Wars are often presented as solutions. They are rarely that simple.

A recent analysis in a mainstream local newspaper examined the logic behind the campaign by the United States and Israel against Iran. The strategy rested on a familiar assumption: neutralise the central hub of Iran’s regional network and the spokes Hezbollah, the Houthis, and allied militias in Iraq and Syria would lose coherence, funding and direction. Strike the centre, and the periphery collapses.

It is an appealing logic. It is also one that history has repeatedly tested and rarely confirmed.

Wars against the sponsors of militant networks often succeed militarily but fail politically. Destroying the hub rarely eliminates the forces that created the spokes.

The theory assumes that armed movements depend primarily on the resources, weapons and ideology of their sponsor states. There is some truth in this. Iran’s regional allies do rely on Tehran for training, funding and strategic coordination. If Iran is weakened, those networks will inevitably feel the strain.

Yet militant movements rarely survive on external support alone. They are sustained by local grievances, supporters with ideological affiliations, identities and political conditions that military campaigns cannot easily erase. Bombing can destroy infrastructure and degrade capabilities, but it rarely eliminates the deeper forces that allow insurgencies to regenerate.

Iran has already adapted to this reality. Its regional network has gradually evolved into a decentralised structure in which local actors enjoy considerable autonomy. Authority is dispersed, operations are compartmentalised, and the system is designed to survive even if parts of it are destroyed. The spokes, in other words, have learned to function even when the hub is under attack. The objective is to keep the threat alive for as long as possible.

This raises a question that the current war inevitably invites: if the limits of this strategy are so visible, why pursue it?

One explanation is miscalculation or frustration emanating from a long history of failures in resolving the conflict through dialogue. The absence of effective multilateral institutions compounds this impasse.

The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, the one body designed to provide collective Muslim diplomatic weight, has once again failed to evolve a clear position, just as it failed during Gaza, Yemen, Syria, and Lebanon. It has condemned Iranian counter-strikes on Gulf states without addressing the root cause of the crisis. It has issued statements of concern without convening an emergency summit.

When the stakes appear high enough, and patience runs out, governments return to the oldest instrument of power — force

When the stakes appear high enough, and patience runs out, governments return to the oldest instrument of power — force

Decision-makers may genuinely believe that overwhelming military force can produce decisive political outcomes, especially when earlier campaigns created the impression that advanced technology and air power could determine wars quickly.

Another possibility is that the stated objective of weakening Iran’s proxy network is only part of the picture. The deeper aim may be to reshape the regional order itself: accelerating Arab normalisation under the Abraham Accords, consolidating Israel’s military dominance before Iran crosses a potential nuclear threshold, and using the war to redraw the strategic map of the Middle East. In this interpretation, Iran is not merely the target. It is the lever.

Pakistan faces a remarkably similar dilemma along its western frontier. For years, Pakistan has viewed the Afghan Taliban government in Afghanistan as the ideological and logistical hub sustaining the insurgency of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan. The assumption is familiar: if Kabul’s support and sanctuary disappear, the TTP will weaken and eventually collapse. It was an outcome of the continuous failure Pakistan experienced in convincing the Afghan Taliban to avoid supporting the TTP.

Recent Pakistani operations across the border reflect this same logic, the last resort of parties who have exhausted dialogue without result.

Yet history offers little assurance that such an approach can fully succeed. Militancy in Pakistan’s former tribal areas predates the current Afghan government and draws strength from conditions that military force alone cannot resolve: poverty, political marginalisation, and above all, ideological differences.

Striking the hub may disrupt the network. It does not drain the reservoir from which new fighters emerge, as long as the ideological base remains intact.

The deeper parallel between the Middle East and South Asia lies not only in military strategy but also in the adversaries themselves.

Iran and its regional allies pursue an agenda that, at its core, challenges the legitimacy of Israel’s existence as a political entity in the Middle East. That position is not merely tactical; it is ideological, and ideological commitments tend to survive military setbacks, economic pressure and leadership decapitation.

The agenda of the TTP is similarly uncompromising. The group does not seek accommodation within Pakistan’s constitutional framework, but the replacement of that framework with its own interpretation of religious rule. For this reason, repeated attempts at negotiations involving Pakistan, the Afghan Taliban and the TTP have ultimately collapsed. The militants are not bargaining for influence within the existing order. They are contesting the order itself.

When adversaries pursue maximalist objectives, military campaigns inevitably encounter a ceiling. Force can impose costs and buy time, but it rarely produces the political settlement required to end the conflict. Wars continue not because they are solving the underlying problem, but because the alternative, accepting the adversary’s terms, is politically impossible.

There is a deeper tragedy embedded in this pattern.

Modern states have spent decades developing tools designed to manage conflict without resorting to war: sanctions, financial pressure, diplomatic isolation and international legal mechanisms. These instruments reflect the hope that political disputes can be contained through institutional means rather than violence.

Yet again and again, those mechanisms eventually reach their limits.

When the stakes appear high enough, and patience runs out, governments return to the oldest instrument of power — force. This pattern transcends ideology, geography and culture. Different states justify it in different ways, but the underlying impulse remains strikingly consistent.

Pakistan does it. Iran does it. Israel does it. Russia does it. The United States does it.

The tragedy is not that any one of these states is uniquely aggressive. The tragedy is that human societies have not yet discovered a reliable way to escape this recurring cycle. Institutions, diplomacy and international law represent humanity’s attempt to restrain violence. But history repeatedly shows how fragile those restraints can be.

The logic of military strategy is seductive because it promises clarity: identify the enemy’s centre of gravity, destroy it, and victory will follow.

Reality is rarely so tidy.

Washington and Tel Aviv may significantly weaken Iran’s regional capabilities. Islamabad may disrupt the militant networks operating along its frontier. But unless the political roots of these conflicts are addressed and ideological foundations are challenged, the unresolved Palestinian question in the Middle East, and governance failures and marginalisation within Pakistan, the violence is unlikely to disappear. It will pause, adapt and eventually return.

And when it does, the consequences may be even more severe.

If military victories are achieved without political resolution, humiliated networks may eventually respond with forms of retaliation far more destructive than what the world has already witnessed, including the shock unleashed by Hamas's attack on Israel (7 October 2023), which dramatically reshaped the regional landscape.

The same risk exists in South Asia. Militant networks operating around Pakistan’s western frontier may escalate their violence in ways that test the resilience of the Pakistani state far beyond the level of insurgency it currently faces.

This is why the ultimate question facing all parties in such conflicts is not military, but political and ideological.

Every belligerent party must eventually decide whether to allow some degree of compromise and flexibility within the existing order or continue pursuing total victory. The first option is difficult and often unpopular. The second promises clarity, but carries the risk of endless escalation.

History suggests that when societies refuse the former, they eventually confront the consequences of the latter.

© The Friday Times