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A security and strategic studies scholar, senior lecturer,
In the American-Israeli confrontation with Iran, the geopolitical clock appears to have stopped at the stage of a fragile truce: neither a stable peace nor a fully-fledged war. The opposing parties resemble a rider who has placed one foot in the stirrup but has not yet mounted the horse. The feet of all actors have sunk into the shifting sands of the Strait of Hormuz, where escalation has become a strategic catastrophe for both sides, while retreat without tangible gains could threaten the political future of the leaders driving the conflict.
Great powers do not suddenly lose their influence or impact on the international stage; rather, the process unfolds gradually, making it difficult to observe directly. Despite the United States possessing superior military and economic capabilities, geopolitical shifts in the region and recent developments suggest that such superiority is no longer sufficient to guarantee political influence or the compliance of regional states.
The United States and Iran have entered what can best be described as a state of “neither war nor peace”—a strategic limbo, as characterised by Iran’s Khorasan Newspaper. This phase is marked by diplomatic stagnation and the sustained deployment of military forces in a costly state of heightened readiness—on both the offensive and defensive sides. In such a context, escalation risks triggering a broader war with unpredictable consequences, while de-escalation may be perceived as a strategic retreat and political loss.
The developments of the escalating war between the United States and Israel on one side and Iran on the other show that overwhelming airpower has not achieved a decisive victory that can be relied upon to declare a convincing win. The American Secretary of Defence and the American President have repeatedly used the term Obliterated, which means destruction or erasure without any trace, to describe the strength of the air campaign against Iran. According to this term,
Iran’s response—targeting Gulf states in addition to Jordan—came as a strategic surprise to Washington, which had largely built its war plan on the assumption that eliminating senior leadership would trigger rapid Iranian capitulation. This assumption overlooked a critical reality: the Iranian regime appears to view this confrontation as existential, and is therefore inclined to expand the scope of conflict and raise its costs for all parties involved.
On the morning of the last day of February, the United States and Israel carried out a high-level strike on Iran that resulted in the killing of several senior Iranian leaders, most notably the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The assassination of the Supreme Leader represents a major turning point in the structure of the regional order. Targeting the head of the regime in a state of Iran’s magnitude is not merely a military strike; it is a strategic event that reshapes the balance of power and raises profound questions about deterrence, intelligence capabilities, and the future of the regime itself.
Since al-Qaeda launched its attacks against the United States in September 2001, followed by the U.S.-led Global War on Terror, Washington entered a phase of what the Copenhagen School of security studies calls the “securitisation of the terrorist threat.” Terrorism was framed as an existential threat that justified extraordinary measures outside the traditional framework of politics. This securitised mindset manifested in mobilising and financing allies to wage a global war against terrorism.
The proposed Sunni trilateral alliance—if it moves beyond political protocol—represents a new regional alignment capable of reshaping the map of alliances in the Middle East. The three states possess notable complementary capacities across economic, military, political, and demographic domains, as well as an ideological dimension, represented by Sunni Islam, the largest religious component in the Islamic world.
Iran is facing the most severe and complex existential threat since the Iranian Revolution led by Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979. The ongoing protest in Iran that has persisted for more than two weeks, resulting in hundreds of deaths and injuries, is escalating rapidly within an exceptionally sensitive geopolitical context. While these protests are not unprecedented, Iran has been subjected to many protests and faced with lethal repression as well. However, what differentiated the current protest and made it dangerous is its convergence with the gradual collapse of Iranian power and deterrence internally and externally. These pillars has consituted the base of Iran's security doctrine and a core source for its domestic legitimacy.
The terrorist attack carried out by Navid Akram and his father, which resulted in the killing of 15 Jewish individuals celebrating Hanukkah on Bondi Beach in Sydney, marked a dangerous turning point in Australia’s security and political landscape.
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