The US-Israeli war on Iran has not come to an end, and the debate over its implications continues unabated. Four months after the outbreak of the conflict, the Middle East is still grappling with its consequences and the lessons it offers.
More than three weeks after the signing of a memorandum of understanding between the US and Iran on 17 June, the fragile truce between the two countries has now ended with the return to tit-for-tat military strikes that experts fear could re-escalate into a fully-fledged war.
Examining the grammar of contemporary warfare is not only essential to understanding modern conflicts but also to finding ways to contain them.
Major wars in the Middle East are not just occasional episodes of military escalation. They are defining moments that may reshape the regional order, redefine the rules governing relations among states, and shed light on the balance of power among the parties involved. They also reveal the extent to which international powers influence the course and outcome of regional conflicts.
Such wars often produce both continuity and change: while some aspects of the regional system remain remarkably resilient, others undergo profound transformation.
This pattern has been evident in earlier important conflicts, including the Iran-Iraq war, Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990, the US occupation of Iraq in 2003, the various waves of the Arab uprisings, and the fifth Gaza war.
The latest conflict with Iran is no exception, as the following 10 lessons demonstrate.
First, the US military campaign against Iran should not be viewed as a single conflict. Rather, three wars were launched and overlapped in terms of causes and the actors involved. Such overlap has added complexity that has rendered this war more challenging and less easy to contain.
Initially, there was the US war on Iran, whose objectives evolved over the course of the conflict. What at first appeared to be an effort to topple the Iranian regime gradually shifted towards changing its behaviour and policies, before ultimately focusing on negotiating those policies in line with US President Donald Trump’s own vision and priorities.
There was also Israel’s war on Iran, which aimed at eliminating or at least significantly degrading the perceived Iranian threat, an objective that enjoyed broad support in Israeli public opinion.
Thirdly, there was Iran’s war against the Gulf, which drew the Gulf states into the heart of the conflict. Tehran initially targeted US and other foreign military bases hosted by the Gulf countries in its response to the US and Israel war. However, the conflict soon expanded as Iranian drone and missile strikes exposed Gulf cities to the risk of direct attack, targeting airports, energy facilities, and other critical infrastructure across the region.
It is important to note that Iran’s attacks on oil and gas facilities in the Gulf reflected a shift from “conventional deterrence” to “deterrence through expansion”. That is, the Iranian strategy seemed to be to expand the scope of the conflict rather than contain it, based on the Gulf countries’ alleged involvement in the US assaults on Iran via direct participation or mere incitement.
These three interrelated wars have raised existential questions about statehood, sovereignty, and development. They underscore the intricate link between politics, geography, and economics and how disruption in one sphere can directly affect trade, investment, and energy networks. In turn, they have heightened security risks for Arab states, exposing the region to an increasingly complex, volatile, and fluid strategic environment.
What began as a single conflict quickly evolved into three interconnected wars whose repercussions have extended far beyond the Middle East, with consequences reverberating across the globe.
FURTHER LESSONS: The second lesson of the conflict with Iran is how the pattern of contemporary warfare has evolved.
A pattern of hybrid warfare is materialising across the region. Recent cycles of escalation and de-escalation suggest that the Middle East is becoming bogged down in a multidimensional conflict in which conventional military operations are integrated with cyber, economic, and information warfare.
In addition to missile strikes, drone attacks, and direct air operations, cyberattacks targeting energy infrastructure, financial institutions, and telecommunications networks have become increasingly prominent.
The Gulf countries, in particular, were subject to a growing wave of cyberattacks affecting banks, airlines, and government service platforms. At the same time, information warfare has intensified, with competing actors seeking to shape public opinion and redefine narratives of legitimacy, deterrence, and threat.
Such hybrid warfare has also included efforts to disrupt maritime security through the harassment of commercial vessels, limited acts of sabotage, and the seizure or detention of oil tankers. Such practices, repeatedly reported in the Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz, have become integral components of the region’s evolving security landscape.
Together, these military and non-military attacks highlight the increasingly hybrid nature of conflict in the Middle East.
The third key takeaway from the conflict is that it revealed the strict limitation of conventional military force in securing solutions and resolving conflicts on the ground.
It is clear that the US-Israeli military actions against Iran could hardly have changed the reality in the region. The US military force, combined with Israeli intelligence and cyber-supremacy, ultimately failed to topple the regime in Iran.
Analysts thus had a point when they speculated that a fragile truce would at least temporarily end the war in a ceasefire that hardly addressed the root cause of the conflict. Over the past three weeks, the region has been witnessing a period of pending stability, a mere lull, with no clear rules that could pre-empt future conflicts. It is no surprise that this temporary lull has so soon ended.
The region is now witnessing the resurgence of what are sometimes described as “grey wars” — conflicts marked by limited, indirect, and often deniable forms of confrontation. Selective military strikes, attacks on critical infrastructure, and cyber-operations are likely to reappear, this time in an even more volatile and fragile strategic environment.
This scenario suggests that the global economy will remain under sustained pressure even in the absence of a full-scale war. The persistent threat to strategic maritime chokepoints, particularly the Strait of Hormuz, could quickly reverberate across the region and prove contagious to other vital waterways including the Bab Al-Mandab Strait.
Such geopolitical risks are likely to disrupt investment flows, undermine energy security, and add further uncertainty to global markets.
This takes us to the fourth lesson of the war: the key role played by geopolitics in modern conflicts. If anything, the recent incidents underscore the pivotal role of geopolitics in contemporary warfare. The war on Iran highlights the evolving nature of conflict in the Middle East, where the dynamics of war are no longer determined solely by conventional military force or the balance of firepower.
One of the clearest lessons is that military superiority alone is no longer the sole defining factor in conflicts and that power can no longer be measured simply by the size of missile arsenals or the number of fighter aircraft.
Today’s warfare has become far more complicated, with geography itself emerging as a strategic asset rather than merely the setting for military operations. Strategic maritime chokepoints carrying the world’s energy supplies and global commerce have become a central war tactic in regional and international conflicts.
The ability to threaten or disrupt these vital shipping routes can alter the regional balance of power and reverberate across the global economy. This demonstrates that influence today is exercised not only through military force but also through control of strategic geography.
Iran appears to have recognised the importance of geopolitics and the fact that the significance of the Hormuz and Bab Al-Mandab straits go beyond being key logistic arteries for the global economy and are instead also important strategic assets in the balance of power. Once the US-Israeli attacks on Iran escalated, Iran used the straits to put pressure on the US and as an indispensable component in negotiations.
Maritime security threats are likely to increase, and the region may witness a resurgence of arms smuggling, acts of piracy, cross-border crimes, and illegal immigration, particularly across the Red Sea and the Horn of Africa. These challenges are likely to reinforce the strategic importance of safeguarding critical sea lanes to maintain regional stability and the uninterrupted flow of global trade.
LESSONS FIVE TO EIGHT: Iran’s use of its geopolitical leverage over the Strait of Hormuz leads to the fifth lesson: the infliction of economic pain on the rest of the world and not just the adversary states as a new war tactic.
The last four months have seen Iran disrupting global economic supplies rather than just inflicting financial losses on the US and Israel in order to pressure negotiations in its favour. The Gulf has gone beyond being a geopolitical arena of conflict owing to its position at the heart of the global economy.
Capital flows in this part of the region are essential components of the stability of global markets, and the Iranian strikes on the Gulf countries disrupted that stability. In the meantime, many European countries were similarly affected due to their dependence on oil supplies going through the Strait of Hormuz.
This disruption of the global economy gave the world an important lesson: strategic waterways should remain safe away from political conflicts and blackmail.
Washington justified its military intervention in Iran on the grounds that Iranian deterrent capabilities were limited and that this would make US strikes far more effective in achieving its objectives than continued diplomacy. However, this proved to be a US miscalculation, which highlights the sixth lesson of the war: Iran’s deterrence is not limited.
Although the US inflicted significant damage on Iran’s conventional military infrastructure, it did not eliminate Tehran’s capacity to launch ballistic missiles or threaten international shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.
Iran relied on asymmetric economic deterrence when it warned that any attempt to target the regime would carry consequences far beyond the battlefield. By leveraging one of the world’s most critical maritime chokepoints, Tehran sought to raise the economic costs of the military escalation for both its adversaries and the international community.
The result was the most important disruption of global energy supplies since the oil crisis of the 1970s, resulting in unprecedented oil price spikes. This underscores how strategic geography can serve as a powerful instrument of deterrence alongside conventional military capabilities.
Lesson seven focuses on how the war is likely to reshape the world, since it is unlikely that the conflict will end in the same strategic environment in which it began.
The conflict has not just redistributed power in the region, but it is also likely to reshape the foundations of the regional order. At its core, the conflict is not simply about military balances, but also about the political architecture that will govern the Middle East in the years ahead. Will the region continue to be shaped by a hybrid order in which states coexist and compete with transnational armed networks, or will it witness the reemergence of the state as the main decisive actor?
The Iran war has not only been distinguished by its scale, the sophistication of its military tools, hybrid nature, and geopolitical tactics. It could also put an end to a prolonged period of what might be termed as “interim conflict management.” For years, the region has largely existed in a strategic “grey condition” — meaning that it was neither bogged down in an all-out war, nor witnessing a state of stable peace, but instead was existing in a state of a temporary truce or fragile balance based on incomplete deterrence and calculated escalation.
Today, this model is under unprecedented strain and is possibly collapsing.
The eighth lesson of the war should thus examine the limits of the regional proxy model. For decades, Iran has relied on a network of allied armed groups to leverage its influence across the Middle East while avoiding direct military confrontation. This strategy proved effective in a relatively low-escalation environment, where conflicts could be managed below the threshold of full-scale war.
However, as hostilities escalate and critical infrastructure becomes an increasingly prominent target, the limitations of the proxy model become more apparent. Proxy forces are less able to control the trajectory of escalation and are more likely to become strategic liabilities than effective instruments of deterrence.
This does not necessarily mean the end of proxy warfare. But it does suggest a decline in the ability of proxy networks to shape the strategic balance or dictate the rules of engagement.
The war against Iran has reinforced a broader trend identified in the strategic literature: the re-emergence of the state as the principal actor in regional security at the expense of non-state armed groups whose influence appears increasingly constrained in high-intensity conflicts.
But the limited reliance on armed groups and proxy wars is not the only change the war has introduced to the region. The war may also invite revisiting regional alliances and the way they will be shaped over the coming period.
The war has highlighted the evolving nature of alliances in the Middle East. Future partnerships are likely to extend beyond traditional security arrangements to include broader networks that integrate defence, economic cooperation, technological innovation, and infrastructure connectivity. Countries will join forces as strategic allies not only to encounter shared threats, but also to manage common risks and protect common economic interests.
In this vein, states with strategic value derived from their geographic location, economic capabilities, technological capacity, or critical infrastructure are likely to occupy a more influential position within this evolving regional order.
Meanwhile, major powers are pursuing distinct approaches. The US seeks to contain escalation without becoming drawn into another prolonged regional military commitment, while safeguarding critical maritime and commercial corridors. China, by contrast, remains focused on protecting its economic interests and ensuring the uninterrupted flow of trade while avoiding direct military involvement.
Together, these approaches suggest that the emerging regional order will be shaped as much by geo-economic and technological competition as by traditional security considerations.
LESSONS NINE AND 10: The war on Iran has exposed the Middle East’s chronic predicament as one of the world’s most contested geopolitical regions, marked by internal armed conflicts, divisions among regional and Arab states, and enduring rivalries involving major international powers.
These tensions do not end when the fighting stops. Instead, they shift from the battlefield to the negotiating table, where deep mistrust and psychological barriers continue to shape relations among regional leaders. Rebuilding political trust will be a long and costly process, not only between the Gulf states and Iran, but also between some Gulf states and Iraq, among the Gulf states themselves, and between the United States and its regional partners.
The financial costs will be equally high. Reconstructing damaged infrastructure, restoring investor confidence, and reviving economic growth will require substantial resources, potentially delaying the prospects for lasting regional stability for years.
If Tehran’s ability to support its regional allies and proxy networks continues to weaken, the balance of influence across the Middle East is likely to shift. However, this should not be mistaken for a path to immediate stability. Instead, it could create new power vacuums, fuel fresh rivalries, and trigger further competition for regional influence, making the Middle East’s strategic landscape even more fragmented and unstable.
The current conflict is not simply a war that must be contained; it is a defining moment that will shape the future of the Middle East, and it is from here that the tenth lesson of the war emerges.
The central question facing policymakers is no longer how to contain the confrontation with Iran, but what new rules will govern regional interactions in its aftermath. While a ceasefire or a memorandum of understanding has satisfied the immediate need to halt the fighting, neither has proved sufficient to restore lasting stability.
The war has not only created new imbalances of power but has also exposed existing ones. The growing politicisation of strategic sea lanes, the vulnerability of energy supplies, the expanding role of missiles and drones, and the continuing gap between formal diplomacy and proxy warfare are all cases in point. The challenge now is not only to end the conflict, but also to build a more stable and sustainable framework for regional security.
Past experience shows that an unconditional or unrealistic ceasefire rarely ends a conflict. Instead, it often creates a temporary lull during which the parties regroup and prepare for the next round of fighting. This is exactly what we are seeing today. In a region marked by multiple actors and overlapping forms of warfare, a fragile truce merely redistributes the risks rather than removes them.
Any settlement that fails to address these underlying dynamics is likely to postpone, rather than prevent, renewed escalation. What the region needs is not another temporary ceasefire, but a new framework for regional interaction and one that moves beyond crisis management towards sustainable conflict management and from fragile balances to enforceable rules of conduct.
This requires redefining acceptable behaviour, not only for states, but also for armed non-state actors.
One mistake that should not be repeated is limiting negotiations to a narrow US-Iran channel, as some academics and diplomats have argued. Gulf security cannot be reshaped while the states most directly affected remain on the sidelines.
Any durable settlement must proceed on two parallel tracks: an international track addressing Iran’s nuclear programme and US sanctions, and a regional track bringing together the Gulf states and Iran to tackle maritime security, non-interference, ballistic missiles, and crisis management.
The writer is head of the Arab and Regional Studies Unit at Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 16 July, 2026 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly.
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