MADRID - In recent weeks, US military pressure in West Asia has reached one of its highest levels, creating a moment of elevated risk and uncertain outcomes. The reinforcement of naval and air assets, the sharpening of deterrent rhetoric and signals of operational readiness have revived a familiar debate in Washington: to what extent can a credible threat of force alter Iran’s behavior without triggering a regional escalation that would be difficult to contain?

Iranian authorities have repeatedly stated that any attack, even a limited one, would be interpreted as an existential threat and would elicit a proportional response. This formulation should not be read as a readiness for indiscriminate escalation, but rather as the distilled expression of a national security doctrine forged over more than four decades of sanctions, economic coercion and indirect confrontation with the United States and its allies. From this perspective, the assumption that a swift and surgical military action could induce a strategic recalibration in Tehran appears, at the very least, questionable.

At its core, the disagreement is less military than conceptual. Across broad segments of US strategic thinking, there remains an assumption that technological superiority, power projection and operational speed can be translated into escalation control. In the Iranian case, however, this assumption collides with a fundamentally different conception of conflict—one in which prolonged resistance, cost absorption and the gradual expansion of the confrontation are integral to the deterrence design itself.

Accumulated experience suggests that a potential Iranian response would not necessarily be linear, nor confined to the realm of conventional confrontation. More likely, it would be gradual and multidimensional, aimed at reshaping the strategic environment in which the conflict unfolds rather than delivering an immediate tactical victory. The objective would not be to prevail in a frontal war—an outcome Iran has never seriously contemplated—but to stretch the conflict across time, space and domains, eroding the adversary’s initial advantage and complicating the initiator’s ability to control events.

This logic rests on a relatively clear principle: deterrence through the prospect of a costly and hard-to-manage escalation. Faced with Western air and naval superiority, Tehran could draw on a range of asymmetric capabilities, including its dominant geographic position around the Strait of Hormuz, a carefully cultivated network of regional partnerships, medium-range missile forces, and tools of economic, cyber and maritime pressure. In this sense, the response would not need to focus on conventional military targets, but rather on critical nodes whose disruption would carry broader economic and political consequences, regionally and globally.

Selectivity is a central element of this approach. Should US allies participate directly or indirectly in a military action, Iran would plausibly calibrate its response to send differentiated signals, prioritising deterrence over indiscriminate punishment. The underlying logic would not be one of immediate retaliation, but of introducing friction within any emerging coalition, underscoring that involvement in escalation entails specific and not always predictable costs.

Jordan, for example, occupies a structurally vulnerable position within the regional architecture. Its dependence on external assistance, the fragility of its economic equilibrium and the sensitivity of its social fabric make it a setting where even limited disruption could have significant political effects. This would not necessarily entail a large-scale direct attack, but rather actions designed to generate indirect pressure and reinforce the message that internal stability cannot be taken for granted amid regional confrontation.

The United Arab Emirates presents a different but equally sensitive profile. Despite recent de-escalatory rhetoric and efforts to project relative neutrality, Abu Dhabi continues to be perceived in Tehran as a key logistical, financial and technological node within the US strategic ecosystem. Targeted disruptions to critical infrastructure linked to trade, aviation or energy would have repercussions extending well beyond the immediate region, affecting global economic flows and reinforcing perceptions of systemic vulnerability.

Further north, the Caucasus could also gain relevance under certain scenarios. Azerbaijan, in particular, occupies an ambiguous place in Iranian calculations. Its role as an energy corridor to Europe and its security cooperation with external actors make it a sensitive link in a strategy aimed at widening the conflict’s impact without engaging in direct confrontation with major powers. Again, this would not imply automatic escalation, but rather a latent option within a spectrum of gradual responses.

Any analysis that assumes an automatic link between military pressure and favourable political outcomes, however, warrants caution. The region’s recent history offers numerous examples in which military superiority failed to translate into durable political control. In this context, the Yemen experience is especially instructive, even if not directly transferable.

Ansarallah in Yemen was subjected for months to an intense US-led bombing campaign, initially conceived as an operation to restore deterrence and force rapid behavioural change. The outcome was a failure for Washington. Despite the material damage inflicted, the movement preserved its core capabilities, maintained internal cohesion and avoided substantive concessions. The subsequent ceasefire did not amount to a strategic defeat for Ansarallah and, in relative terms, helped erode one of the most persistent myths of US military power: the idea of operational invincibility and the ability to impose political outcomes through limited force.

The differences between Yemen and Iran are obvious and substantial. Iran is a state with consolidated institutions, a significant industrial and scientific base, and incomparably greater geopolitical weight. Yet the Yemeni precedent invites a re-examination of certain enduring assumptions in Western strategic planning. It highlights, in particular, that actors with high thresholds of political and social resilience can absorb significant costs over prolonged periods without altering their core objectives. In such contexts, time, adaptation and escalation management can carry weight equal to—or greater than—technological superiority or initial firepower.

In an Iranian scenario, moreover, the economic dimension would be difficult to disentangle from the military one. Even limited disruptions to key energy infrastructure could translate into significant price increases and heightened market volatility, amplifying the crisis far beyond the Middle East. The impact might not be immediate or uniform, but it would be cumulative, affecting supply chains, inflation expectations and financial stability in economies already under structural strain.

Added to this would be the potential gradual activation of regional allies—not as an automatic reaction, but as part of a calibrated pressure strategy. From the eastern Mediterranean to the Red Sea, the expansion of the theatre of operations would introduce additional layers of logistical, political and diplomatic complexity. Cyber and influence tools, aimed at disrupting critical infrastructure and eroding adversaries’ internal cohesion, would complete this multidomain approach to confrontation.

All of this points to a central problem for strategic planners: the difficulty of keeping a conflict within predictable and favourable bounds for the party that initiates military action. For Tehran, the preservation of the political system constitutes a clear red line, and any perception of an existential threat would widen the range of options deemed legitimate. This does not necessarily imply a deliberate pursuit of open war, but rather a strategy designed to progressively raise the costs of confrontation until its continuation becomes politically unsustainable for the adversary.

From this vantage point, the notion of a quick solution based on the initial impact of force appears less convincing than that of a prolonged war of attrition, marked by recurrent episodes of tension and persistent uncertainty. Rather than a single moment of “shock and awe”, the risk lies in a sequence of cumulative disruptions affecting energy markets, trade routes and political balances across multiple regions.

Ultimately, Iran’s deterrence logic does not promise a classic military victory or a clear defeat of the adversary. What it suggests is that even a limited action could prove sufficiently costly to prompt a reassessment of its strategic utility. It is within this necessarily uncertain calculation—prone to misperception—that one of the reasons lies for why, despite confrontational rhetoric, the diplomatic track rarely disappears entirely from view.

The principal battlefield, at least in an initial phase, would not be solely military. It would be the more abstract, but no less decisive, space in which cost–benefit analyses informing decision-making in Washington and among its allies are constructed. And it is precisely in this terrain that Iran’s strategy seeks to exert its most effective pressure: not by promising victory, but by calling into question the very viability of escalation.