By Dipak Kurmi
After weeks of intensifying rhetoric and military signalling, the United States and Israel have launched a sweeping wave of strikes across Iran, targeting military and defence installations alongside segments of civilian infrastructure in multiple urban centres. This marks the second major assault on Iran in less than a year, once again justified by Washington and Tel Aviv as necessary to contain Tehran’s nuclear ambitions. The scale and coordination of the operation suggest a deliberate effort not merely to degrade specific capabilities but to reshape the broader strategic equation in West Asia. Yet the decision to escalate militarily at a moment when diplomatic engagement reportedly retained some momentum has raised profound strategic, geopolitical, and legal questions. Far from closing the nuclear file, the strikes risk pushing the region into a far more volatile and unpredictable phase of confrontation.
President Donald Trump has framed the campaign in sweeping and uncompromising language, portraying it as a decisive effort to dismantle Iran’s missile industry, cripple its naval forces, uproot its network of regional proxies, and permanently foreclose its path to nuclear armament. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has gone further still, suggesting the operation could create conditions for the Iranian public to challenge the Ayatollah-led system from within. Trump himself has repeatedly hinted at regime change, labelling Iran’s leadership a radical dictatorship and pledging to “raze their missile industry to the ground.” Such expansive objectives significantly raise the stakes. Military campaigns designed for limited deterrence often evolve differently when political rhetoric begins to target systemic transformation. The more ambitious the declared end state, the greater the risk of strategic overreach.
Despite suffering damage during the earlier June strikes, Iran would be a grave mistake to underestimate. While Tehran does not match the conventional military sophistication of the United States or Israel, it retains substantial asymmetric capabilities that can impose meaningful costs. Iran has already demonstrated its ability to respond through missile attacks directed toward Gulf states hosting American military facilities, including Qatar, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain. Intelligence assessments continue to indicate that Tehran still possesses hundreds of missiles capable of reaching Israeli territory. In addition to direct retaliation, Iran could pursue a broader escalation strategy designed to widen the theatre of confrontation and raise the economic and political costs for Washington and its regional partners.
One of Iran’s most potent levers lies in geography. The country straddles the northern coastline of the Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly one-fifth of globally traded crude oil passes. Even limited disruption in this narrow maritime corridor can trigger immediate tremors in global energy markets. Tehran has previously signalled that, under extreme pressure, it could attempt to impede shipping in the strait. Such a move would transform the present conflict from a regional security crisis into a global economic shock. Energy markets are notoriously sensitive to Gulf instability, and even the perception of risk can send prices sharply upward. A sustained confrontation could therefore transmit inflationary pressures worldwide, affecting economies far removed from the battlefield.
Iranian officials have already adopted increasingly defiant rhetoric, vowing to open what they describe as the “gates of hell” if the campaign continues. This language is not merely theatrical; it reflects a strategic doctrine that emphasises calibrated escalation through both direct and proxy means. Tehran’s regional network of allied armed groups across Lebanon, Iraq, and Syria provides multiple pathways for indirect retaliation. If activated at scale, these actors could convert a primarily bilateral exchange into a complex multi-front confrontation stretching across West Asia. The danger is that once such a dynamic takes hold, escalation control becomes exceedingly difficult for all parties involved.
The nuclear dimension remains at the heart of the crisis. Iran has consistently maintained that its nuclear programme is exclusively peaceful, insisting that enrichment activities are intended for civilian energy and research purposes. The United States and several Western governments, however, have long suspected Tehran of seeking at least a latent weapons capability. These concerns intensified after Trump withdrew Washington from the 2015 nuclear agreement, a move that prompted Iran to accelerate uranium enrichment and accumulate a larger stockpile of near-weapons-grade material. Although the US administration claimed that last June’s strikes had significantly degraded Iran’s nuclear infrastructure — with Trump declaring the programme “obliterated” — subsequent intelligence assessments suggested Tehran retained the technical capacity to rebuild elements of it. The latest strikes appear designed to reinforce that earlier effort.
From a legal standpoint, the operation is already generating sharp debate among international law scholars. Critics argue that the strikes constitute a clear violation of Article 2(4) of the United Nations Charter, which prohibits the use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state. Under Article 51, the right of self-defence is triggered only in response to an armed attack or an imminent and demonstrable threat. In the present case, sceptics contend that neither Washington nor Tel Aviv has publicly demonstrated the existence of an immediate Iranian attack that would meet this threshold. The absence of widely accepted evidence of imminent danger complicates efforts to frame the operation within the Charter’s legal framework. Supporters of the strikes argue for a broader interpretation of anticipatory self-defence in the face of emerging nuclear risks, but that position remains deeply contested in international jurisprudence.
Beyond legality lies the strategic paradox confronting the United States and Israel. Sustained military pressure intended to halt nuclear progress can, under certain conditions, produce the opposite effect. External attack often strengthens hardline factions within targeted states, reinforces nationalist narratives, and weakens internal constituencies that favour diplomatic engagement. Iran’s political system has historically shown resilience under pressure, and there is a credible risk that the current campaign could deepen Tehran’s perceived need for a robust deterrent capability. Military force can damage infrastructure, but it cannot by itself dissolve the underlying political distrust that drives proliferation concerns.
The broader regional consequences could be equally far-reaching. West Asia is already a densely interconnected security environment in which conflicts rarely remain geographically contained. Should the confrontation intensify, shipping routes, energy infrastructure, and forward-deployed military assets across the Gulf could all become potential flashpoints. Insurance premiums for maritime transit would likely rise, investor confidence could weaken, and global markets might experience heightened volatility. What begins as a targeted security operation could therefore cascade into a wider geopolitical and economic disturbance with global reach.
For major energy importers such as India, the risks are particularly acute. Rising crude prices would feed directly into domestic inflation and fiscal pressures, while any threat to the Strait of Hormuz would complicate supply security. New Delhi must therefore monitor the evolving crisis with exceptional care, balancing its strategic partnerships while preserving its long-standing commitment to diplomatic resolution and regional stability. The stakes are not merely geopolitical but deeply economic and humanitarian.
Ultimately, the true measure of the current campaign will not be the scale of infrastructure destroyed or missiles intercepted. It will be whether the principal actors can prevent the confrontation from sliding into a prolonged cycle of retaliation and counter-retaliation. History offers repeated reminders that military force, while sometimes tactically decisive, rarely resolves the political mistrust at the core of nuclear disputes. If diplomacy is further marginalised, the region may enter a period of sustained instability in which deterrence becomes more brittle and miscalculation more likely.
The coming days will therefore be critical. If cooler strategic judgement prevails, there may still be space to revive negotiations and re-anchor the crisis within a diplomatic framework. If not, the Middle East could be moving toward a far more dangerous equilibrium — one shaped less by negotiated restraint and more by recurring demonstrations of force.
(The writer can be reached at dipakkurmiglpltd@gmail.com)
