Defying U.S. demands for capitulation, Iran is taking advantage of the six-month conflict to pursue the enforcement of its own war goals in the Middle East.
Tehran’s core aims are not nuclear despite the United States and Israel’s focus on the issue. The Islamic Republic has always denied seeking to produce a weapon of mass destruction and, throughout the course of the war, the country has wielded an even more potent tool in the form of its leverage over the Strait of Hormuz.
That status may soon be formalized amid reports of an upcoming deal between Iran and Oman, which has sought to establish a system of service fees to be collected by both nations that lie along the crucial oil and gas trade corridor as a key to unlocking a peace settlement.
“Iran’s most important goal is to transform its military achievements and the pressures of war into a permanent and strategically recognized advantage—namely, control over the Strait of Hormuz,” Javad Heirannia, director of Persian Gulf Studies at the Center for Scientific Research and Middle East Strategic Studies in Tehran, told Newsweek.
“Tehran seeks to impose its control and influence over this vital waterway upon the world, and especially upon the United States, as an undeniable and irreversible reality,” he said.
In fact, Heirannia said the Strait of Hormuz arrangement could serve to support a “cost-benefit equation regarding the nuclear issue,” providing Iran with an insurance policy against future U.S. intervention should it agree to dilute its highly enriched uranium even if Washington ultimately fails to live up to its own end of the deal.
Behind the maneuver, however, is an even bigger power play that could forever upend a regional order already in a state of flux after nearly three years of crisis since the outbreak of the war in Gaza.
“From Tehran’s perspective, the recognition of Iran’s status as a powerful regional player is of paramount importance, because this recognition paves the way for the realization of its main goals—namely, consolidating control over the Strait of Hormuz and obtaining security guarantees,” Heirannia said.
“Iran seeks to establish its position in the emerging regional order as a determining power, not merely a passive player under pressure.”
The New Middle East Order
When the Palestinian militant group Hamas attacked Israel in October 2023, Iran appeared to be caught off-guard.
Tehran’s Axis of Resistance coalition moved quickly, however. The Lebanese Hezbollah movement joined the conflict the day after Hamas’ surprise attack, while Yemen’s Ansar Allah, also known as the Houthis, and the collective of Popular Mobilization Forces—or al-Ḥashd ash-Shaʿbī—militias known as the Islamic Resistance in Iraq soon followed suit.
Each group would face severe blows in the form of Israeli and U.S. strikes targeting fighters, top leaders and weapons caches. When the war came directly to Iran for 12 days last June, the Axis of Resistance appeared too mired in disarray to mount a comprehensive response.
But the U.S.-Israeli war launched in February brought a different result.
“Although the Axis of Resistance was weakened in recent attacks, Iran, rather than abandoning it, is seeking to revive it through renewed investment and tactical changes,” Heirannia said. “Members of this axis, by opening new fronts (such as the recent Houthi and al-Ḥashd ash-Shaʿbī actions against Saudi Arabia) and through greater coordination, are helping to increase pressure on adversaries and strengthen Iran’s levers.”
“In its new strategy,” Heirannia said, “Iran has even declared that attacks on any member of this axis are equivalent to an attack on its own vital infrastructure and has committed to responding.”
Iran is far from the only nation in the region to be investing in partnerships. But the turmoil ensuing from years of crisis and now an active war has both created new shifts and accelerated existing changes taking place in the geopolitical faultlines of the Middle East.
Saudi Arabia, now under threat from multiple fronts, has leaned further into an informal quartet of Muslim powers also including Egypt, Turkey and Pakistan, with which the Kingdom signed a formal defense pact last September. The United Arab Emirates has pursued closer cooperation with Israel in line with the Abraham Accords and a growing alignment with India that also includes strategic ties with Greece and Cyprus, among others.
The Saudi-UAE divergence has led to frictions in the otherwise cooperative relationship between the two Gulf Cooperation Council neighbors, which find themselves at odds over conflicts dividing Libya, Sudan and Yemen.
As the U.S. attempts to bridge the gap by uplifting the role of Turkey and pressuring Saudi Arabia into establishing diplomatic ties with Israel, Iran, “using its levers such as the Strait of Hormuz and its network of proxy groups, is shifting the balance of power in its favor, although the Arab states of the Persian Gulf and Israel are also seeking to preserve their interests and influence, and the final order will be the outcome of this complex competition,” according to Heirannia.
The Consequences for America
The regional strife is already having serious effects on the U.S. footprint in the Middle East. Beyond the depletion of critical munitions, including interceptors tasked with defending against Iranian missile and drone attacks on nations hosting U.S. military bases, Washington’s partners are beginning to question the extent and effectiveness of security ties.
“I do think that this war has fundamentally altered the calculation that our Gulf partners have around the United States and the security umbrella that it’s offering, and the sort of implicit understanding we have around that, and oil in the region,” Aya Ibrahim, a non-resident fellow at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy who previously served at the State Department and White House, told Newsweek during a virtual panel hosted by Defend America Action.
Speaking at the same event, Randy Manner, a retired Air Force Major General and former acting vice chair of the Joint Chiefs for the National Guard, told Newsweek that the conflict “has had a significant and material negative impact” on U.S. interests extending far beyond the Middle East.
With the U.S. repositioning assets from other strategic regions, such as Taiwan, located on the frontier with China, and Ukraine, mired in a war with Russia on NATO’s doorstep, he warned, “the world is a far, far more dangerous place” than it was prior to the war against Iran.
Former Pentagon spokesperson Chris Meagher, another panelist, also painted a bleak picture of U.S. relationships around the world as the war against Iran—and the intervention in Venezuela that preceded it—draws valuable resources and attention.
“China continues to conduct enormous exercises in the Indo-Pacific, threatening Taiwan. They see what we’re doing elsewhere in the world, and see that as an opportunity,” Meagher told Newsweek. “Russia continues its war in Ukraine because they know that we’re distracted in other parts of the world.”
“So, these force buildups that we’ve seen over the course of the administration in places like South America and now the Middle East just show that this administration is distracted and has taken its eye off the ball on what actually matters in terms of the safety and security of the United States of America,” Meagher said.
In fact, when it comes to China, the top U.S. competitor’s influence in the Middle East may also be accelerated as one of many consequences of the conflict, as Beijing promotes itself as a beacon of stability.
“One of the most significant [trends] has been the growing determination among Washington’s Gulf partners to diversify their relationships beyond the United States by deepening ties with China and other powers, thereby reducing their dependence on Washington,” Giorgio Cafiero, CEO of the Washington-based Gulf State Analytics geopolitical risk consultancy, told Newsweek.
“Although this trend has been in play for many years, the ongoing crisis is accelerating it,” Cafiero said. “More broadly, I believe the crisis is likely to lead to a more Beijing-oriented regional order in the Middle East. The growth of Chinese influence at the expense of American primacy aligns closely with Iran’s long-standing geopolitical interests.”
Iran has long invested in closer ties with China and has simultaneously campaigned for the removal of regional U.S. military presence that has since served as a pretext rather than a deterrent for hostilities against nearby nations.
“At the same time, Iran has reinforced its longstanding argument to Arab governments that U.S. military bases on their soil are sources of insecurity more than guarantors of stability,” Cafiero said. “Whether or not Gulf leaders fully embrace that view, the conflict has undeniably lent greater credibility to Tehran’s narrative from the perspective of many in the region.”
“Additionally, by leveraging Iran’s geographic position astride the Strait of Hormuz,” he added, “the Islamic Republic is well positioned to increase its influence over Gulf Arab states and shape the regional balance of power in ways that could endure long after the current crisis eventually subsides.”
Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Frances Mao and Sam Wilson.
