The Middle East is once again on edge as US and Israeli attacks on Iran’s military infrastructure continue. Iran has responded with missile and drone attacks. Oil markets have soared and global shipping lanes are under pressure.
But this is not unfolding like a typical war in the region.
Even as the strikes continue, tankers are still transiting the Strait of Hormuz under limited conditions. Backchannel communications have not collapsed. Key regional players are not fully committed to escalation or restraint. Instead, they do something much more telling: they adapt.
That is the first signal that this is not just a military confrontation. It is a system under pressure, a system that is being deliberately reformed.
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To understand what is happening now, you have to go back to the system that existed before this moment.
Map from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies showing Iran’s missile range. (The Foundation for the Defense of Democracies)
For almost two decades, the Middle East operated on a managed equilibrium basis. After the Iraq War, through the Arab Spring and in the fight against ISIS, three different power structures emerged that learned to coexist without resolving their conflicts.
Shiite-dominated Iran built what became known as the ‘Axis of Resistance’ and entrenched itself in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen. These were not casual proxy relationships. They were institutional supports: militias integrated into state structures, political actors who controlled territory and budgets. Iran’s incentive was clear: to expand its influence without provoking an immediate, overwhelming response. Stay below the threshold of full-scale war while steadily increasing influence.
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In the Sunni world there was no united front to counter this. Saudi Arabia and the UAE pushed for a centralized, state-led regional order, while Turkey and Qatar supported Islamist political movements that offered a competing model of legitimacy. Their motivation was not coordination, but competition. Each camp used regional conflict to expand influence without committing itself entirely to a single strategic bloc.
Israel, meanwhile, stood apart. By the mid-2010s, the country had unrivaled military capability and operational reach, but remained outside the region’s political framework. Its impetus was to maintain that advantage through deterrence: striking when necessary but avoiding becoming entangled in the region’s unstable alliances.
Iranian women collect money for the war effort outside a bomb shelter in Tehran, during the Iran-Iraq war, May 11, 1988. (Kaveh Kazemi/Getty Images)
The United States has managed this system instead of solving it. The Iran nuclear deal treated Tehran’s nuclear ambitions separately from its regional behavior. Conflicts like Gaza followed a predictable cycle of escalation and ceasefires. Stability was maintained, but only by compartmentalizing the underlying tensions.
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That model made it possible for any actor to operate within the system without fundamentally changing it.
President Donald Trump rejected that model from the start.
His first big break came in May 2018, when he withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal and reimposed sweeping sanctions. This was not just a policy change on nuclear issues. It was a systemic move. By targeting Iran’s oil exports, financial networks, and shipping, the government began to increase the costs of maintaining the regional architecture.
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The incentive for Iran began to change. Expansion was no longer low risk. Each additional node in its network now had economic and operational consequences.
That pressure escalated in April 2019 with the designation of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization, and then in January 2020 with the strike that killed Qassem Soleimani. These actions were widely described at the time as escalation. In reality, they were consistent steps in a broader strategy: eliminating the assumption that Iran could operate in the gray zone indefinitely.
President Donald Trump meets with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman during a coffee ceremony at the Saudi Royal Court on May 13, 2025 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)
At the same time, Trump took steps to reform the other side of the system.
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The 2020 Abraham Accords broke one of the longest-standing barriers to Middle East diplomacy. For decades, the Arab states had made normalization with Israel conditional on a solution to the Palestinian issue. Trump reversed that order. The United Arab Emirates and Bahrain normalized relations first, followed by Morocco and Sudan.
This created a new set of incentives in the Sunni world. Joining Israel was no longer politically off-limits. It became a path to security cooperation, advanced technology and closer ties with the United States. Instead of waiting for a final settlement, states could now act in their immediate strategic interests.
For Israel, this was a structural shift. It no longer operated outside the regional system. It was integrated into it.
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But coordination alone did not resolve the system’s contradictions.
Saudi Arabia remained cautious. Turkey and Qatar continued to pursue their own networks. Iran’s influence persisted through deeply entrenched institutions. The region had new alignments, but these were incomplete.
This is where Trump’s approach evolved from coordination to enforcement.
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During the Gaza war following the October 7, 2023, attacks, the United States helped establish a phased settlement in early 2025 that linked the release of hostages to Israel’s withdrawal and linked humanitarian assistance to monitoring mechanisms. This was not a traditional ceasefire. It introduced conditionality directly into the structure of the agreement.
This logic continued in 2026 with the development of a US-led framework for reconstruction and governance, involving Israel and its regional partners. The principle was clear: participation in the system would now be tied to measurable results.
This changed the stimuli again. Collaboration was no longer symbolic. It became transactional and enforceable.
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And yet, even with these changes, the system did not fully align.
The Iranian networks remained intact. Sunni divisions persisted. Israel continued to expand its own strategic relations beyond the immediate region. The old structures were weakened, but not dismantled.
That is why the current war is important.
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The attacks that began in late February 2026 are not just about degrading Iranian military capabilities. They are about forcing simultaneous adjustments in all three systems.
Iran now faces a different reckoning than at any time in the past two decades. The strategy of gradual expansion has collided with persistent economic pressures and immediate military risks. The incentive shifts from building influence to maintaining it under duress.
Sunni states are being pushed out of their comfort zone of strategic ambiguity. The ability to hedge between competing blocs is becoming smaller and smaller. As pressure mounts, the costs of remaining non-aligned rise, and the incentive to consolidate around a clearer regional framework becomes stronger.
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Israel, in turn, is positioned not only as a military actor, but also as a central node in that emerging framework. Its role is evolving from deterrence to systems participation, linking security, technology and governance among connected states.
What Trump is doing with this war is not just escalating a conflict. He compresses timelines.
Instead of allowing these systems to evolve gradually, he is applying pressure that is forcing decisions now. Each actor is encouraged to make his position known, not in theory, but in practice.
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That is why this war seems inconsistent at first glance. Escalation and negotiations take place at the same time, because the goal is not pure military victory. It is a forced realignment of incentives across the region.
This marks a fundamental break with the model that has determined American policy for decades. The old approach managed instability and accepted unresolved tensions as the price for avoiding larger conflicts. The current approach attempts to resolve these tensions by making the costs of maintaining them too high.
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Whether that works remains uncertain. What is clear is that the Middle East no longer operates under the same rules.
This is not just a war with Iran. It is an attempt to change the way the region functions and who gets to shape it in the future.
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