A strike is not a strategy - Iran will prove it

M A Hossain, 

In certain quarters of Washington, one imagines the corks popping. The news flashes across screens: a coordinated American and Israeli strike has killed Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, along with senior commanders. The president posts a triumphant video in the small hours of the morning, urging the Iranian people to seize their moment. Commentators speak of a “decisive blow,” of history turning, of freedom’s imminent arrival in Tehran.

If only geopolitics were so obliging.

There is a recurring temptation in American statecraft—the belief that precision munitions can accomplish what patient politics cannot. Remove the tyrant. Decapitate the regime. Trust that civil society, long suppressed, will rise phoenix-like from the rubble and embrace liberal democracy with grateful tears.

It is a theory. It is also, more often than not, a fantasy.

International politics is not a morality play in which villains exit stage left and heroes stride in from the wings. It is an arena of power, fear, interest, and inertia. When one smashes the central authority of a state—especially one of more than 90 million people with deep institutions, hardened security services, and a powerful ideological core—it do not create a vacuum that angels rush to fill. It creates a vacuum that militias, warlords, and the most ruthless actors scramble to dominate.

We have seen this scenario before.

In Iraq, the toppling of Saddam Hussein was supposed to inaugurate a democratic transformation of the Arab world. Instead, it unleashed sectarian carnage and paved the way for jihadist movements that metastasized across borders. In Libya, the removal of Muammar al-Gaddafi—wrapped in the rhetoric of humanitarian intervention—left a fractured state, rival governments, and open-air slave markets. In Syria, attempts to midwife regime change helped turn a domestic uprising into a prolonged inferno that drew in regional and global powers alike.

These were not small experiments conducted in the margins of world politics. They were enormous strategic wagers, placed on the proposition that American force could engineer political outcomes at acceptable cost.

And now, we are told, the same logic will succeed in Iran—a larger, more populous, more nationally cohesive state, with a far more capable retaliatory apparatus.

Consider the immediate material reality. The Strait of Hormuz is not an abstraction; it is a narrow maritime corridor through which roughly one-fifth of the world’s traded oil passes. It is the jugular vein of the global energy system. When conflict threatens that artery—when tankers hesitate, when insurers spike premiums, when shipping lanes empty—the consequences ripple far beyond the Persian Gulf.

Energy markets are exquisitely sensitive to risk. A sustained disruption would not remain a regional inconvenience. It would translate into higher oil prices, inflationary pressure, and economic pain for households already stretched thin. Grand strategy that ignores such second- and third-order effects is not strategy at all. It is wishful thinking dressed up as resolve.

Then there is the matter of retaliation. Iran is not merely a conventional state; it is a networked power. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has spent decades building influence across the region—arming and financing partners in Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, and beyond. A decapitation strike may remove individuals, but it does not erase institutions. Nor does it extinguish the logic of survival that grips regimes under existential threat.

States rarely commit suicide. They lash out.

In such a scenario, missile exchanges, proxy escalations, and attacks on regional bases would not be aberrations; they would be predictable responses. And once the spiral begins, it becomes exceedingly difficult to calibrate. Wars have a habit of outrunning the intentions of those who start them.

Meanwhile, strategic focus drifts.

For more than a decade, American policymakers have spoken of a “pivot” to the Indo-Pacific. The rationale is straightforward: the only true peer competitor to the United States is China. It possesses the industrial scale, technological ambition, and demographic heft to challenge American primacy in a way no Middle Eastern power can.

Yet a prolonged conflict with Iran would absorb attention, munitions stockpiles, intelligence assets, and political capital. Every cruise missile launched, every carrier strike group deployed to the Gulf, is a resource not available for deterrence in the Western Pacific. Beijing would not need to fire a shot to benefit from Washington’s distraction. Time and focus would be its quiet allies.

There is also the question of narrative. Wars are often sold with urgent claims—imminent threats, shadowy plots, ticking clocks. History counsels skepticism. Before the invasion of Iraq, the American public was assured of weapons programs that proved illusory. Today, assertions about long-range missile capabilities or nuclear timelines deserve rigorous scrutiny, not applause lines.

When leaders inflate threats beyond publicly verifiable evidence, they corrode trust at home and credibility abroad. The republic pays twice: first in blood and treasure, and then in the erosion of democratic accountability.

None of this is to romanticize the Iranian regime. It is repressive at home and disruptive abroad. Its security forces have suppressed dissent; its regional activities have destabilized neighbors. But acknowledging these realities does not absolve policymakers from the burden of prudence.

Prudence is not passivity. It is the disciplined alignment of means and ends. If the objective is regime change, one must be prepared for occupation, reconstruction, and the long, grinding labor of political transformation. If the objective is deterrence, one must calibrate force to avoid triggering the very conflagration one seeks to prevent. If the objective is containment, one must husband resources for the arenas that matter most.

The danger lies in mistaking a tactical success for a strategic solution. Killing leaders can disrupt command structures. It can degrade coordination. It can signal resolve. But it does not, by itself, resolve the underlying balance of power, nor does it guarantee a friendly successor.

History is unsentimental. It punishes overreach. It exposes illusions.

The jubilation in elite circles—should it exist—may prove fleeting. The harder work begins after the strike: stabilizing markets, reassuring allies, deterring adversaries, and preventing escalation. If that work is not undertaken with sobriety and clarity, the initial triumph will curdle into something far less celebratory.

Great powers are not undone by a single mistake. They are undone by patterns—by the repeated substitution of impulse for strategy, of spectacle for substance.

The United States still possesses unmatched strengths: alliances, innovation, economic depth, military capability. The question is not whether it can strike. It clearly can. The question is whether it can align its actions with a coherent vision of long-term interests.

If the answer is no—if the pattern of the past three decades continues—then the champagne corks may one day be remembered not as the sound of victory, but as the prelude to another costly lesson. Power is real. So are limits. Statesmen ignore either at their peril.

M A Hossain is a senior journalist and international affairs analyst based in Bangladesh.

This article published at :

1. Asia Times, HK : 02 March, 26

2. The Nation, Pak : 03 March, 26

Militancy, sovereignty at South Asia's fault line

M A Hossain, 

The latest spiral of violence between Pakistan and Afghanistan is less a sudden war than the resurfacing of an old, unresolved argument—about borders, sovereignty, militancy and the burdens of history. What happened this week was dramatic: airstrikes, retaliatory assaults, declarations of “open war.” But the underlying logic has been years in the making.

On February 21–22, Pakistan launched airstrikes into Afghanistan’s eastern provinces—Nangarhar, Paktika and Khost—targeting what it described as camps belonging to Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and ISIS-K. Islamabad called them intelligence-based, selective operations. Kabul called them violations of sovereignty that killed civilians. By February 26, the Afghan Taliban responded with cross-border attacks on Pakistani posts. On February 27, Pakistan escalated further, widening strikes and invoking 'Operation Ghazab Lil Haq'.

Both sides claim heavy enemy casualties. Both deny significant losses of their own. The numbers matter less than the pattern: a fragile ceasefire mediated last year in Doha has collapsed; the Durand Line (the 2,600-kilometer border drawn in 1893 between British India and Afghanistan) remains contested in Afghan political memory; and the militant ecosystem that once served as a geopolitical instrument has become a strategic liability.

To understand why Pakistan acted so forcefully, one must begin not in Kabul but in Islamabad and Peshawar. Early February brought a succession of deadly attacks inside Pakistan: a suicide bombing at a Shia mosque in the capital that killed dozens; cross-border raids in Bajaur; an assault in Bannu that killed Pakistani officers during an intelligence operation. The TTP claimed responsibility for several of these attacks. Pakistan insists the planners and facilitators operate from Afghan soil.

There is a cruel irony here. For decades, elements within Pakistan’s security establishment cultivated militant proxies as tools of regional influence—first against Soviet forces in Afghanistan, later against Indian interests. But geopolitics has a way of mutating its own creations. After the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 and the Taliban’s return to power, TTP networks found renewed sanctuary and ideological encouragement across the border. What was once strategic depth has become strategic blowback.

Islamabad today sees the TTP not as a nuisance but as an existential threat. The group seeks to overthrow the Pakistani state and impose its own rigid interpretation of governance. Its attacks have killed hundreds in recent years. From Pakistan’s vantage point, diplomacy with Kabul has failed. A Qatar-mediated truce last year collapsed amid continued skirmishes. Officials now say “patience has run out.”

Yet force is a language that rarely translates cleanly across the Durand Line. Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers reject the legitimacy of that border altogether. They deny harboring TTP leadership, even as ideological affinities and personal ties blur distinctions. When Pakistan bombs what it calls militant camps, Afghan authorities call them civilian villages. Each side speaks past the other, appealing to domestic audiences as much as to international law.

The Durand Line itself is not merely a cartographic relic; it is a psychological scar. For Afghanistan, it represents a colonial imposition that split Pashtun communities. For Pakistan, it is an internationally recognized frontier that defines its territorial integrity. Every cross-border strike reopens that wound. Every militant incursion deepens mistrust.

International reaction has been cautious, almost weary. The United Nations has urged de-escalation and respect for international law. Regional actors—Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Iran—have offered mediation. India condemned Pakistan’s strikes as an attempt to externalize internal failures. Noticeably muted have been the United States and China, both of whom have significant stakes in regional stability but limited appetite for new entanglements.

This restraint reflects a broader geopolitical reality. The world’s attention is divided—Ukraine, Gaza, the South China Sea. South Asia’s border crises struggle to command sustained focus unless they threaten nuclear escalation. Afghanistan, after two decades of international intervention, has receded from daily headlines. But neglect does not equal irrelevance. Instability along the Pakistan-Afghanistan frontier can radiate outward: refugee flows, extremist safe havens, regional rivalries.

Pakistan’s decision to escalate also carries domestic dimensions. The country faces economic fragility, political polarization and strained civil-military relations. In such contexts, external action can consolidate internal unity—at least temporarily. Military operations against cross-border militants can rally public opinion and reinforce the narrative of a state under siege. Critics argue this risks conflating legitimate security concerns with political expediency. Supporters counter that no government can ignore attacks on its soldiers and civilians.

Afghanistan’s Taliban leadership confronts its own dilemmas. Having fought a two-decade insurgency against foreign forces, it is reluctant to appear submissive to Pakistani pressure. It must balance ideological solidarity with TTP elements against the practical necessity of avoiding a war with its largest trading partner. Its economy is fragile; international recognition remains elusive. Prolonged conflict with Pakistan would deepen isolation.

History offers sobering lessons. In the 1980s, cross-border sanctuaries turned Afghanistan into a battleground for superpower rivalry. In the 1990s, civil war metastasized into regional proxy conflict. After 2001, the porous border allowed insurgents to regroup, prolonging a war that exhausted both Afghanistan and its neighbors. Each time, tactical decisions compounded strategic instability.

There is also a legal dimension. Under international law, states have a right to self-defense against non-state actors launching armed attacks from another territory. But that right is constrained by necessity and proportionality. Was Pakistan’s use of airpower necessary because Kabul was unwilling or unable to act against TTP? Or did it exceed proportional bounds, risking civilian harm and broader conflict? These are not rhetorical questions; they are the hinge on which diplomatic legitimacy turns.

For the international community, the challenge is not merely to call for restraint but to create incentives for it. Qatar’s prior mediation suggests channels exist. Saudi Arabia and Iran—despite their own rivalries—have signaled interest in regional stability. China, with investments tied to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, has reason to discourage prolonged insecurity. Even India, despite condemning Islamabad, benefits from preventing militant spillover.

What would de-escalation require? First, a verifiable mechanism addressing Pakistan’s core grievance: cross-border militant activity. That could involve joint monitoring, intelligence sharing, or third-party verification—ambitious, perhaps unrealistic, but preferable to perpetual reprisal. Second, renewed dialogue on border management, even if the Durand Line’s political status remains contentious. Practical cooperation need not resolve historical disputes overnight. Third, humanitarian safeguards to minimize civilian harm, because every unintended casualty becomes propaganda for the next recruitment drive.

The tragedy of this week’s escalation is that both sides have legitimate security concerns—and both risk undermining them through unchecked retaliation. Pakistan cannot tolerate persistent attacks on its soil. Afghanistan cannot accept routine violations of its sovereignty. The space between those positions is narrow but not nonexistent.

Wars often begin with the language of inevitability. “Patience has run out.” “Open war.” Such phrases satisfy the emotional demand for resolve. They rarely satisfy the strategic requirement for stability. The Pakistan-Afghanistan frontier has endured empires, insurgencies and superpower contests. It will outlast this week’s strikes as well. The question is whether its leaders will learn from history’s hard arithmetic—or repeat it.

In geopolitics, as in life, force can silence a threat for a season. It cannot, by itself, settle a century-old argument about borders, identity and power. That settlement requires something rarer than airpower: political imagination, sustained diplomacy and the humility to recognize that yesterday’s proxy can become tomorrow’s peril.

M A Hossain, political and defense analyst based in Bangladesh. He can be reached at: writetomahossain@gmail.com

  This article published at :

1. New Age, BD : 02 March, 26