Iranian Wars: Who Will Pay the Price?

The confrontation now shaking the Middle East is no longer simply another chapter in the conflict between Iran and its adversaries, nor can it be reduced to a struggle between Tehran, the United States, and Israel. Recent developments point to a reality that extends far beyond the war itself. They raise a more fundamental question: what regional order will emerge from this confrontation, what place Iran will occupy within it, and what future awaits the network of armed groups through which Tehran has built a substantial share of its influence across the Arab world.

For many years, Iran’s strategy rested on a relatively straightforward equation: safeguarding its own territory while extending its influence and deterrent capability beyond its borders through a network of allies and armed groups stretching from Iraq to Yemen, via Lebanon. This model provided Tehran with what it regarded as a “strategic depth,” enabling it to exert pressure on its adversaries from multiple theatres without necessarily turning Iranian territory itself into the primary battlefield.

Yet the current war is exposing the limits of that equation and may well mark the beginning of its reversal against those who devised it.

The issue is no longer confined to the actions of Iran’s allies. Iran’s neighbouring states have themselves become an integral part of the theatre of operations, while several Arab countries have come under direct attack from Iranian missiles and drones. On February 28, Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain announced that they had intercepted Iranian missiles, while Jordan also intercepted missiles after they entered its airspace. In the weeks that followed, the attacks and their repercussions spread to other Gulf states. On March 11, the Security Council adopted Resolution 2817, condemning Iranian attacks against countries in the region and demanding that Tehran bring them to an end.

Here lies the first paradox that deserves careful consideration: how can Iran demand respect for its own sovereignty while treating that of its neighbours as something that may be disregarded whenever its military calculations require it?

There is no doubt that Iran itself has been subjected to significant military attacks and has justified its response on the grounds of self-defence. That reality cannot be ignored in any objective analysis of the conflict. Yet a state’s right to defend itself does not automatically grant it the right to turn other countries into geographical extensions of the battlefield, particularly when those countries are seeking to remain outside the conflict or to contain its escalation.

From Exporting Influence to Exporting the Cost of War

One of the defining features of Iran’s regional policy is that, over the past decades, it has not merely expanded its political influence. It has also tied part of its national security to the construction of military capabilities beyond its own borders.

From Tehran’s perspective, the logic was straightforward: confront adversaries far from Iranian territory in order to gain greater strategic flexibility and stronger deterrence. Yet this strategy has another face: transferring the costs of Iran’s conflicts onto other states and other societies.

That is what gives the current developments their broader significance.

The Gulf states, for example, are no longer what they were twenty years ago. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman, and Bahrain are now investing in economic models increasingly built on stability, foreign investment, aviation, tourism, technology, logistics, and deeper integration into global markets.

For these countries, security is no longer confined to protecting national borders. It has become one of the foundations of their economic model and of their ability to pursue their long-term development projects.

Consequently, when their airports, critical infrastructure, airspace, or maritime routes become part of a confrontation between Iran and a third party, the issue extends well beyond an isolated military incident. It directly challenges the very concept of sovereignty that is supposed to govern relations among the states of the region.

More importantly still, this policy is not expressed solely through the Iranian state itself.

This is where the second dimension of the problem begins: Iran’s armed proxies and allies.

The Houthis: When an Armed Group Decides Relations Between Two States

Recent developments in Yemen provide perhaps the clearest illustration of the dilemma now confronting the region.

The Houthis have announced what they describe as a “naval blockade” of Saudi Arabia and have threatened vessels linked to Saudi ports, thereby taking the confrontation far beyond the confines of Yemen’s internal conflict. These threats have already prompted tankers carrying Saudi oil to alter their routes, demonstrating that their consequences extend well beyond political rhetoric to affect trade, energy markets, and international shipping.

The question should not simply be: why are the Houthis acting this way?

The more important question is another one altogether: who has granted an armed group operating in Yemen the authority to take decisions capable of shaping relations between that country and a neighbouring state as significant as Saudi Arabia, while simultaneously exposing Yemen itself to potentially severe military and economic consequences?

This is not merely a Yemeni issue.

It lies at the heart of the crisis created in several Arab countries by the model of armed groups operating alongside the state.

The problem is no longer simply that Iran possesses armed allies across the region. Some of those allies are now capable of redefining their own country’s relations with its neighbours outside the framework of state institutions.

That is a fundamental distinction.

A political party is free to adopt whatever regional position it chooses, to support Iran or oppose it, and to express its views regarding the United States, Israel, or Saudi Arabia. That is the normal course of politics.

But when a party or organisation possesses an independent military capability enabling it to transform its political position into a war that draws an entire state into the conflict, an altogether different reality emerges.

From Yemen to Lebanon and Iraq

What Yemen is revealing today is not without echoes of Lebanon’s own experience, even though the circumstances and contexts are different.

Over recent years, the Lebanese have experienced what it means for the decision to go to war to slip beyond the authority of state institutions and become subject to calculations that lie outside their control, turning a country already burdened by a profound economic and political crisis into one of the theatres of a much wider regional confrontation.

The debate, therefore, is not simply about the Lebanese position towards Israel, nor about the legitimacy of resisting occupation during particular periods of history. It raises a far more precise question: who today holds the authority to take Lebanon to war?

The State, or an organisation operating within the State?

Iraq faces a similar dilemma, although in a different form. Baghdad seeks to preserve its relations with Iran on the one hand, and with the Arab world, the United States, and the wider international community on the other, even as the actions of certain armed factions can leave the Iraqi state dealing with the consequences of decisions that its own government never made.

The current confrontation has also shown that the calculations of some Iraqi armed factions do not necessarily coincide, in every instance, with those of Tehran. According to several reports, groups with which Iran has cultivated close ties over many years have expressed reservations about becoming involved in a large-scale war in which Iraq itself would be the first to bear the cost.

That is a development worthy of close attention.

For the question now beginning to emerge within these circles may no longer be: are we with Iran or against it?

It may instead be this:

Does Iran’s interest in this war necessarily coincide with the interests of Iraq, Lebanon, or Yemen?

Armed Groups: From “Strategic Depth” to Strategic Burden

This may well be where the greatest paradox of Iran’s strategy lies.

For decades, Tehran invested in building a network of relationships with armed groups across the region, regarding that network as an essential component of its deterrent capability and national security.

Yet what was long viewed as a source of strategic depth may, in today’s regional environment, become a strategic burden.

Each time an armed group uses the territory of an Arab state to threaten another state, pressure increases not only on that group, but also on the country from which it operates.

And as missiles, drones, and maritime routes increasingly become instruments employed by actors operating outside official state institutions, it becomes ever more difficult to regard the weapons held by such groups as merely an internal matter for the state in which they are based.

Iran and its allies could be making a major strategic mistake if they assume that the Middle East emerging from the current war will continue to accept the same rules that prevailed before it.

The Region Is Changing, and So Are the Rules of the Game

A deeper transformation is now underway across the Middle East.

Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states are redefining their priorities. Other Arab countries are striving to rebuild their institutions after years of war and internal division. There is a growing recognition that economic stability, regional security, and national sovereignty are no longer separate issues, but closely intertwined interests.

In such an environment, it is difficult to imagine a stable regional order that would indefinitely tolerate the existence of armed organisations capable of independently taking military decisions against other states.

No state can demand that its neighbours respect its sovereignty if it does not itself hold a monopoly over the use of force and the decision to wage war within its own borders.

Nor can an armed organisation claim to be part of the political system when it suits its interests, only to behave as an independent state whenever questions of war and peace arise.

Such an arrangement may remain viable as long as the costs of confrontation are limited.

But it becomes far more fragile when a single drone or missile is capable of striking critical infrastructure, paralysing an airport, threatening a maritime route, or dragging two states into a broader confrontation.

That is why what is unfolding today may amount to far more than a simple rebalancing of power between Iran and its adversaries.

It may ultimately redefine what will henceforth be regarded as acceptable or unacceptable within the regional security system itself.

Iran’s Greatest Miscalculation

Tehran’s greatest strategic miscalculation today may be the belief that broadening the scope of confrontation will invariably strengthen its deterrent capability.

That may be true from a purely military perspective, at least for a time.

But a strategy is not measured solely by the number of fronts an actor is capable of opening. It must also be judged by the political and security order those fronts will leave behind once the war has ended.

If Iran’s actions and the threats issued by the forces aligned with it lead Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states, Jordan, and other countries to deepen their defence cooperation, increase international pressure on armed groups operating outside state authority, and reinforce domestic demands in Lebanon, Iraq, and Yemen for the monopoly of legitimate state institutions over decisions of war and peace, then Iran may ultimately discover that the very war through which it sought to demonstrate the reach of its influence has instead contributed to undermining the environment that made that influence possible.

This possibility should not be underestimated.

For Iran’s regional power has never rested solely on its missiles, its nuclear programme, or its conventional military capabilities. A crucial part of that power has depended on Tehran’s ability to operate within the grey zones of the Arab state: a state that exists without possessing a monopoly over force; a government that governs without exercising exclusive authority over military decision-making; internationally recognised borders that nevertheless fail to prevent the movement of weapons and the expansion of conflict.

Should those grey zones begin to disappear, one of the principal foundations of Iran’s regional influence would face a profound challenge.

Iran’s Wars and Those of Its Proxies: Who Will Pay the Price?

The outcome of the current confrontation remains open to multiple scenarios. It is still impossible to determine with certainty what form the regional order that emerges from it will ultimately take.

One reality, however, is already becoming unmistakably clear: a region subjected to such a degree of threat and instability will not simply return to the situation that existed before the war.

States will reassess their alliances, their defence arrangements, their borders, and their relations with Iran. They will also rethink how they view armed groups capable of threatening them from the territory of other states.

Iran’s allies themselves may then be compelled to confront a question even more important than that of victory or defeat in the present conflict:

What will remain of them, and of their states, once the war is over?

The Houthis may threaten Saudi Arabia, but Yemen will be the first to bear the consequences of another war.

Iraqi armed factions may choose to engage in a wider regional confrontation, but it is Iraq that will bear its economic, security, and political costs.

In Lebanon, an armed organisation may regard itself as part of a broader regional equation. Yet when the fighting ends, it will be the Lebanese people who are left to rebuild their economy, their state, and their institutions.

As for Iran, it may broaden the theatres of confrontation and demonstrate its ability to strike its adversaries beyond its borders. But in doing so, it also risks transforming the fear generated by its influence into the very foundation of a new regional order designed precisely to contain it.

Herein lies the central paradox.

What Iran spent decades constructing as a source of strategic depth could, through the excessive use of that very instrument, become the principal reason why the region seeks to establish a new security architecture aimed at preventing any state or armed group from acquiring the power to determine the destiny of other states.

The real question, therefore, is no longer whether Iran and its proxies are capable of opening new fronts. They have already demonstrated that they are.

The more difficult question is whether they fully appreciate that each new front may accelerate the emergence of a Middle East no longer willing to accept the rules that allowed those proxies to emerge and endure.

Iran’s wars may originate in Tehran’s strategic calculations. Yet it is often the states and peoples transformed into battlefields that will pay the highest price. And in the Middle East now taking shape, the state’s monopoly over the decision of war and peace may no longer be merely a matter of domestic sovereignty, but one of the fundamental conditions of any viable regional order.