The Israel-Iran Conflict: Strategic breakdown, maritime flashpoints, and reconfiguration of global order

Covert strikes to open war

The military confrontation between Israel and Iran is transitioning from years of covert operations and proxy maneuvers to a direct and symmetrical war between two of the Middle East’s most heavily militarized states. Israel’s Operation Rising Lion involves extensive air and missile strikes deep into Iranian territory, targeting nuclear research sites, IRGC command infrastructure, energy storage facilities, and political-military leadership figures. This includes the assassination of IRGC Intelligence Chief Mohammad Kazemi. In return, Iran responds with coordinated ballistic and cruise missile attacks on major Israeli urban and military centers, including Tel Aviv, Haifa, and Ashdod, making it the highest level of direct state-to-state military engagement between the two in modern history.

The scale and openness of this exchange represents a significant departure from the strategic ambiguity and deniability that previously defined their hostility. Each actor is adopting a doctrine of clarity-escalation is no longer a breakdown of diplomacy but a core component of deterrence strategy. In doing so, the conflict now threatens to cascade beyond its immediate border, drawing non-state proxies and placing the wider region on alert.

This transition shows a structural shift in how conflicts are managed (or not managed) in the contemporary international system. Escalation is becoming institutionalized. The tools of restraint, once found in multilateral forums and quiet diplomacy, are being replaced by calibrated shows of strength and public defiance. This war is signaling a confrontation, not containment, and increasingly defining high-stakes regional rivalries, especially in areas where institutional authority is absent or contested.

Targeting command structures

Israel targeting high-ranking Iranian figures suggests a firm adoption of decapitation warfare-previously employed in counterinsurgency contexts, now repurposed for strategic state conflict. The objective appears to be to degrade Iran’s decision-making capacity, leadership cohesion, and strategic depth. Iran’s missile response is strategic rather than indiscriminate, aiming to preserve the image of a capable deterrent actor while showing that no part of Israeli territory is immune to retaliation.

Such strikes are not merely tactical. They aim to impose psychological pressure, sow confusion within adversarial command chains, and project overwhelming technological dominance. Both states are engaging in a psychological war as much as a material one, with each trying to fracture the other’s internal confidence while preserving domestic legitimacy.

The normalizing of decapitation warfare in state-level conflicts lowers the threshold for preemptive action and increases the risk of perpetual instability. Leadership targeting eliminates the potential for negotiation continuity, increasing the likelihood of retaliatory decentralization and embeds a long-term trauma in national security cultures. While tactically seductive, this approach sets a precedent where diplomacy becomes unfeasible simply because its practitioners are being eliminated. The line between battlefield victory and strategic failure blurs, dangerously.

The collapse of preventive mechanisms

The breakdown of U.S.-Iran nuclear negotiations and Israel’s explicit dismissal of diplomatic solutions is reflecting a broader collapse of institutional conflict resolution. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), already weak due to previous withdrawals and sanctions, has lost all relevance. Regional mediators such as Oman and Qatar have made overtures, but lack leverage. Global institutions, such as the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) are failing to provide even minimal intervention or unified messaging.

Multilateral diplomacy, which was once a cornerstone of international crisis containment is effectively being bypassed. The global community, divided by competing alignments and domestic distractions, is shifting to a model where war is tolerated until it becomes unmanageable.

This failure illustrates that diplomacy is no longer structured as a stabilizing force in international relations. Without enforcement capacity or legitimacy among combatants, mediation efforts will collapse into background noise. The implications are far-reaching. If state actors lose faith in diplomacy to deliver results, they will default into confrontation as a primary mode of foreign policy. This weakens the foundation of international law and invites a return to great-power politics that are defined by coercion rather than compromise.

Rising risk in global sea lanes

Even as aerial and missile campaigns are intensifying on land, the maritime domain is becoming a critical yet underreported dimension of this conflict. The Joint Maritime Information Center (JMIC) and UKMTO classified the threat level across the Strait of Hormuz, Bab el-Mandeb and the Northern Arabian Sea as “significant.” Direct maritime attacks are yet to be confirmed, however, reports of GNSS interference, spoofing, and suspicious naval movements are emerging.

The economic effect is immediate: vessels are avoiding traditional Gulf shipping routes and rerouting via the Cape of Good Hope. These shifts are placing heavy logistical burdens on African coastal ports such as Mombasa, Durban, Berbera and Djibouti. Insurance premiums for vessels operating in the Gulf and Red Sea are surging, with ripple effects felt across global supply chains.

The maritime dimension is a revelation of how modern conflicts impose global costs regardless of geographical boundaries. Sea lanes are not insulated from land wars, they are strategic and vulnerable to economic and kinetic disruption. The absence of coordinated regional maritime security frameworks exposes trade-dependent states, especially in Africa and Southeast Asia, to second-order fallout. Failure to anticipate and invest in maritime surveillance, port resilience, and intelligence coordination is leaving these regions exposed in every new global flashpoint.

Africa’s strategic silence

Although directly impacted by rising oil prices, delayed imports, and maritime congestions, African governments are issuing limited or vague statements regarding the Israel-Iran war. The African Union has not released a coordinated diplomatic position or proposed any collective response despite clear economic and security implications for member states. Key regional powers (South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya and Egypt) are avoiding the issue or framing it in generic appeals for calm.

This policy inertia comes at a time when African maritime domains are facing strategic interest from global powers, with ports and sea lanes increasingly becoming contested spaces withing wider geopolitical rivalries.

Africa’s absence in moments of strategic rupture perpetuates its marginalization in global diplomacy. The continents economic corridors are affected, but its political voice is subdued. In a world where influence is tied to presence, silence is becoming self-erasure. African states that are not articulating foreign policy positions on global conflicts forfeit the ability to shape the outcomes that affect their sovereignty, trade, and regional stability. A reactive posture will ensure dependance, not strategic autonomy.

Anticipating escalation

The coming days and weeks will likely expand the conflict horizontally through proxy engagement and vertically through escalation in the cyber and maritime domains. Hezbollah activation along Israel’s northern frontier, increasing Houthi aggression in the Red Sea, and cyberattacks targeting infrastructure in Israel, the Gulf or even East Africa are all plausible. The possibility of commercial vessel targeting, symbolically or substantively can’t be ruled out.

Economic implication will accelerate. Brent crude is projected to surpass USD 120/barrel if even one key maritime chokepoint is temporarily closed. Undersea cable disruption or damage to key port infrastructure will trigger crisis scenarios in global logistics. Insurance and digital finance sectors.

Strategic foresight must now move beyond scenario generation and into multi-domain preparedness. Intelligence coordination should include maritime surveillance, cyber response planning and infrastructure resilience. Especially states along the Indian ocean Rim and Red Sea corridor should prepare for asymmetric disruption, future conflict will not announce itself with full invasions, but likely emerge through ambiguous, deniable, and rapid escalation. Readiness must be as multi-dimensional as the threats being faced.

Global implication

The Israel-Iran war is a pivotal break in the global security framework. It’s demonstrating that deterrence, in its classical form has failed. The incapacity of institutions like the United Nations to mediate major power tensions is revealing. It’s exposing the limitations of both Western and Eastern alliances in enforcing restraint among their partners. And it is suggesting that global leadership, being measured in diplomatic weight, not military power is in short supply.

The conflict is not a spontaneous crisis but the consequence of a long-ignored strategic trajectory: the erosion of arms control agreements, the normalization of grey-zone warfare, and the growing irrelevance of traditional mediating powers. The war keeps dividing global narratives, with BRICS+ countries and G7 members looking at it from opposing ideological and strategic lenses. And the narratives shaped are not necessarily into Cold-War style blocs, but into spheres of influence with little consensus. Africa, Southeast Asia, and Latin America (regions historically situated between great powers) keep getting pulled into these realignments, without a clear voice in shaping them.

This war didn’t initiate the collapse of post-Cold war order but merely confirming its irreversibility.

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About the Author: Jasleen Gill is an International Relations graduate with a minor in Criminal Justice and concentration in Peace and Conflict studies, with a strong focus on security, diplomacy, and conflict resolution. Passionate about global governance, humanitarian action, geopolitics and intelligence analysis, she explores the dynamics of war, peacebuilding, and international security, with a particular interest in Africa’s evolving role in global affairs.

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