The War in Iran

Iran sits at the center of what scholars and policymakers call the “Axis of Resistance” — a network of allied state and non-state actors built over four decades as Tehran's primary tool for projecting power without committing its conventional forces. The logic is deterrence through distributed threat: if any state attacks Iran, it faces simultaneous retaliation from Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Palestine, the Houthi movement in Yemen, and various Shia militia groups in Iraq and Syria. The word “axis” can mislead; this is less a formal alliance than a set of patron-client relationships bound together by shared hostility toward Israel and American presence in the region, mediated through the IRGC's Quds Force.

But here is the question students should be asking in March 2026: does the Axis still function? By the time Operation Epic Fury launched, the network was already severely degraded. Israel's campaigns in Gaza and Lebanon through 2023–2025 dismantled much of Hamas's military infrastructure and killed Hezbollah's senior leadership, including Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah. The fall of the Assad regime in late 2024 removed Iran's most important state ally and severed the land corridor connecting Tehran to Beirut. The Quds Force headquarters was struck by the IDF on March 9. What remains is less a coherent network than a set of loosely connected actors, some of which — Hezbollah, notably — are still demonstrating significant capability (29 claimed attacks in a single 24-hour period on March 9–10, the highest since the war began, per CTP-ISW), while others are operating through front groups to avoid attribution.

Iran's rivalry with Saudi Arabia has defined Gulf politics for decades. A 2023 Chinese-brokered détente paused some of the proxy warfare, but the 2026 conflict shattered it: Iranian retaliatory strikes have hit Saudi territory, including the U.S. Embassy in Riyadh and Aramco's Ras Tanura and Berri facilities. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, with U.S. backing, has declared Saudi willingness to use military force against further Iranian incursions. CTP-ISW assessed on March 2 that Iran is deliberately targeting Gulf energy infrastructure to compel the U.S. and its partners to pursue a ceasefire before achieving their objective of regime collapse.

Israel's role is co-belligerent but strategically distinct. Israeli intelligence drove much of the pre-war targeting, including the decapitation strike on Khamenei. Operation Roaring Lion runs in parallel with Epic Fury, with Israeli objectives centered on permanently eliminating Iran's nuclear breakout capacity. The IDF has struck over 300 ballistic missile launchers, targeted 11 of Iran's 17 tactical airbases, and destroyed F-14 fighter jets at bases in Esfahan. The operational coordination is tight; the strategic objectives are not identical. That divergence matters, and it is explored in the Discourses section.

Cancian and Park break the first 100 hours into three cost categories: operations and support (~$196M, mostly budgeted), munitions replacement (~$3.1B, entirely unbudgeted), and equipment losses and infrastructure repair (~$350M, unbudgeted). The daily burn rate: $891.4 million. The unbudgeted total — $3.5 billion — will require either a supplemental appropriation, reconciliation bill funding, or diversion from the DoD's existing $150 billion reconciliation allocation. Any of those mechanisms becomes, as Cancian notes, a political focal point for opposition to the war.

The munitions math is particularly instructive. The campaign consumed roughly 2,600 munitions in 100 hours, beginning with over 160 Tomahawks at $3.6M each in the opening wave. General Caine's announcement of a “munitions transition” on Day 4 marked the shift to cheaper stand-in weapons like JDAMs ($80,000 each) — a 45x cost reduction per unit. But air defense interceptors tell the opposite story: defending against 500 Iranian ballistic missiles and 2,000 drones cost an estimated $1.7 billion in interceptors alone, with Patriot and SM-3 missiles running $4.6M–$8.2M per shot against threats that cost Iran a fraction of that. This is the structural asymmetry the munitions debate is really about: when the interceptor costs more than the weapon it destroys, attrition math favors the attacker.

Russia & China: The Quiet Escalation

The Carnegie Endowment's Alexander Gabuev and Temur Umarov frame the Russia-China position incisively: neither has come to Iran's aid “in a forceful, kinetic, and undeniable way.” But that framing, while structurally correct, understates what is happening beneath the surface. Reporting confirmed across the Washington Post (Robertson, Nakashima, and Strobel), CNN (Bertrand et al.), and NBC News establishes that Russia is providing Iran with satellite imagery intelligence identifying the positions of American warships, aircraft, and ground forces. Iranian FM Araghchi told NBC on March 6 that Iran was receiving “political and otherwise” support from Russia and China, declining to elaborate. The intelligence sharing represents an indirect form of combat support — one that mirrors, with uncomfortable precision, the U.S. provision of targeting intelligence to Ukraine over the past four years of war with Russia.

China's position is more cautious but materially consequential. U.S. intelligence suggests Beijing is preparing financial assistance, spare parts, and missile components for Iran (CNN, March 6). China has continued purchasing Iranian oil through the Strait even as commercial shipping halted — an estimated 12 million barrels since the war began, per Kpler data reported by CNBC. But Beijing has not offered overt military support. The Carnegie analysis explains why: China's foreign policy has never included military rescue of distressed partners; its investments in Saudi Arabia ($50 billion agreement), the UAE, and the broader BRI network dwarf its trade with Iran; and Trump is due to visit Beijing in April. For China, the calculation is survivability through the Trump presidency without a trade war, not solidarity with Tehran at the cost of that objective. As Gabuev and Umarov put it, even if the Iranian regime falls, its successor will have “no choice but to engage with China, which holds a monopoly on the delivery of high-tech goods.”

The SpecialEurasia analysis maps the military-technical architecture of the Russia-Iran relationship more precisely: the Khayyam spy satellite (Russian-built Kanopus-V, providing 1.2-meter imagery), Su-35 deliveries (48-unit, ~$6.5B order), S-400 components for layered air defense, and the Rezonans-NE over-the-horizon radar. These are not improvised wartime transfers; they reflect years of strategic investment. For that reason, Defense Secretary Hegseth's claim that Russia and China are “not really a factor” is analytically unsupportable, even if it is politically convenient.

Turkey: Surrounded by the War Without Being In It

Turkey occupies what may be the most difficult strategic position of any state in the conflict. It is a NATO ally hosting U.S. bases — yet refused to allow its airspace to be used against Iran. Two Iranian ballistic missiles have entered or targeted Turkish airspace: one intercepted by NATO systems with debris landing in Dörtyol, Hatay Province; a second near Gaziantep. NATO confirmed both interceptions. Turkey has deployed F-16s to Northern Cyprus but opposes any Western arming of Kurdish groups, given the PKK's four-decade insurgency inside Turkey. Allegations have surfaced that Ankara is covertly aiding Iran against the Kurdish offensive. Meanwhile, Greek-Turkish tensions over Cyprus have sharpened, with both countries deploying forces near the bilateral border and each protesting the other's military movements while remaining reluctant to cooperate as NATO partners. Turkey is, in the most literal sense, surrounded by a war it did not choose and cannot control.

NATO & Europe: The Teetering Position

The drone strike on RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus on March 1 — launched by Hezbollah from Lebanon, using Iranian-made Shahed-type technology — dragged Europe into the conflict's orbit. Cyprus is an EU member but not a NATO member, meaning Article 5 cannot be invoked; but EU Treaty Article 42.7 (mutual defense) entered discussion. Greece deployed two frigates and F-16s. France sent the frigate Languedoc and anti-drone systems. Italy, the Netherlands, and Spain sent warships. Ireland offered to join the coalition. Even non-NATO states like Austria and Switzerland are being woven into European air defense through the Sky Shield initiative. NATO Secretary General Rutte declared the alliance would “defend every inch of NATO territory” but the bar for Article 5 activation remains high, and the sovereign base areas on Cyprus occupy an ambiguous legal space under Article 6. The war has forced Europe to confront a question it has been deferring: what does collective defense mean when the threat emanates from the Middle East and NATO's southeastern flank is simultaneously exposed to Russia?

The Atlantic Council's expert panel identified the core dilemma with precision: a Kurdish offensive would stretch Iranian defenses and increase pressure on the regime, but it would simultaneously alarm Turkey (which has fought Kurdish insurgency for four decades), destabilize Iraq (whose Kurdish regional government has said it does not want attacks launched from its territory), and risk replicating the pattern of American Kurdish abandonment that has occurred repeatedly — in 1975, 1991, 2019. As one senior Kurdistan Regional Government official told CNN: “One day Trump says we will overthrow the regime, the next day he says something different. The policy is not clear.”

For that reason, the Kurdish offensive is best understood not as a military fact but as a strategic signal — one that is being calibrated, walked back, leaked, denied, and recalibrated in real time by at least five distinct actors (CIA, Mossad, White House, Kurdish factions, Turkish intelligence) with overlapping but non-identical interests. Whether a full-scale ground operation materializes remains, as of March 11, genuinely uncertain.

The Strait of Hormuz is not merely a geographic feature; it is the single most consequential energy chokepoint on earth. In 2025, approximately 20 million barrels of petroleum products per day transited the strait — about 20% of global consumption, over a quarter of all seaborne crude flows. Qatar's LNG exports, representing 20% of the world's liquefied natural gas, pass through the same waterway. When the IRGC closed the strait on March 2, it weaponized a vulnerability that energy analysts have warned about for decades.

On March 2, IRGC naval commander Alireza Tangsiri stated that any vessel must obtain Iranian approval or face attack. By that evening, no tankers were broadcasting AIS (Automatic Identification System) signals in the strait. Protection and indemnity insurance was pulled for March 5, making transit economically impossible. U.S. officials described the waterway as a “death valley.” More than a dozen commercial vessels have been attacked since, killing at least seven seafarers. The Naval News analysis characterized the mining as a weapon of “fire and forget” capable of denying access to vast ocean areas — a lesson reinforced by the Russo-Ukrainian War, where mines broke free from moorings and threatened civilian shipping throughout the Black Sea.

Prétat, Sato, Powers-Riggs, and Funaiole at CSIS produced the most granular open-source analysis of the Strait's closure using Starboard Maritime Intelligence AIS data. Their findings are stark: the strait averaged more than 153 vessel transits per day in the weeks before the war. By March 2, total traffic had collapsed to 13 transits — roughly 8% of normal volume, with only a single oil tanker observed. Since March 1, only 78 total vessels have been detected passing through, for a daily average of 13. Container ships and oil tankers, which together constituted 88% of pre-war traffic, have all but vanished.

The China dimension is particularly revealing. Between February 23 and 28, more than 49 Chinese- and Hong Kong-flagged vessels transited the strait. Since March 1, only two Chinese-flagged ships have been observed making the passage. The bulk carrier Jin Hai Wo passed through midday on March 1. A container ship, Run Chen 2, appears to have made a midnight run with its AIS transponder turned off — its signal went dark at 9:30 PM local time near the western mouth, reappearing in the Gulf of Oman at 4:20 AM. This is the maritime equivalent of running a checkpoint with your headlights off.

Early reporting had suggested Chinese vessels might receive privileged passage, following the Houthi precedent of 2024, when Iran-backed rebels reportedly agreed to spare Chinese ships during their Red Sea campaign. But the data shows no such arrangement is functioning. 55 Chinese-flagged vessels remain trapped inside the Persian Gulf. In one telling incident, a Marshall Islands-flagged cargo ship named Iron Maiden changed its AIS destination to read “CHINA OWNER” before attempting transit on March 5 — invoking Chinese identity as a protective talisman. The gesture captures the desperation of the situation and the limits of Beijing's influence over Iran's wartime decision-making.

Iran entered this war with over 600,000 active-duty personnel, 2,000–3,000 ballistic and shorter-range missiles, and a drone capability centered on the Shahed series that has been combat-proven across three theaters (Yemen, Ukraine, now the Persian Gulf). Its navy was outclassed by the U.S. but designed for exactly this scenario: small-boat swarms, coastal missile batteries, submarines, and mine-laying capacity optimized for asymmetric denial in confined waters.

Despite rapid degradation — 80% of missile launchers destroyed per Israeli assessment, navy rendered “combat ineffective” per Hegseth, over 30 ships sunk — Iran has achieved outcomes that any honest assessment must acknowledge. It closed the Strait of Hormuz, removing 20% of global oil supply from circulation. It killed six American service members. It struck diplomatic facilities, energy infrastructure, and civilian targets across the Gulf. It forced Qatar to declare force majeure on LNG. It damaged Dubai International Airport. It mined the world's most critical energy chokepoint. And it maintained retaliatory capacity sufficient to keep the Gulf states anxious about the war's cost to them, which is precisely the strategic logic CTP-ISW identified: Iran is targeting regional infrastructure to compel a ceasefire before the U.S. achieves its objectives.

Cyber & Homeland Threats

Palo Alto Networks' Unit 42 tracked approximately 60 hacktivist groups active by March 2, including the “Electronic Operations Room” formed on February 28. The most prominent persona, “Handala Hack” (linked to Iran's MOIS), has claimed operations against Israeli energy companies, Jordanian fuel systems, and Israeli healthcare. The FBI and NSA issued joint warnings that Iranian cyber actors may target U.S. defense contractors, critical infrastructure, and financial institutions. Iran's internet connectivity dropped to 1–4% on February 28, which Unit 42 assessed will hinder state-sponsored cyber operations in the near term — but hacktivist activity from outside Iran has surged, including pro-Russian groups joining the campaign.