Threatened strikes on Iran have again been called off after President Donald Trump revealed a previously reported “secret mission” to move ships through the Strait of Hormuz and promised that a ceasefire agreement would be reached within days. A new open-access article in Middle East Policy argues that Washington has perpetuated the escalation of conflict, a cycle that can be reversed only by restraining Israel and reducing maximalist demands that have convinced Tehran’s clerical regime that diplomacy offers little path to security, stability, or economic recovery.
Middle East Policy has just published its Summer 2026 double issue, featuring incisive open-access examinations of the Iran War, its causes, and its implications, including what lies ahead in the Strait of Hormuz; how Trump’s transactionalism is backfiring; how the Islamic Revolution upended regional security; Iran’s forward defense in Africa; and the effects of the war on Gulf cooperation with the Asia-Pacific. The table of contents of this special double issue is below. You can still read our special issue on the Iran War and our Spring 2026 compilation.
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In his open-access analysis for Middle East Policy, Buğra Sari argues that since the deadly Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023, the Israel-Iran conflict has evolved through successive cycles of escalation that gradually normalized direct attacks. But the decisive factor driving the current Iran War was US strategy. Washington repeatedly reshaped the choices facing both sides—largely through enabling Israel and making maximalist demands on Iran—ultimately transforming what had been a gradual increase of hostilities into a regime-change war. In his view, reducing the potential for endless violence requires the United States to alter the incentive structure it has helped create rather than simply managing each new crisis as it emerges.
Sari opens with an examination of the two states’ immediate moves after the October 7 massacre, with each testing the other’s limits by signaling a willingness to fight but not crossing thresholds that would trigger wider regional conflict:
Iran refrained from conventional attacks while providing nonstate allies with sufficient backing to sustain pressure on Israel. This suggests a strategy of attrition, whereby Tehran leveraged its network to incrementally erode Israeli security and military capacity without crossing thresholds likely to trigger large-scale retaliation. Throughout this stage, Iran repeatedly signaled its intent to avoid all-out war.
Sari shows that the conflict entered a new phase when Israel began to directly target Iranian personnel, assets, and command structures. To restore its credibility, Tehran responded with unprecedented direct missile and drone attacks on Israeli territory, abandoning its traditional reliance on proxy deterrence. However, this tit-for-tat sequence allowed Israel to gain escalation dominance by destroying the Islamic Republic’s homeland air defenses.
By June 2025, with neither side willing to retreat, the cycle escalated further as Israel launched a devastating assault on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, military command, and scientific establishment. Although President Donald Trump contributed to the effort by ordering strikes on key nuclear sites, he ended the immediate conflict by changing the costs and benefits facing both combatants and compelling them to accept a temporary halt in the fighting. As Sari explains:
The June war showed the United States to be a master of the game in the last resort. Through a combination of defensive support, diplomatic off-ramps, and coercive punishment, Washington altered the payoff structure for both players. It made the cost of escalation…unbearably high for Iran through direct military strikes and for Israel through the threat of withheld support. It made the choice to de-escalate…more palatable by providing face-saving exits, such as ceasefires and negotiated talks. The United States therefore succeeded not by stopping the game, but by becoming its most powerful player and rewriting its rules.
With this newfound power, Sari argues, came responsibility to end the cycle. Instead, the article shows, Washington’s actions ended one war but created the conditions for another by convincing Israel that American military support would remain available while reinforcing Iranian fears that diplomacy could not guarantee security.
Sari concludes that a durable reduction in violence requires the United States to return to a role that constrains escalation, lowers incentives for preventive war, and provides credible diplomatic alternatives to repeated cycles of coercion and military confrontation. “The structural incentives of this new environment, and the resulting war that threatens the global economy, must be dramatically altered,” Sari contends:
Negotiations for a ceasefire, mediated by Oman or relatively neutral third parties, should aim to restrain the maximalist agendas on all sides. The United States, which has never presented coherent objectives, needs to return to a constitutional, truly deliberative process of deciding on war and peace. A rational approach requires Washington to unambiguously signal to Israel that military support is neither automatic nor unconditional and that it will not sign onto future provocations.
Middle East Policy, Summer 2026
Special Double Issue!
AMERICA’S WAR ON IRAN
Signals, Red Lines, and Collision: The Israel-Iran Spiral and US Intervention
Buğra Sari—open access!
Trump’s Transactional Diplomacy: Breakthrough or Breakdown?
Guilain Denoeux | Robert Springborg—open access!
Between Ideology and Strategy: The Iranian Revolution and the Reconfiguration of Middle Eastern Security
Alabbas F. Alsudani—open access!
Iran’s Forward Defense in Sub-Saharan Africa
Ariel Limanya Limbu | Ronen A. Cohen—open access!
CONSEQUENCES IN THE GULF
Crisis in the Strait of Hormuz: What Lies Ahead?
Gawdat Bahgat—free to read!
GCC-Asia Pacific Energy Nexus: Navigating Shifts in Demand and Geopolitics
Umud Shokri—open access!
Outwardly Strong, Internally Brittle: Dissecting the MBS Regime
Mohammed Ayoob—free to read!
POLITICAL CONVULSIONS OVER PALESTINE
New Political Actors in Palestine: The Digital Efficacy of Gen Z
Abdalraheem S.H. Shobaki | Mahmoud S.H. Shobaki
Between Fatigue and Fear: West Bank Student Solidarity During the Gaza War
Mert Öztürk / Oqab Jabali
Explaining Saudi Arabia’s Inaction During the Gaza War: Why No Oil Embargo?
Mazaher Koruzhde | Eric Lob—free to read!
From Palestine Ally to Zionist Partner: India-Israel Relations, 2014–2025
Yücel Bulut—open access!
REBUILDING AND RECKONING IN SYRIA
A Heuristic Equation of Transformation, Justice, and Violence in Post-Assad Syria
Zeynep Banu Dalaman—free to read!
Federalism in Post-Assad Syria: Toward Durable Peace in a Pluralist Society
Dilan Okcuoglu
REGIONAL SOCIAL & ECONOMIC GOVERNANCE
Cryptocurrency Regulation in MENA: From Prohibition to Conditional Legalization
Bassant Hassib | Fatimah Ayad
Fallen Cedar: Lebanon’s Debt Diplomacy, 2015–2020
Kevin Rosier
Plastics Pollution in the Gulf Countries: Problems and Policy Solutions
Richard Rutter et al.
Constructing Social Cohesion in Qatar: National Vision, Strategy, and Constitution
Logan Cochrane et al.
THE ATTRACTIVE POWER OF EAST ASIA
Saudi Arabia’s Deepening Engagement with Asia-Pacific Nations
Ghulam Ali
China’s Hajj-Related Infrastructure Diplomacy with Saudi Arabia
Song Niu | Danyu Wang
Chinese-Arab Scientific Cooperation and Effectiveness
Minglian Long, Yijia Luo, Yi Zhang
BOOK REVIEWS
Lynch, America’s Middle East
Reviewed by Yasir Kuoti
Denoeux, Springborg, and Alaoui, Making Aid Work
Reviewed by Naomi Sakr
Momeni, The Presidential Difference and Iran’s Foreign Policy Under Khatami from 1997 to 2005
Reviewed by Mahmood Monshipouri
Bajoghli et al., How Sanctions Work
Reviewed by Bahram P. Kalviri
Donelli, Power Competition in the Red Sea
Reviewed by Riccardo Gasco
Brownlee and Ghiabi, States Without People
Reviewed by İlhan Bilici
Karam, The Middle East in 1958
Reviewed by Elifnur Düzsöz
Uysal, Class, Capital, State, and Late Development
Reviewed by Yusuf Murteza
Greenberg, The Long War of Ideas
Reviewed by A.R. Joyce