Since the United States and Israel launched airstrikes on Feb. 28, the conflict has spread along the Axis of Resistance deep into the Gulf, generating a four-front war of compounding complexity. Each actor — Israel, the Gulf Arab states, the United States, and Iran — is actively pursuing a distinct strategic objective. None has yet achieved it, and the interaction between their competing calculations is what continues to drive the war's relentless escalation.
Israel: Winning By Exhaustion
Israel is the clearest driver of this conflict, and its war aims have not wavered despite mounting global costs. The initial objective was explicit regime change, seeking to collapse the Islamic Republic from the top by eliminating senior leadership, including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and National Security Council Secretary Ali Larijani.
That outcome has not materialized; instead of triggering the mass uprising Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu predicted, the assassinations handed the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps unprecedented political dominance. Israel has responded not by scaling back, but by shifting to a strategy of shaping the postwar regional environment through systematic destruction.
Airstrikes have dramatically expanded beyond military targets to include banks, schools, hospitals, energy infrastructure, and the South Pars gas field. This deliberate logic seeks to maximize Iran's postwar reconstruction burden, starve the Axis of Resistance of funding, and accelerate domestic instability.
By forcing Iranian retaliation against Gulf energy infrastructure, Israel is deliberately poisoning any developing rapprochement between Iran and the Gulf Arab states. If the Gulf states conclude that Iran is an irreconcilable threat, they may eventually align with Israel, providing a regional security architecture that eliminates the need for Israel to fight alone.
Saudi Arabia's Strategic Opportunism
The Gulf Cooperation Council states are the war's most direct collateral victims, with the partial closure of the Strait of Hormuz disrupting vital energy exports. Missile strikes have damaged commercial infrastructure and derailed the economic diversification programs built by Riyadh, Abu Dhabi, and Doha.
Despite these massive conventional costs, the Gulf states are not leading the push for a ceasefire, and the reason centers entirely on Saudi Arabia. As the dominant power within the GCC, Saudi Arabia effectively dictates strategic questions for smaller members like Kuwait, Oman, and Bahrain.
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman views Iran not as a distant ideological rival, but as a concrete and proximate security threat more immediate than Israel. Riyadh privately lobbied Washington to strike Iran before the war began and has since absorbed Iranian retaliatory strikes without moving toward mediation.
From Riyadh's perspective, the United States and Israel are actively doing the work of degrading Iranian power that Saudi Arabia cannot do alone. Furthermore, watching Iranian missiles damage Qatar's energy assets and the UAE's commercial standing is not entirely unwelcome from Riyadh's vantage point.
The result is deep structural paralysis within the GCC. The states most harmed by the conflict lack the strategic weight to override Saudi preferences, while Saudi Arabia has its own calculated reasons to let the destructive war run its course.
The United States: Cycling Between Endgames
Washington entered this war expecting a short campaign, calculating that a rapid strike against Iran's infrastructure would demonstrate resolve and allow the administration to declare victory. The military tool of choice was airpower, precisely because it offered a lower-cost exit if the operation stalled.
The operation stalled immediately as Iran honored its threat to retaliate, striking U.S. assets across the Gulf and partially closing the Strait of Hormuz. The administration's messaging subsequently collapsed into incoherence, with Donald Trump cycling through shifting justifications and contradictory timelines.
Despite the political confusion, U.S. force commitments have grown steadily, with reported planning for ground operations to seize Kharg Island or extract enriched uranium stockpiles. However, a recent poll found that 65% of Americans believe Trump is preparing a large-scale ground invasion, while 59% oppose the war outright.
Washington appears to be cycling opportunistically between three theoretical endgames rather than pursuing any one coherently. The first is the Iranian regime's collapse, which remains highly unlikely in the near term, given the IRGC's domestic consolidation of power.
The second is a negotiated framework exchanging sanctions relief for broader constraints on Iran's missile program. However, Trump's withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear agreement has permanently damaged U.S. credibility, and Iran has no domestic political space for major concessions while under active bombardment.
The third outcome is a prolonged stalemate where military intensity slowly declines, the strait reopens under an informal arrangement, and Iran's strategic programs remain unresolved. Washington's inability to settle on a strategic direction guarantees that U.S. decision-making will remain dangerously reactive.
Iran: Survival As Strategy
Iran entered this war at a structural disadvantage but has managed to avoid total collapse through a mosaic defense doctrine of dispersed assets and proxy networks. The partial closure of the Strait of Hormuz has successfully imposed real economic and political costs on Washington.
The IRGC has also successfully installed Mojtaba Khamenei as successor, maintaining vital institutional continuity under extreme pressure. However, the underlying logic of Iran's regional strategy has been exposed as self-defeating, as its buffer zone of proxy forces ultimately became the direct justification for the current war.
Facing an existential threat with extremely limited diplomatic options, Iran has defaulted to aggressive escalation as deterrence. By striking Gulf energy infrastructure, Tehran is signaling that it cannot be defeated without imposing utterly unacceptable costs on the global economy.
Tehran is also preserving a crucial measure of ambiguity in the strait, keeping it partially open to allow some vessels an informal safe passage. This deliberate tactic keeps the possibility of de-escalation open while maintaining enough pressure to sustain its deterrent posture.
Ultimately, Iran is playing a probability game, behaving as though escalation holds no fear in order to prevent a truly catastrophic outcome. Until one of the four competing calculations breaks through military defeat or political collapse, the war will continue to reshape the Middle East's strategic geography.
*The author is a lead international affairs commentator for Hong Kong 01, where this article was originally published. It is reprinted with permission. （Related： Trump Faces Political Crisis As Iran War And High Gas Prices Sink Approval Ratings ｜ Latest ）
