Iran War: the need for a political framework

Leo Tolstoy's epic novel War and Peace is set against the backdrop of the Napoleonic Wars. Tolstoy's deeper insight was that wars are rarely concluded by battlefield success alone. They end only when the political forces that created them become willing to construct a new political order. "I said when the campaign started that it wouldn't be settled by gunpowder but by those who invented this war" is what Prince Andrey Bolkonsky says while fighting against Bonaparte's army as a Russian officer. This imaginative description by Tolstoy of how any war may end not by the use of gunpowder but by those who invented the war is a binding framework that is true for any war, including the Iran War being fought today. President Trump has declared the interim MoU and the 60-day negotiating framework over. Once again, the principal actors in the conflict are back to using gunpowder to settle the conflict. This represents a significant deterioration in the diplomatic process and leads me to ask some relevant questions. Has diplomacy failed? Why has the MoU been set aside? What is the actual challenge that the principal actors in the war face now? Is war now the only preferred outcome for the belligerents?

The current impasse reflects what defensive realists describe as a security dilemma and what Balance of Threat theorists identify as reciprocal threat perception. From an academic point of view, it is prudent to analyse the Iran War under Balance of Threat, Offensive Realism, and Defensive Realism as competing theories. Iran frequently argues that its military build-up is defensive. Israel and the US interpret those same capabilities as offensive. This precisely leads to the security dilemma, as measures taken by one state to increase its security decrease the perceived security of others. Each side believes it is acting defensively while viewing the other as offensive. Offensive and defensive realism explain each side's strategic behaviour, while balance of threat explains why those behaviours generate reciprocal threat perceptions and sustain the conflict. Is the conflict sustainable? Does the end of the 60-day agreement mean the end of diplomacy?

The distinction between the collapse of an agreement and the collapse of diplomacy is analytically important. As long as the central strategic disagreements, such as the future of Iran's nuclear programme, sanctions, regional insecurity and mutual guarantees against future attacks remain unresolved, diplomacy will likely continue in some form even if the present MoU has collapsed. It appears that the principal actors in the conflict treated the MoU as a time-bound mechanism for testing whether diplomacy could produce a settlement without either side abandoning its core strategic objectives. Once they concluded that the gap remained too wide, the negotiating framework itself became expendable. This does not necessarily imply that war has become the preferred outcome. Rather, it suggests that both parties may believe they can improve their bargaining position through renewed pressure before returning to negotiations.

The challenge is no longer to achieve a ceasefire, but to create a political framework. This is, in my view, the central strategic question emerging from the Iran War. If the objective is not merely to stop the fighting but to produce a durable regional order, then the political framework must reconcile the core security interests of all the principal actors rather than attempting to impose a unilateral outcome. Without incentives, institutions rarely emerge, so the big question is why the principal actors – the US, Iran and Israel – would voluntarily agree to a political framework? That is only possible by offering incentives and strategic relief to all parties of conflict. Iran must receive economic incentives and sanctions relief and, in return, must agree to adopt a state behaviour in line with the region's emerging economic and security needs.

Any durable settlement requires a political framework built on four principles.

One, no agreement is likely to endure without external support. The US is an ally of Israel, while Russia and China maintain significant ties with Iran. Instead of competing for exclusive influence, these great powers and some middle powers, including permanent observers of the UN and the EU, may establish a joint forum that could guarantee key elements of any agreement, including: a nuclear deal, sanctions implementation, and dispute-resolution procedures. This would distribute responsibility and reduce the perception that the framework serves only one bloc.

Two, the principal destabilising feature of the contemporary Middle East is not always direct interstate war but proxy warfare. A future framework should include commitments to reduce material support for armed non-state groups duly monitored by the established forum. The established forum may build mechanisms to investigate alleged violations and jointly recommend punishment for the violators, including regional and international isolation to reduce and ultimately end proxy warfare in the Middle East.

Third, the Iran War reinforces the point that economic realities increasingly shape strategic outcomes. The framework should therefore include safe energy transit through the Strait of Hormuz, investment in regional infrastructure, reconstruction funds, and gradual reintegration of Iran into regional economic networks as its key components.

Fourth, the established forum must focus on crisis management rather than ideological reconciliation. The greatest obstacle is not ideological but political. None of the principal actors currently appear willing to compromise on what each considers its core security interests. Israel seeks enduring guarantees against existential threats; Iran seeks recognition of its sovereignty and strategic autonomy. The US seeks to prevent nuclear proliferation and maintain regional stability. Arab Gulf states seek security while avoiding entanglement in major wars. These objectives require all sides to accept that absolute security for one actor produces enduring insecurity for another. A stable Middle East will not emerge from the military victory of one side, but from the institutionalisation of crisis management under a mutually accepted political forum that can create a political order.

As highlighted earlier, the central strategic question from the Iran War is how to reconcile the strategic interests of the principal actors. The answer to that question does not lie in Prince Andrey Bolkonsky's words, 'use of gunpowder'. Wars are ultimately remembered not for the battles that were fought but for the political orders that emerged from them. The real test of statesmanship is therefore not the ability to wage war but the wisdom to design a peace that no participant has an incentive to destroy.