US-Israel Combine’s grand strategic design for a future Greater Middle East Region (GMER) could entail establishing total control over all its varied geopolitical, geostrategic, and geoeconomic dimensions and manifestations. To that end, it would need to achieve the following: one, satiating Israel’s abiding insecurities through the elimination of all real, potential, imminent, conjured up, and/or imaginary threats to it from within and beyond the GMER. Two, neutralising Iran, the only surviving ostensibly existential threat, by not allowing it to become a nuclear weapon state or retain its ballistic missile and drone/UCAV capacities. Three, compelling the Gulf Arab states to submit meekly to the evolving strategic environment, sign the Abraham Accords, and become no more than mere obedient sources of investment, capital, and fossil fuels for the US-led West and the world. Four, establishing Israel’s unchallenged, unambiguous hegemony, freedom of action, and military superiority in the region. Five, ensuring that Israel is the only nuclear-missile power in the region. The balance of power would thus remain permanently skewed in its favour.

Such an overwhelming strategic environment would engender crucial ramifications as well. One, enable the US-Israel Combine to potentially establish its absolute oversight of the geopolitics of the region, assert the total control of its economy, determine the pace and destinations of fossil fuels’ exports, and manage all trade routes and Sea Lines of Communication (SLOC) within it—including the inescapable Hormuz Straits. Two, the US-Israel Combine could then feel well positioned to spread its strategic reach and sphere of influence into the South-Central Asian Region (SCAR), to forestall all other potential (?) threats. Three, strategic forays into Pakistan via Balochistan could then become possible through its exposed western flank. Such plans are well known, well documented, and well discussed on international forums and in the international media. Four, India, an opportunist and devious strategic ally of the US, a destabilised, incoherent Afghanistan, and the myriad terrorist groups it supports could combine to create the strategic environment, within and without Pakistan, to further existential threats to it. Five, Iran thus becomes increasingly central to the divergent geopolitical goals of both the US-Israel Combine and Pakistan-SCAR. The former must, of compulsion, want it reduced to a vassal-like status, while the latter would desire to see it survive as a strong, independent, sovereign state with its territorial integrity intact and act as the main bulwark against a potential hostile “einmarsch” into Pakistan-SCAR!

However, like the Iraq war, this one too is intended to bludgeon Iran into absolute submission. Iraq was falsely accused of holding WMDs/nuclear weapons, whereas Iran, despite its vociferous denials, is now being incredulously charged with developing nuclear weapons, holding ICBMs, and being an imminent threat to the US and its allies. Ordinarily, all non-kinetic options like diplomacy, talks, negotiations, mediation, sanctions, coercion, etc., ought to have been fully exhausted before resorting to war. Furthermore, the war should have had international sanction from the UN/UNSC, at least. This then raises credible questions on the legitimacy and justness of the US-Israel Combine’s cause and war on Iran!

The planning and conduct of the US-Israel Combine’s apparently arbitrary war leave a lot to be desired, too. There is no well-defined, distinct, joint end state that it seems to be pursuing. Its campaign appears to be vacillating between constantly shifting strategic objectives, which have been variously declared to be regime change, an unconditional surrender, the elimination of Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programmes, the destruction of Iran’s military might, especially its Navy, getting control of Kharg Island and Iran’s oil and its transportation systems, etc. (Getting control of Iran’s oil, in addition to Venezuelan oil, would ostensibly give the US effective oversight over 31% of the world’s oil reserves). The latest could be the provision of escorts to oil tankers/shipping through the Hormuz Straits or, failing which, forcibly eliminating Iran’s blockade of the vital choke point. Additionally, since there is no well-crafted, unambiguous end state to pursue, there is no strategic coherence or clarity on the ways and means to get there either. They have to be consistently recalibrated. This has caused avoidable confusion in the conduct of the war, in the execution of strategic and operational plans, etc. Aircraft carrier strike groups, THAAD batteries, Marine forces, naval ships, etc., are thus moving rapidly to and from the Middle East.

The US-Israel combine has clearly made strategic miscalculations in its second assault on Iran within eight months. It erred in its strategic appreciation and assessment of Iran’s resilience, retaliation, national, political, and military will to fight, as well as the reaction of the international community. However, Iran had apparently drawn the right lessons, conclusions, and deductions from its eight-year war with Iraq, the two invasions of Iraq by the US-led coalitions in 1990–91 and 2003, the US war in Afghanistan, and, most importantly, the June 2025 US-Israel Combine’s attacks. It showed remarkable clarity in its assessments, policies, strategies, preparations, and execution of operational and tactical plans. It made the necessary organisational changes and force structures, created the right operational strategies, and prepared for war accordingly. Its decentralised force and chain of command structures form the basis of its mosaic defence, which has thus far faced the US-Israel Combine’s multidimensional, multidomain onslaught very manfully. The most important deduction was perhaps that “restraint will always be taken as a sign of weakness by the aggressors” and that there is great merit in the adage, “offence is the best form of defence”!

Currently, the US-Israel Combine’s campaign seems to be floundering. It lacks strategic direction. It struggles to achieve its constantly changing strategic objectives. Have its strategic miscalculations engendered serious ramifications at the geopolitical, geostrategic, and geoeconomic levels?

Imran MalikThe writer is a retired brigadier of the Pakistan Army. He can be reached at im.k846@gmail.com and tweets @K846Im.

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