Recently, it has been observed that the United States (US) has carried out an extraordinary military buildup in the Eastern Mediterranean basin, particularly in the Sea of Oman, which is situated in Iran’s immediate vicinity. While diplomatic channels appear to remain open within the context of US-Iran tensions, there are strong indications that the parties view the negotiation process as a tactical tool to gain time. This situation generates serious “uncertainty” in terms of regional security architecture. Indeed, in strategic literature, uncertainty is considered an element of “deterrence and power projection” in its own right.
The fact that data regarding Iran’s military capacity is limited and partially classified further deepens this uncertainty. Especially the lack of clear and verified information regarding the nature of the ballistic missile inventory and the potential nuclear warhead delivery capacity of these systems reduces the predictability of crisis scenarios. The possibility of Iran possessing the capacity to integrate nuclear warheads into ballistic missile systems would increase the risk of a potential conflict evolving into a large-scale, multi-actor war transcending regional boundaries.
In this framework, the article will analyze the strategic objectives of the US toward expanding its sphere of influence in the Middle East. Furthermore, within the scope of the article, an attempt will be made to provide an answer from a theoretical and strategic perspective to the question of which directions a potential Iran-US conflict might evolve in terms of military, geopolitical, and global power balances.
Under the influence of comprehensive sanctions implemented by Western countries, Iran has turned toward seeking alternative cooperation, particularly in the development of missile technologies and the procurement of critical components for the defense industry. In this context, military and technical cooperation developed with China, North Korea, and Russia has played a significant role in maintaining Iran’s defense capacity. However, these relations have also brought about a ground of dependency that could produce controversial effects on Iran’s strategic autonomy in the long run.
On the other hand, the chronicization of the antagonism and the continuity of regional tensions” between Iran and Israel has led Western actors to further tighten the sanctions regime against Iran. This situation has caused Iran to become increasingly isolated in the international system and excluded from West-centered economic-financial networks.
As a result of these “isolation” policies implemented by the West, Iran has disproportionately gravitated toward the Russia-China axis on political, economic, and military levels. Over time, this orientation has transformed into an asymmetric relationship of interdependence. When evaluated from a strategic perspective, unilateral foreign policy engagements can limit the maneuverability of states and increase vulnerability to external shocks.
Within the framework of an alternative foreign policy approach—as seen in the example of Türkiye—Iran’s development of multilateral cooperation platforms on East-West and North-South axes and its pursuit of a balancing diplomacy could have offered Iran a more flexible and diversified international positioning. Such multi-faceted integration strategies could have prevented economic and strategic vulnerabilities in Iran by reducing the risk of single-axis dependency. However, at the current stage, Iran’s past failure to develop a multi-faceted and balancing foreign policy strategy has caused serious structural vulnerabilities in the long term.
The US strategy to increase its influence in the Middle East is the product of a multi-layered geopolitical approach on the axes of security, energy, financial hegemony, and great power competition. In this context, the strategic objectives of the US to reach its political, military, and economic interests in the Middle East can be summarized under the following headings:
• Ensuring the security of Israel: Protecting the military superiority and security of Israel, one of the most important allies of the US in the region, is one of the fundamental priorities of Washington’s Middle East policy.
• Preventing China’s global expansion, particularly in economic and political spheres: China’s increasing infrastructure, logistics, and energy investments in the Middle East through the Belt and Road Initiative is viewed by the US as a geoeconomic and geostrategic challenge.
• Seizing control of energy resources: The rich oil and natural gas reserves of the Middle East are of critical importance for the stability of global energy markets. Therefore, the US seeks to control the region’s energy reserves.
• Preserving the reserve currency status of the dollar in energy trade: The fact that oil and natural gas trade is largely conducted in US dollars strengthens the position of the “dollar as the international reserve currency.” The US considers the maintenance of dollar-based energy trade as a strategic priority.
• Control of critical maritime trade routes and logistics hubs: The US does not wish to lose its dominance over the seas and oceans to another actor through trade corridors such as the Strait of Hormuz, the Persian Gulf, the Gulf of Aden, and the Suez Canal, which are vital for global trade and energy transmission lines.
• The strategic importance of the Strait of Hormuz: The Strait of Hormuz is a critical chokepoint through which approximately 30% of the world’s seaborne oil and about 20% of global LNG trade reach international markets.
When analyzed in the context of geoeconomics, security, and regional/global power competition, the answers to why the US and Israel exert military pressure on Iran reveal the following headings:
- The US seeks to control China’s energy supply security: Considering that approximately 60% of China’s total energy imports pass through the Strait of Hormuz, control over this critical chokepoint carries the potential to create strategic pressure on Beijing’s energy security. In this context, the encirclement of Iran is an extension of the strategy to limit China’s geoeconomic maneuverability.
- Competition over energy trade and pricing mechanisms: It is claimed that a significant portion of Iranian oil is exported to China at discounted prices through mechanisms that bypass Western sanctions. For the US, this is an element that weakens the decisive role of the dollar in energy trade.
- Debates on the nuclear program and enriched uranium stockpiles: It is alleged that Iran possesses a 400-kilogram stockpile of uranium enriched to 60% purity. While the Tehran administration maintains that the program is for peaceful purposes, the US and Israel accuse Iran of developing nuclear weapons.
- Demand for the limitation of ballistic missile capacity: The US evaluates Iran’s long-range ballistic missile program as a threat to regional and global security and demands that this capacity be abandoned.
- Weakening the Russia-China axis and alternative multilateral blocs: The strategic cooperation Iran has developed with Russia, China, and North Korea strengthens tendencies toward alternative bloc formations against the West-centered international order. In this context, formations such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and BRICS are viewed by the US as potential counter-hegemonic platforms. Through Iran, the US is engaging in a show of force and intimidation against the SCO and BRICS, led by Russia and China.
- Tension between normative rhetoric and geostrategic interests: According to critical approaches, the US rhetoric toward Iran—which emphasizes democracy, human rights, and freedoms—is intertwined with geostrategic and geoeconomic goals. The US attempts to generate international legitimacy for its potential military interventions in Iran through this rhetoric. In other words, the US instrumentalizes protests, the regime, and chaotic situations in Iran for its own interests.
Iran, with a population of approximately 90 million, is an influential country in a vast and strategically important geography of 1.6 million km², bordered by the Caspian Sea and Turkestan to the north, and the Persian Gulf and the Sea of Oman to the south. On a geoeconomic level, Iran is at a critical crossroads between China’s Belt and Road Initiative and the North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC) on the Russia–India line. Gwadar Port in Pakistan, Chabahar Port—where India has invested—and Iran’s Bandar Abbas Port in the Strait of Hormuz are strategic nodes for the security of energy and trade routes.
Given the regional and global dynamics, it does not seem likely that the US and Israel will defeat Iran in a short time. Any military operation could increase the risk of the conflict spiraling out of control and spreading on a regional and global scale, causing crises that would be extremely difficult to stop.
The US policy on Iran has become a web of “uncertainties” due to the complex interaction of domestic and foreign dynamics. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants the tension toward Iran to continue in order to stay in power, as there are elections in Israel in October. US President Donald Trump is under serious pressure due to the Epstein cases domestically and the midterm elections in November. In this context, the policies of Netanyahu and Trump toward Iran overlap in the political arena regarding their personal careers.
During the 12-day Israel-Iran conflict, Trump carried out a military intervention under pressure from Netanyahu but achieved no significant results. Today, a similar direction and pressure exist. The US has deployed high-cost military buildups worth billions of dollars in and around the Sea of Oman; these buildups serve as a global show of force, primarily against Iran and China. In this context, it has become mandatory for Trump to organize an operation against Iran so that he can explain the cost-benefit analysis of these military buildups to the public on the eve of the election. However, Trump faces great confusion, the outcome of which he cannot fully predict. Trump is trying to provide intimidation, fear, and deterrence over Iran by using the military buildup. However, because the US demands are maximalist, Iran refuses to surrender unconditionally without a war. This makes it difficult for the US to reach its strategic goals.
During the Cold War, the US followed a strategy aimed at wearing down the USSR rather than destroying it directly, and similarly with Al-Qaeda post-9/11, managing the process to its own advantage. Similarly, the US aims to limit Iran’s regional influence by preparing an environment where it can occupy Iran with chaos and internal turmoil, much like Iraq. In other words, the US desires to turn Iran into Iraq. Achieving this goal appears quite difficult and ambiguous for the US. This situation naturally aligns with the interests of Israel, which desires fragmented, warring ethnic groups in the region instead of integrated states.
The current tension between the US and Iran has transformed into a strategic war of attrition focused on wearing each other down, generating costs, and spreading over time rather than a classic frontal war. Therefore, the US strategy toward Iran is not just to make Iran abandon nuclear studies and missile production or to achieve regime change, but to build a new order that can control regional flow through chaos. In this framework, whether the US achieves success is directly proportional to the ways and methods by which Russia and China support Iran, as well as the US’s power of endurance in this war of attrition. On the other hand, the positions of the UK and India in this war are at a level that could significantly affect its course.
If “result-oriented gains are not achieved” after mobilizing high-cost and ostentatious military buildups toward the Middle East (Iran), it is highly probable that major ruptures against the US will emerge on a global scale. These ruptures would weaken the US’s deterrent power, erode its global hegemonic position, and bring about the failure of Trump’s attempts to annex Greenland and Canada to US territory.
