The ongoing US-Iran crisis offers a sobering window on the evolving grammar of force in contemporary international politics. What began on February 28, 2026 with coordinated US-Israeli airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure and
military assets quickly escalated into a direct confrontation that had long been incubating through proxy conflicts and nuclear brinkmanship. By early April, a tenuous ceasefire had emerged, even as negotiations continued under the shadow of a US naval blockade and Iranian disruption in the Strait of Hormuz.
For students of international relations, this episode is neither novel nor predictable. It reaffirms the enduring salience of military power while simultaneously highlighting the constraints imposed by interdependence, asymmetry, and domestic politics.
At one level, the conflict underscores the formidable utility of force. The United States of America, in concert with Israel, demonstrated an ability to achieve rapid operational dominance, striking key Iranian nuclear facilities, ballistic missile installations and IRGC assets. The result was not the destruction of Iran’s nuclear programme but a significant setback measured in time.
Equally significant was the coercive leverage generated through the US naval blockade of Hormuz. By raising the costs for Tehran, Washington compelled Iran to return to the negotiating table. This aligns with long-standing theories of compellence: military pressure can shape adversarial behaviour short of total war. The signalling dimension, too, was unmistakable, demonstrating that the US retains the capability and the willingness to project power across regions.
And yet, to focus solely on these successes would be to miss the larger story. The war also laid bare the profound limits of force in a deeply interconnected and asymmetric global order. Iran, despite its inferiority in conventional military terms, has managed to leverage its geographic and strategic position to disrupt traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, a chokepoint vital to global energy flows. Through a mix of mines, drones, and proxy activity, Tehran imposed costs and even exposed vulnerabilities of the most capable naval power. Nor did the campaign yield a decisive political outcome. The elimination of Ali Khamenei did not precipitate regime collapse; instead, it underscored the resilience of the Iranian State. Civilian suffering and infrastructural damage risked entrenching nationalist sentiment. Meanwhile, Iran’s network of regional proxies ensured that the conflict stretched from the Levant to the Gulf.
Questions of sustainability complicate the picture further. The US found itself navigating not just battlefield dynamics but also domestic
political constraints, resource limitations, and competing strategic priorities. A ground invasion, often the only route to decisive transformation, remains politically untenable and strategically fraught.
What emerges, then, is a familiar but sharpened insight: force retains its relevance, but its utility is bounded in ways that policymakers can ignore at their peril. Recent events in the Middle East make it clear that military power, however overwhelming, cannot operate in a political vacuum. Its effectiveness is contingent on clarity of objectives and, more importantly, on the existence of a viable political pathway to follow through.
Weaker actors are no longer confined to traditional metrics of power; instead, they have adapted by exploiting economic chokepoints and deploying hybrid tactics that impose disproportionate costs on stronger adversaries. Iran’s ability to disrupt
flows through the Strait of Hormuz is emblematic of this shift.
The US-Iran crisis ultimately reinforces a central proposition of contemporary geopolitics: military power can open doors, but it cannot by itself determine what lies beyond them.
The uneasy ceasefire between Washington and Tehran is less an endpoint than a strategic interlude, one that
highlights both the potency and the limits of force in shaping outcomes in the 21st century.
Harsh V. Pant is Vice-President for Studies and Foreign Policy, Observer Research Foundation