By Mohamed Ahmed Adan, PhD
Tuesday March 10, 2026
The conflict between Iran and Israel had developed in the shadows of decades. Intelligence operations, cyberattacks, covert sabotage and proxy warfare characterised long-term indirect confrontation. They both waged war tactfully without going to war. That balancing act, though, is soon becoming shaky. What was earlier being played out as a shadow war is now slowly turning into an open strategic confrontation, redefining the security landscape in the Middle East and sending a geopolitical shockwave much farther afield.
This revolution is not merely a military revolution. It is an indicator of a deeper structural shift in regional geopolitics, one that is changing alliances, disrupting major maritime routes, and increasing the potential for broader geopolitical conflict.
The Era of Proxy Rivalry
The hostility between Iran and Israel can be traced back to 1979, when the new Iranian leadership took a hostile position and made it an open threat to Israel because of the Iranian Revolution. Instead of confronting Israel, Tehran engaged in indirect confrontation by building partnerships with non-state actors in the region.
Organisations like Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, and the Houthis in Yemen drew the focus of the Iranian policy of influence projection and pressure on Israel by using proxy wars. It is the network that is sometimes called the Axis of Resistance, which enabled Iran to confront Israel without being too close to the confrontation.
Israel replied with a plan that would relegate the expansion of the Iranian region without necessarily causing an actual interstate war. Underground actions, cyber sabotage, and the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists became the major characteristics of this conflict. The airstrikes by Israel against the Iranian-associated military targets in Syria also evidenced the will of Tel Aviv to ensure that Tehran does not manage to gain military influence along its borders.
This shadow war had taken years to build tactical strength for both parties and maintain plausible deniability. The proxy wars served as a shock absorber, preventing the actual war between the two states by bearing the brunt of the confrontation.
The Failure of the Shadow War.
That model of strategy is starting to implode.
The recent flare-ups indicate that there is a thin line between the undercover struggle and the outright warfare, which is increasingly blurring. In 2024, Iran responded to an Israeli attack on an Iranian diplomatic compound in Damascus with a massive missile and drone attack on Israel. The attack was the first direct Iranian assault on Israeli soil, and was an indication that the rules of engagement were going to change radically.
Things were even heated up in 2025 when Israeli airstrikes on Iranian nuclear and military installations were met with missiles fired back by the Tehranian government. Analysts are beginning to see such exchanges as a turning point in the Israel-Iran competition. As security experts have noted,
The fact that Israel launched a direct attack instead of a proxy attack is an indication of a total change of direction of shadow warfare to direct warfare.
This change can be attributed to several factors. Israel is gradually starting to believe that the nuclear program that Iran is developing poses an existential threat, especially since the levels of uranium enrichment have reached dangerous levels. Meanwhile, Israeli military campaigns against Iran-linked entities in Gaza as well as Lebanon have undermined aspects of Tehran's proxy network, diminishing their deterrence ability.
To Iran, retaliation serves both strategic and symbolic purposes. By displaying its missile and drone capabilities, Tehran can send the message of deterrence to domestic and regional populations and indicate that it has the capabilities to counterattack Israeli actions.
Economic and Security Risks
The escalation has strong economic consequences. The instability of the Middle East has always created volatility in the energy markets of the world, and confrontation between Iran and Israel is already generating the same effects.
The oil prices skyrocketed after Israeli attacks on Iranian targets, which showed growing concerns about the disruption of the region. The analysts caution that the position may deteriorate significantly when Iran attacks the Gulf oil infrastructure or the shipping via the Strait of Hormuz, one of the most important energy oil chokepoints in the world. Those destabilisations might drive prices of energy upwards and make the world economy decelerate even more likely.
The sea security is also becoming very weak. Strategic routes such as the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab el-Mandeb are important conduits of global trade. An increase in these areas may result in shipping attacks, higher insurance rates, and interruptions in global supply chains.
The growing Geopolitical Competition.
The crisis in Iran and Israel is also attracting international forces. The United States still stands in favour of Israel with military aid, and it would want to prevent the war in the whole region. In the meantime, Russia and China have established themselves as potential mediators in diplomacy, as a testament to the increasing overlap between Middle Eastern discord and world-system rivalry.
Such a dynamic threatens to push the region into another stage in which great-power interests collide with local ones.
Spillover to the Horn of Africa.
The possibility of spillover of the conflict to the Red Sea and the Horn of Africa is one of the most understudied aspects of the conflict. The Red Sea passage links the Middle East with East Africa and is one of the world's most strategically important routes.
Countries such as Somalia, Djibouti, Eritrea, and Sudan are located along this important route. With increasing geopolitical rivalry, the region is at risk of being drawn into the wider rivalry in the Middle East. The military bases, investments in ports, and security relationships along the Red Sea depict how external powers increasingly see the Horn of Africa as an important strategic asset.
For weak actors in the region, such a widening of geopolitical rivalry may worsen economic vulnerability and political instability.
A New Strategic Reality
The Iran-Israel conflict is taking a new and more threatening stage. The shadow warfare period, when both parties could handle a confrontation without necessarily going to war, is slowly disappearing.
Instead, the trend is toward more open military engagements, the growth of geopolitical rivalry, and the development of threats of regional escalation.
The consequences are far-reaching. The Iranian-Israeli conflict has evolved beyond the proxy conflict to a new phase of direct strategic attack, redefining the security framework of the Middle East region and projecting the geopolitical argument to the Red Sea and the Horn of Africa. This new strategic reality, without proper diplomatic intervention, will soon turn into a broader regional crisis, the aftermath of which can be experienced even outside the Middle East.
