In January 2026, the Pentagon initiated a force buildup in the Persian Gulf, preparing a configuration that restores Washington’s options for direct operations against Iran’s infrastructure of coercion.
A key signal was preparatory planning to redirect the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln toward the Middle East, alongside the deployment of additional air capabilities within the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) area of responsibility.
These steps were taken in response to the regime’s further escalation of violent suppression of protests and to reduce security risks for U.S. partners in the region.
Washington is using the current crisis to identify an effective strategy for Iran’s transformation—one that would dismantle the regime’s repressive core while simultaneously shaping an environment that compels more pragmatic elements within the system to evolve toward a more negotiable and manageable configuration of power.
The current wave of protests in Iran differs from previous episodes in two key respects. For the first time, Tehran has deployed its proxy formations to suppress domestic unrest, including Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), which Iran had incubated outside its own territory.
Through financing and support from Tehran, the PMF’s official manpower under Iraq’s 2023 budget framework increased to 238,000 personnel, while state funding exceeded $2.6 billion annually.
The PMF crossed into Iran as an organized formation and operated as a punitive instrument of the regime. Their deployment raised the threshold of brutality and became a direct driver of the sharp increase in casualties.
A significant share of fatalities also resulted from targeted eliminations of local activists and protest leaders, with individuals neutralized based on their classification as unreliable or potentially dangerous elements.
This repressive logic extends to the preemptive decapitation of protest infrastructure through kill lists compiled via digital surveillance, network analysis, and communications interception.
This model of protest suppression directly relies on external technological support from Iran’s partners, increasing both the precision and scalability of repression and transforming Iran’s internal crisis into an instrument for stabilizing the autocratic axis.
For Beijing, preserving Iran’s governability is a critical condition for maintaining the functional integrity of the autocratic axis following the weakening of its anchor regimes in Syria and Venezuela.
The collapse of the Tehran regime would trigger cascading destabilization across the entire proxy architecture, disrupt mechanisms for exporting coercion, and deprive autocracies of a critical tool for keeping the United States permanently engaged in the Middle Eastern theater.
Within this logic, Chinese and Russian tools do more than enhance digital control; they convert network identification into physical elimination of individuals and the deliberate decapitation of protest infrastructure—constituting a qualitative escalation of the threat to democratic states.
The U.S. strategy toward Iran envisions regime transformation through dismantling repressive infrastructure, and the current crisis serves as a testing phase for instruments capable of delivering controlled effects without reliance on a personalist scenario—specifically, without elevating symbolic figures such as Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, the son of Iran’s last Shah.
Washington’s objective is the dismantling of the repressive core, primarily the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) security complex and its associated proxy infrastructure, which enables the regime to scale repression domestically while projecting coercive power regionally.
Abandoning a bet on the Pahlavi option also reduces the risk of restoring a pro-Persian nationalist trajectory in Iran, making the U.S. approach to regime reconfiguration more compatible with the interests of Turkey and segments of Washington’s Arab partners that are not interested in the return of Iran’s revisionist identity.
Washington is constructing a coercive environment in which Iran’s internal power institutions are forced to evolve toward a more manageable configuration, while negotiable elements within the regime gain space for liberalization only after the monopoly of the security apparatus over control, budgets, and coercive channels is broken.
In this model, liberalization is the consequence of a reconfigured internal balance of power and the simultaneous trimming of external leverage, rather than a bet on a leader who lacks control over the instruments of violence.
The current protest wave was triggered by an internal economic shock in Iran, driven by the devaluation of the rial and an inflation spike that destroyed price predictability, eroded purchasing power, and paralyzed small business activity.
The banking crisis—particularly the case of Ayandeh Bank—reinforced perceptions that the collapse stemmed from a system in which losses are socialized while regime-connected groups retain privileged access to resources.
The sanctions economy further exacerbated this gap by concentrating access to foreign currency, external trade, and sanctions-evasion logistics within the IRGC’s control. This increased costs for the private sector and generated a perception that the state had monopolized survival channels under sanctions.
Socioeconomic grievances rapidly transformed into political demands, scaling protests from localized demonstrations into a nationwide wave.
The regime responded with scalable violence and demonstrative terror. As of January 19, 2026, Iranian authorities acknowledged at least 5,000 confirmed deaths, while Western human rights organizations estimate the toll at more than 15,000.
Protest suppression combined kinetic force with the neutralization of communications channels, the creation of an information vacuum, and network-based activity tracking, increasing repression efficiency while reducing sensitivity to traditional forms of international pressure.
This effectiveness is systemic and rests on a Chinese technological backbone that has, over years, expanded the Islamic Republic’s internal security toolkit—from control of telecommunications backbones to mass surveillance infrastructure.
Beijing provided Tehran with access to categories of equipment critical for intercepting and classifying digital communications, including lawful intercept and deep packet inspection solutions.
These tools allow the regime to identify communication nodes, disrupt protest coordination, build relational databases, and conduct targeted repression even under conditions of partial global internet shutdowns.
In parallel, Iran’s security apparatus expanded video surveillance and behavioral analytics through an ecosystem of Chinese manufacturers and local distributors, particularly within supply chains linked to IRGC-affiliated structures—turning “digital clearance” into a scalable method for neutralizing protest infrastructure and effective societal mobilization.
Within this framework, the U.S. force buildup in the Persian Gulf represents preparation for a kinetic phase, as without direct action the situation would degrade to a level unacceptable for the United States and Israel.
In June 2025, Israeli and U.S. strikes against Iranian military and nuclear infrastructure degraded parts of Tehran’s capabilities, but the proxy architecture was weakened unevenly.
Hamas and Hezbollah lost portions of their resources and operational flexibility; however, the Iraqi node centered on the Popular Mobilization Forces not only survived but strengthened—preserving the core of scalable escalation and pushing toward a renewed, more decisive kinetic phase aimed specifically at dismantling this node.
During the first half of the 2020s, Iran transformed Iraq’s PMF into an autonomous security pillar within the Iraqi state—capable of sustaining Iranian influence in Baghdad, supporting the Shiite proxy axis, and serving as a reserve force for crises where Iran’s internal instruments prove insufficient.
Beyond direct financial support from Tehran, the PMF institutionalized their own economic base by controlling access to state contracts, influencing procurement logistics, and establishing external supply channels, including import flows from China.
This has turned the Iraqi segment into a resilient coercive asset of the axis that is difficult to neutralize through sanctions alone.
In the context of Iran’s protests, this translates into a higher threshold of permissible violence and reinforcement of the repressive machine through exported personnel and practices of total control.
It is precisely the Iraqi segment that transforms protest suppression from internal repression into an exported matrix of violence that scales through Iran’s “axis of resistance” and heightens regional security risks.
The U.S. strategy for transforming Iran includes active use of ethnic minorities as instruments of internal pressure through organized communities that are less susceptible to repression and possess independent coordination channels.
Within this framework, mobilizing peripheral communities in border regions increases the cost of suppression for the regime by forcing the security apparatus to operate simultaneously across multiple geographic and social vectors, dispersing its resources.
One priority direction for implementing this strategy is western Iran, leveraging influence over the Kurdish minority through the presence of U.S. forces in Iraq and ties with Iraqi Kurdistan, which functions as a rear area for the U.S. regional architecture. Washington thus maintains a stable platform for operating along Iran’s border regions.
At the same time, the Kurdish track is not automatically controllable and requires constant political management, as it depends both on U.S. decisions and shifts in the Syrian operational environment. In January 2026, Kurdish positions in Syria weakened, increasing Kurdish sensitivity to signals regarding potential U.S.–Turkish compromises.
For this reason, Washington is diversifying its reliance on organized communities and is not making the Kurds the sole instrument of internal pressure, instead employing parallel coordination channels, including the Azerbaijani track.
With a developed deterrence architecture around the Gulf and a continued military presence in Iraq, the United States faces the task of intensifying pressure on the ayatollahs’ regime along Iran’s northern, northwestern, and southeastern borders.
On the one hand, Washington is testing transformational pressure through organized communities less vulnerable to repression and equipped with external coordination channels.
The Azerbaijani segment in Iran’s northwestern provinces represents one such vector, where ethnic identity intersects with socioeconomic discontent to produce an autonomous agenda capable of complicating the regime’s repressive operations.
In this configuration, Baku serves as an infrastructural channel of external influence through which the United States can maintain communication and organizational links with Azerbaijani communities in Iran’s northwest—and more broadly with ethnically heterogeneous regions of the country, where Persians account for only about 61 percent of the population.
Two other regional power centers bordering Iran that Washington seeks to engage in weakening the ayatollahs’ regime are Turkey and Pakistan.
Under Donald Trump’s second term, the development of White House–Ankara relations aims, among other things, to enlist Turkish resources in countering Iran, giving Washington leverage to manage the balance between these two regional powers.
Deepening Ankara–Tehran confrontation, on the one hand, constrains Turkey’s ability to significantly expand its influence in countries where the United States and other regional dynamics competing with autocracies have pronounced geopolitical interests.
On the other hand, drawing Ankara into containment of the ayatollahs’ regime creates more comprehensive pressure on Tehran, including destabilization of Iran’s least loyal northwestern provinces.
The U.S. administration is increasing Turkey’s role in pressuring Iran by exploiting the long-standing Turkish-Iranian rivalry over influence in Iraq.
Ankara views Iran’s influence mechanisms in Baghdad—centralized around the PMF—as a direct obstacle to advancing Turkish security and political interests in Iraq.
Sharing more than 300 kilometers of border with Iraq—an area persistently destabilized by Kurdish armed groups—Turkey views Iraq as a space whose stability directly affects the security of its southeastern regions.
Turkey’s practical efforts to extend influence over Baghdad include regular cross-border military operations and the maintenance of a permanent armed presence in northern Iraq.
Between 2018 and 2024, Ankara increased the number of its permanent military bases in Iraqi Kurdistan from 15 to at least 136 and constructed approximately 660 kilometers of military roads connecting Turkish force deployment points.
These measures have been implemented in parallel with the creation of a militarized buffer zone along the Turkish-Iraqi border, extending in some areas up to 40 kilometers into Iraqi territory.
Taking into account Turkish interests in Iraq and seeking to preserve constructive relations with Ankara, Baghdad has pursued a flexible balancing policy between the Erdoğan government and the ayatollahs’ regime. Tehran’s control over segments of Iraq’s political and security institutions constrains Turkey’s ability to influence Baghdad.
U.S. Middle East strategy accounts for this reality and Ankara’s desire to reduce the role of Shiite forces in Iraq; consequently, Washington aims to convert the protracted Ankara–Tehran rivalry over Iraq into systemic Turkish pressure on the ayatollahs’ regime.
The strengthening of the Iraqi militarized segment of the Shiite proxy architecture has turned Iran’s southern perimeter into a key vector of U.S. containment.
Washington relies on partner infrastructure and forces in the Gulf states while simultaneously building a networked configuration that incorporates the interests of Turkey, Arab monarchies, and South Asia.
Ankara, Riyadh, and Islamabad are not interested in an uncontrolled collapse of Iran. Their priority is to weaken Tehran’s capacity to export coercion while preserving basic regime governability to avoid regional chaos.
For the Gulf monarchies, the Strait of Hormuz remains the critical vulnerability as a hub for oil and LNG exports and a central element of their fiscal stability.
Any prolonged kinetic phase against Iran’s coercive infrastructure increases incentives for Tehran to pursue asymmetric actions in the strait—from attacks on shipping to mining operations and proxy pressure along the littoral.
Even limited disruption of traffic translates immediately into spikes in insurance premiums and freight rates, as well as price volatility—undermining budget calculations in Riyadh, Abu Dhabi, and Doha and generating domestic political risk.
Accordingly, their coordination with Washington centers on preserving the strike option while maintaining dense military control over the Hormuz corridor through maritime patrols, mine countermeasures, and an integrated air and missile defense architecture at U.S. and partner bases.
Arab capitals expect the redirected carrier strike group to prioritize patrolling the strait, deterring mine and missile escalation risks, and underwriting commercial shipping.
Within this logic, a key task is establishing a mechanism that synchronizes regional power centers and reduces mutual competition while increasing pressure on Tehran’s most resilient proxies.
This is why Pakistan is gradually transitioning from a peripheral partner to a central anchor through which Washington can convert fragmented regional interests into a coordinated containment policy.
Integrating Turkey into regional Iran-containment formats consolidated around Pakistan is becoming a key instrument of Ankara’s engagement.
In January 2026, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan announced that Ankara was negotiating with Pakistan and Saudi Arabia on joining a defense alliance formed between the two countries in September 2025.
Turkey’s potential participation in the Saudi-Pakistani security pact—which defines an attack on any signatory as aggression against all—demonstrated that Islamabad has become the principal U.S. regional anchor through which Washington can coordinate Turkish and Arab approaches to containing Iran.
In a broader context, stabilizing relations between Turkish and Arab political dynamics through Pakistani mediation is becoming part of a reassessment of U.S. regional strategy ahead of intensified U.S.–China confrontation.
Concrete evidence of Pakistan’s growing role in U.S. strategic calculations includes joint U.S.–Pakistani military activities aimed at building interoperability and standardizing staff-level interaction.
On January 16, 2026, U.S. and Pakistani forces concluded joint exercises titled Inspired Gambit–2026, which began on January 8, 2026.
These exercises marked the thirteenth iteration of the Inspired Gambit program, designed to expand military cooperation through counterterrorism experience-sharing and the development of operational interoperability between U.S. and Pakistani forces.
Defense cooperation between Washington and Islamabad extended the broader recalibration of bilateral relations that accelerated following the ceasefire in the Indo-Pakistani armed confrontation in spring 2025.
Following escalation with Iran, Washington faced the necessity of reducing additional force and resource commitments to the Middle East and reallocating them toward the Indo-Pacific and the Western Hemisphere, while transferring portions of the effort to counter the Shiite “axis of resistance” to regional political dynamics opposed to the autocratic bloc.
Renewed military-political engagement with the government of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif enabled Islamabad to strengthen its regional role and emerge as a coordinator of defense linkages between Gulf monarchies and Turkey, under U.S. strategic sponsorship.
Achieving this objective requires building a network of interconnected partnerships in which regional power centers align their security actions with one another under U.S. strategic guidance—reducing the risks of mutual competition among key Middle Eastern political dynamics.
By diversifying defense partnerships in West Asia, the United States is transforming the security model it had offered Gulf states over previous years—a model that entered crisis following the Israeli airstrike on Qatar in fall 2025.
Because the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) strike and the limited response of the U.S. administration prompted a reassessment of U.S. ally status and the prospects for continued defense cooperation with Washington, the White House initiated a revision of the Middle Eastern security configuration. This revision entails a gradual departure from a centralized model of regional threat deterrence.
Whereas the previous defense framework in West Asia preserved the United States’ central role in countering the Shiite “axis of resistance,” the new configuration seeks to redistribute responsibilities and functions between Washington and its Middle Eastern partners.
Under the updated security model, the United States retains the role of coordination hub and enabling partner—providing allies with intelligence, air power, air and missile defense, high-technology systems, and other critical defense capabilities—while responsibility for specific deterrence actions against autocratic actors is delegated to regional power centers.
The intensification of military-political and defense-industrial contacts between Ankara and Riyadh in late 2025 and early 2026 demonstrated that the logic adopted by the United States and the format of its implementation are effective.
Despite the new phase of Saudi–Turkish coordination that gained momentum in 2025–2026, Ankara and Riyadh remain situational partners.
According to U.S. calculations, Pakistan’s defense advantages serve as the key instrument for achieving a level of interaction between Turkey and Saudi Arabia that enhances both actors’ ability to counter Iran while simultaneously strengthening indirect U.S. influence in West Asia.
On the one hand, Pakistan possesses the largest army in the Islamic world, with 654,000 active-duty personnel and approximately 550,000 reservists.
Islamabad’s defense resource is further reinforced by the fact that Pakistan remains the only Muslim-majority country with a nuclear arsenal, estimated at roughly 170 nuclear warheads.
This military potential enables Islamabad to offer Turkey security guarantees that are otherwise unavailable, while Ankara, in turn, can transfer military experience and defense-technological developments to Pakistan.
Owing to Pakistan’s defense capabilities and its experience in simultaneous economic, energy, and military cooperation with both Turkey and Saudi Arabia, Islamabad functions as a practical intermediary among regional power centers within the framework of Middle East policy priorities established by the U.S. administration.
On the other hand, Pakistan’s importance to U.S. regional strategy is reinforced by the fact that Islamabad remains embedded in China-led political and economic integration structures while simultaneously deepening its partnership with the United States.
Pakistan maintains full membership in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and was among the first countries to join the Belt and Road Initiative in 2013.
At the same time, while pursuing participation in Chinese initiatives, intergovernmental organizations, and economic projects, Islamabad consistently preserved a degree of cooperation with Washington, including its status as a Major Non-NATO Ally, granted in 2004.
Following the conclusion of the latest escalation phase of the India–Pakistan conflict in May 2025, U.S.–Pakistan cooperation in defense, trade, and investment deepened further.
According to Pakistani Deputy Prime Minister Ishaq Dar, bilateral trade reached $13.28 billion, and Washington designated the Balochistan Liberation Army and its constituent factions—engaged in armed activity against Pakistani security forces—as terrorist organizations.
This step represents an element of stabilizing Pakistan’s internal security environment amid regional escalation around Iran. The current geography of Iranian destabilization and associated border risks places the greatest pressure on Iran’s north and west, while the absence of concentrated turbulence in the Balochistan direction reduces the likelihood of rapid spillover into Pakistani territory.
This increases short-term risk manageability for Islamabad and leaves Washington room to expand Pakistan’s coordinating role without triggering immediate internal instability in critical provinces.
The culmination of U.S.–Pakistan defense cooperation was Washington’s approval of a $686 million agreement to modernize Pakistan’s fighter aircraft, extending the operational lifespan of Pakistan Air Force platforms through 2040.
The configuration developed by the United States constrains Iran’s ability to operate through its proxy forces and reduces China’s capacity to exploit regional conflicts to advance its political interests. Beijing has a direct interest in weakening coordination among Pakistan, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia.
One of China’s key objectives is to exert pressure on Pakistan through internal destabilization, increased financial dependence on Chinese funding, and support for political forces oriented toward closer alignment with Beijing.
Without Pakistani security guarantees—grounded in a capable military and nuclear deterrent—any regional security architecture would be structurally incomplete.
Moreover, the successful disintegration of Middle Eastern defense partnerships would weaken the U.S. strategy of surrounding Iran with political dynamics hostile to autocracies and disrupt coordination mechanisms among Turkey, Arab monarchies, and the United States.
Anticipating these risks, the U.S. administration has identified the systematic strengthening of relations with Pakistan as a priority objective.
This will be pursued through offers of new investments, trade opportunities, and defense projects in exchange for political alignment, security cooperation with Muslim-majority states, and mediation in disputes between Turkish and Arab political dynamics.
The effectiveness of the regional coordination model in the Middle East will depend on support for Pakistan’s security institutions, reduction of Islamabad’s financial and infrastructural dependence on Beijing, and the strengthening of indirect U.S. influence over Pakistan’s domestic political processes.
Consequently, the United States’ ability to free military and economic resources to respond to China’s expansionist policy in the Indo-Pacific will depend on these factors as well.
Pakistan’s foreign policy model—maintaining participation in China-led integration frameworks while simultaneously expanding cooperation with the United States—has given Washington greater leverage to influence Chinese-created structures without escalating confrontation with Beijing.
By elevating Islamabad’s role, Washington is simultaneously creating a signaling mechanism for New Delhi, which in the second half of 2025 intensified political engagement with Beijing and did not integrate into the U.S. containment logic vis-à-vis China.
Demonstrating renewed reliance on Pakistan alters India’s regional security environment, raises India’s maritime logistics costs from the Strait of Hormuz to the Red Sea, and forces New Delhi to account for the fact that U.S. coordination architecture in the Islamic world will develop without prioritizing Indian interests.
The Modi government has not taken sufficient steps toward liberalizing economic policy nor made efforts to integrate New Delhi into export control regimes designed to prevent the transfer of U.S. technologies to third countries.
As a result, Washington has been compelled to broaden the circle of regional partners on whom it can rely for security and political cooperation.
By signaling to India a reassessment of Islamabad’s role within security alliance systems, the White House indicates that new formats of U.S. engagement with Islamic political dynamics will alter international cooperation models involving India, including IMEC and I2U2.
A decline in trust between the Modi government and the White House would automatically increase costs for Indian businesses along maritime routes from the Strait of Hormuz to the Red Sea and necessitate additional investment by New Delhi in shipping insurance.
Instead, through Pakistan—which has already demonstrated its capacity to implement U.S. security priorities in the Islamic world—Washington will shape new models of regional coordination that gradually incorporate other West Asian states alongside Saudi Arabia and Turkey.
Integrating Turkish and Arab defense resources into a format that enhances the capacity of the United States and its Middle Eastern partners to counter Iran while reducing the risk of intra-partner competition represents the most advantageous option for U.S. Middle East strategy at the current stage.
Accordingly, the White House will intensify this approach by sustaining regular security consultations, joint defense-industrial projects, and efforts to align the positions of Washington, Riyadh, Ankara, and other regional power centers on armed conflicts in the Middle East and Africa.
By revitalizing relations with Pakistan, the United States has gained additional leverage over the balance of power within Islamic political dynamics and greater capacity to control escalation levels in relations with Iran. Continuation of this policy incentivizes China to act aggressively to preserve its influence in Pakistan and the broader region.
Chinese leadership possesses multiple strategies aimed at limiting U.S.–Pakistan interaction by destabilizing the power vertical in Islamabad and removing the current government.
Pakistan faces systemic economic challenges and significant political polarization. Beijing has sufficient leverage over Islamabad through a combination of economic vulnerability and political fragmentation, including the ability to use financing, infrastructure dependencies, and protest mobilization to recalibrate Pakistan’s foreign policy orientation.
Declining foreign direct investment and heightened public anxiety over economic performance create favorable conditions for fueling anti-government campaigns, while the persistence of alternative political power centers increases the risk of institutional instability—conditions China can exploit to disrupt U.S.–Pakistan coordination.
This renders Islamabad vulnerable to pressure campaigns and financial conditionality.
For Washington, this necessitates anchoring Pakistan within the U.S. strategic configuration through a package of tangible incentives—from defense programs to trade opportunities—in order to narrow the space for Chinese disruption of coordination among Pakistan, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia.
An additional risk for the United States is the limited willingness of Pakistan’s current leadership to commit to an unequivocal geopolitical trajectory.
Domestic political actors seek to preserve stable and pragmatic relations with China, given Pakistan’s long-standing dependence on Beijing for financing, infrastructure projects, and political support in the Kashmir dispute.
Islamabad is prepared to further expand cooperation with the United States, but primarily in areas that do not create direct conflict with China.
The expansion of U.S.–Pakistan defense cooperation and the diversification of regional security models—initially marked by the Saudi–Pakistani defense agreement and the prospect of Turkey’s accession—have demonstrated their effectiveness in facilitating the transformation of U.S. Middle East strategy.
The weakening of Iran’s proxy architecture has been uneven; the Iraqi node centered on the Popular Mobilization Forces has persisted as the core of scalable escalation. Without dismantling this node, residual energy within the Shiite axis will continue to regenerate Tehran’s coercive capacity.
This asymmetry underpins Washington’s and Israel’s logic for transitioning to a more decisive kinetic phase focused on targeting the infrastructure that manages repression and proxy logistics, rather than symbolic attributes of the regime.
By synchronizing the efforts of Middle Eastern allies against the autocratic axis and strengthening coordination among leading centers of Islamic political dynamics, the United States has reduced China’s ability to use the Middle East as a platform for expanding its economic and military-political interests.
Missing the current opportunity to weaken the autocratic axis in the Middle East would allow Iran—backed by Beijing—to rebuild its proxy network in ways that simultaneously increase pressure on U.S. interests in West Asia and expand China’s ability to act against the United States and its partners in the Indo-Pacific. This would occur through resource diversion and managed escalation.
At the same time, Washington has laid the groundwork for strengthening and scaling a network of partnerships and defense blocs in which regional political dynamics coordinate their security actions under U.S. strategic sponsorship—without a direct increase in U.S. military presence in West Asia.
If successfully implemented, this strategy would place Iran’s ayatollah regime under multidirectional pressure, while enabling U.S. partners in the Middle East to coordinate the neutralization of remaining elements of the Shiite “axis of resistance” in Yemen, Syria, and Iraq.
By positioning itself as a power that delegates responsibility to regional leaders and incentivizes enhanced security cooperation, the United States will rebuild trust as a predictable partner—one that regulates relations among Middle Eastern states, mitigates intra-Islamic conflict, and guarantees a balance of interests among the region’s principal powers.
Over the long term, however, this model cannot sustain itself automatically and requires continuous political oversight by the United States.
Within this framework, U.S. strategy does not rely on symbolic regime-change scenarios; the primary target of pressure is the ayatollah regime’s coercive infrastructure and its ability to reproduce repression through proxy networks.
The objective is to create conditions under which Iran’s internal power institutions are forced to evolve toward a more manageable and predictable configuration, with liberalization emerging as a consequence of dismantling the repressive core.
Accordingly, U.S. oversight must be continuous and multi-channel, encompassing partner security coordination, economic incentives, and targeted pressure on the autocratic axis’s infrastructure.
In this logic, the window for dismantling Iran’s infrastructure of violence is narrow, and the United States now has a unique opportunity to lock in the irreversibility of the regime’s weakening repressive core.
Delaying the kinetic phase of operations against Iran would grant Tehran additional time to restore its internal control mechanisms, regroup the IRGC, and reconfigure proxy logistics through Iraq.
A preserved and strengthened Iraqi node centered on the Popular Mobilization Forces would regenerate the Shiite axis in a more resilient and scalable form.
Under such a scenario, the next escalation cycle for the United States and Israel would be costlier, less manageable for Gulf partners, and more advantageous for Beijing as a tool for diverting U.S. resources from the Indo-Pacific theater.
For this reason, the buildup of U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf and the deployment of integrated air and missile defense systems at partner bases are creating the operational conditions for a targeted campaign.
This campaign would focus on degrading command centers of Iran’s repressive apparatus and proxy logistics—above all the Iraqi node that ensures the resilience and scalability of the Shiite network.
For Washington, this course of action serves both to restore partner confidence after the regional security guarantees crisis and to prevent the collapse of the autocratic-axis deterrence architecture, with Iran as its central node.
Tehran has already reconfigured its air defense posture and concealment of critical infrastructure, while Russian and Chinese technological support has enhanced its ability to complicate air operations, intelligence collection, and strike platforms.
This raises the cost of air dominance specifically for the United States and Israel, which would need to suppress Iranian air defenses in a kinetic phase.
At the same time, failure to exploit the current window would entrench Tehran’s repressive model, allow time for the restoration of external leverage through proxy networks, and push the crisis into a phase that is unacceptable for both the United States and Israel.
