The Interests Behind the Iran-USA War

Those who have studied war, such as Gaston Bouthoul or Marvin Harris, never confined their analysis to the immediate geopolitical dimension alone. They did not merely ask "why did it break out?" but also "what does it do?" and "whom does it serve?" For societies, when they prove unable to resolve their internal contradictions, tend to export them outward, and war is transformed into a means of reorganising the interior through violence directed toward the exterior.

This approach allows for a reading of contemporary wars that escapes their reduction to the military or directly geopolitical sphere. The conflict blazing today across the Iranian-American-Israeli triangle cannot be understood simply as a struggle for influence or mutual deterrence; it must rather be grasped as a complex process serving multiple functions, aimed at consolidating embattled domestic legitimacies, redrawing regional balances, and producing mobilisation narratives that simultaneously redefine the enemy and the self.

For Bouthoul, war gave birth to history, which begins with the chronicle of armed battles; it constitutes the boundary marking all great transformations. It embodies one of the forms of accelerated transition.

In Cows, Pigs, Wars, and Witches, Marvin Harris endeavours to explain cultural, religious and military phenomena from a material, economic and ecological angle. His approach helps measure the importance of resources as a factor of conflict and demonstrates that economics and geopolitical role constitute the background of apparent confrontations. It also illuminates why certain communities remain in a state of prolonged war despite accumulated losses, because war fulfils social functions embedded in the heart of the material structure. Harris further connects the infrastructure, understood as the economy, the environment and technology, to the superstructure formed by religion, symbols and beliefs.

His analytical framework, however, struggles to account for the role of religious and political ideology, whether Shia, Sunni, Zionist or nationalist, or for the place of emotions, hatred and historical memory, whose determining power the Iranian aggression against the Gulf states so forcefully demonstrated. It also leaves aside the real-time interactions between heads of state that punctuate current events.

The ongoing war must therefore be considered a conflict with plural objectives. Strategic resources play a decisive role in American engagement, through the consolidation of influence in the Gulf, the control of energy corridors and maritime passages, and the assertion of technological superiority; the tactics of maintaining hegemony can be read in the difficult balancing act Washington performs between its own sphere of influence and the rising threats that challenge it. The internal social structures of states also play their part, as political and industrial elites exploit instability in pursuit of their own interests, while economic and military apparatuses draw substantial benefit from the perpetuation of tensions. The conflict further serves to preserve the internal cohesion of certain regimes, particularly Netanyahu's, and the "external threat" is converted into an instrument of social control, as is manifestly the case in Iran.

It is here that the symbolic, psychological and directly political factor comes into play. Symbols, memory and identities exercise a central function in the Middle East especially. The current war also obeys ideological, religious and nationalist impulses that cultural materialism alone cannot exhaust; it encompasses struggles for identities, for religious and historical narratives, for existential security and for domestic legitimacy.

Unpacking the conflict between the three states reveals the material interests concealed behind the ideological discourse, and invites the question of who benefits structurally from the continuation of the war. In terms of geography and resources, Iran presents itself as a regional power endowed with considerable territorial depth and vast energy reserves, while Israel, geographically small, bases its survival on technological and military superiority as well as on American support. The strategic theatre of the confrontation encompasses the Gulf, the energy corridors and regional waters. The balance of forces between the two sides reveals that Israel perpetuates an undeclared nuclear superiority, against an Iranian nuclear programme seeking to establish strategic deterrence, while a parallel race in missiles, drones and cyberwarfare further intensifies the tension.

On the American side, the conflict touches on the very architecture of the world economy. The sanctions imposed on Iran generate an internal resistance economy, while the Israeli and American defence industries benefit fully from the climate of threat prevailing in the region, and the persistent tensions provide justification for military and security alliances on a global scale. The conflict thus overflows the bounds of simple doctrinal antagonism to encompass a struggle for hegemony, deterrence and the distribution of power in an environment exceptionally rich in strategic resources.

The question that then arises is how the conflict serves the internal structure of each actor. In Iran, the "Israeli-American threat" has long reinforced the narrative of siege, justified the tightening of the security grip and consolidated the position of the Revolutionary Guards as a cardinal institution of the state. In Israel, the Iranian threat has reinforced the centrality of security in political life, strengthened the currents that perceive the danger as existential, and produced an unprecedented degree of social cohesion, despite the deep fractures that run through the society. For the United States, it has made it possible to maintain regional balance, consolidate alliances and manage influence in the face of rising powers. In this sense, the conflict fulfils an internal social function, generating cohesion through shared fear.

At the level of the symbolic superstructure, encompassing language, religion and identity, one enters the orbit of the grand formulas: the erasure of Israel, the defence of existence, support for the axis of resistance and the nuclear threat. These formulas do not belong to the realm of mere discourse; they function as instruments of mobilisation. To this must be added the metaphysical dimension embedded in Iranian discourse, and the historical trauma that, in Israeli consciousness, resurfaced with redoubled intensity after the war of 7 October, summoning the collective memory and the existential anguish this trauma carries within it.

Is the conflict between Iran and Israel structurally resolvable? Or has it become part of a functional equilibrium that serves the survival of the regimes themselves? Does Netanyahu not have an urgent need for the wars to perpetuate themselves to his benefit? Does Trump not need the strategic balance to prevent China from allying itself with Iran, from extending its influence and from consolidating the Belt and Road? Does Iran not need to maintain the regime against a people in rebellion?

And yet, the functional equilibrium we have just described seems now to be slipping beyond all control. The regimes that believe themselves masters of escalation remain exposed to any unforeseen event, whether an assassination, a miscalculation or a decisive strike, and here we are, plunged into a war whose cost weighs on all actors, while the very survival of the Iranian regime is now at stake.