Since October 7, 2023, the United States and Israeli regimes have attempted to constrain Iran through sustained diplomatic and military pressure. However, this pressure has degraded not Iran's capacity to be deterred, but its willingness to remain constrained. The missiles and drones now striking across the Gulf demonstrate that Iran is no longer holding back.
For years, Iran operated under a doctrine of "strategic patience." This was a deliberate, calculated form of restraint that guided how Tehran and its network of allies dealt with Washington and Tel Aviv. Rather than direct confrontation, Iran built and leveraged a web of deterrence: Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, Hamas in Gaza, and the Popular Mobilisation Forces in Iraq were its allies surrounding Israel and helped to apply brakes on any major Israeli aggression.
The first serious fracture in Iran's policy came in April 2024, when an Israeli strike destroyed the Iranian consulate in Damascus, killing senior Revolutionary Guard commanders. Tehran's response was to launch Operation True Promise, a direct barrage of drones and ballistic missiles fired at Israeli territory.
Following the 12-day war in 2025, Iran formally declared a new doctrine in January 2026 of "active and unprecedented deterrence." When the US and Israeli regimes launched coordinated strikes on February 28, 2026, during ongoing negotiations, they confirmed to the Iranian leadership that restraint offered no protection and would likely offer none in the future.
Iran's new doctrine has been demonstrated in practice: Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Jordan, Israel, and Cyprus have all been hit by Iran in a matter of days. Particularly significant are the strikes on the UAE, where rockets have rained down on Dubai and Abu Dhabi, shattering the illusion that this state's stability is insulated from its actions in the region.
As the primary actors lock into a cycle of overt military confrontation, dormant domestic crises are rapidly being ignited across the Middle East. There are reports that the US administration is allegedly encouraging Kurdish forces to form a ground offensive against Iran. In Bahrain, renewed protests against the monarchy have erupted, with Saudi forces being deployed to the island kingdom to crack down on the opposition. Protesters in Baghdad have tried to storm the Green Zone, the seat of parliament.
Palestine remains the clearest expression of the regional order that Israel and the US regimes, with active support from the UAE, have sought to impose: isolated enclaves, subject to permanent low-grade military pressure in the West Bank and full-scale destruction in Gaza. The capacity for meaningful self-governance has been systematically dismantled while territorial expansion by Israel continues. This is the template.
Source: www.aljazeera.com