Dr. Salem AlKetbi is a UAE political analyst
Anyone closely following developments on the Iranian scene over the past few weeks realizes that what is happening goes well beyond temporary escalation. It reveals a clash between two opposing visions for the use of force and risk management.
In my view, the crisis between the United States and Iran is no longer just another chapter in the traditional series of tensions between historic adversaries. It has evolved into a confrontation between two colliding approaches to the management of conflict itself: the approach of a regime that politically thrives on the brink of explosion, and the approach of a superpower determined to neutralize that threat at its roots before it becomes an uncontainable reality.
From my perspective as an observer of Iran’s regional behavior over the past two decades, Iran does not negotiate from a position of strength or stability but from the edge. It builds its foreign and military policy on one core foundation: repeatedly courting catastrophe as a lever of pressure. Iran does not view chaos as a danger to avoid but as a card to play when options narrow. That is why it relies on asymmetric tools with a near-suicidal character, such as cross-border proxy terrorist militias, threats to maritime navigation and global energy supplies, and strikes against adversaries in soft, hard-to-defend targets.
But the most dangerous shift, in my estimation, has not been in the rising level of rhetoric or the pace of military maneuvers. It lies in the nature of the targets that Tehran has chosen to bring into the theater of threats.
When channels linked to the Revolutionary Guard leak information about pinpointing a hotel in Doha where officers from US Central Command have relocated, claiming it has become an operations room, we are not facing a traditional deterrence message. We are facing a deliberate probe of Washington’s red lines and the region’s red lines at the same time.
Without doubt, the message here is twofold. The first is that Iran is closely monitoring movements of US military command even outside regular bases. The second, and more dangerous, is that it is ready to cross one of the most enduring taboos in modern conflicts: blurring the distinction between military targets and civilian locations. Therefore, the threat was not phrased in evasive or symbolic language. It came in a blunt statement that relocation “will in no way shield them from a decisive and forceful response by the armed forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran in the event of any aggression against Iranian territory."
In this sense, Tehran is not threatening a specific site. It is announcing a shift from limited coercion of the adversary to spreading geographic terror: turning every potential American point of presence in the Gulf into a legitimate target, and every allied country into a potential battlefield deferred. In my opinion, this is not a deterrence policy. It is a deliberate policy of widening the circle of chaos.
In contrast, American rhetoric is no longer confined to military warnings or brandishing military force. President Donald Trump’s statement to Politico - calling for “new leadership in Iran" and declaring that “leadership is about respect, not fear and death" - cannot be dismissed, in my view, as a mere emotional outburst. It is a clear political diagnosis of the nature of the problem as Washington sees it today. It is a problem of the regime itself, not merely episodic hostile behavior that can be contained or tolerated.
This is where the real shift in calculations begins. The United States is no longer asking only how to respond to Iran. It is asking how to halt a regime that has built a large part of its domestic legitimacy and regional influence on a policy of pushing crises to the brink of catastrophe.
Traditional deterrence, as known in strategic literature, assumes a rational adversary who fears the costs. But when the threat becomes part of the regime’s political DNA, containment becomes a high-stakes long-term gamble, and thinking about structural disruption emerges as a seriously considered option within decision-making circles.
For this reason, I believe that any potential military decision, if taken, will not be a punitive strike or a limited show of force. It will be an operation designed to dismantle the backbone of the Iranian threat system. Here Washington recalls its experience in targeting centers of gravity among adversaries, as it did when it assassinated Qasem Soleimani, viewing him as the operational architect of regional influence networks, not just a field commander.
To put it more bluntly, America prefers to eliminate the brain rather than incinerate the body: dismantling the decision-making center instead of destroying cities, neutralizing launch capabilities instead of expanding battlefronts, and turning the regime into a bulky entity without nerves or the ability to take initiative.
The goal here, in my estimation, is not a quick media victory. It is degrading the regime’s retaliatory capacity to a tolerable level and stripping the Iranian threat of its effectiveness as political and security capital. This is where the deadly paradox emerges.
Iran’s brinkmanship policy, theoretically designed to deter adversaries, is practically turning into the most convincing justification for an existential strike against it. A regime that insists on convincing the world it is ready for political and military suicide is pushing its adversary to move beyond containment toward preventive eradication.
Some may argue that the cost of such major surgery on regional stability and energy markets will remain an obstacle to such a decision. But continuing to live with a regime that feeds on brink-of-the-abyss crisis management carries its own accumulating and unsustainable cost, which Washington increasingly views as intolerable in the long term.
