a dramatic diplomatic breakthrough. Instead, it reflects a calculated and relatively low-cost way to preserve operational relevance in a strategically volatile region.

Taken together, the move suggests continuity rather than escalation: a repositioning designed to sustain counter-terror capabilities in the Sahel, a region shaped by rapid population growth, climate stress, desertification, and intensifying intra-factional tensions.

What I’m watching this week:

• Munich Security Conference is underway - Secretary of State Marco Rubio is attending, and how he positions the US on transatlantic relations will be interesting to watch.

• USS Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group has been ordered to the Middle East. Its voyage timeline (from the Caribbean) offers a reference for timing in the US-Iran negotiations.

• Israel has joined the US-led ‘Board of Peace’, but it’s unclear how and when Hamas will disarm.