By any conventional definition of military or political strategy, the recent bellicose actions attributed to Iran and its regional proxies raise far more questions than they answer. While Tehran frames its regional escalations as a calculated confrontation with the United States and Israel, the reality on the ground reveals a striking and troubling characteristic: These actions disproportionately endanger the very civilians who are the least protected in the region.
The data is impossible to ignore. Iranian missiles and drones frequently target areas lacking adequate shelter infrastructure. This includes Palestinians living in high-risk zones and Bedouin (Muslims) in Israel’s periphery – specifically in the Negev and Galilee – where access to protective facilities remains tragically uneven. In practice, the result is that those with the fewest defenses bear the greatest risk.
While the targeting of any civilian is inherently immoral and a violation of international norms, there is a specific, jarring irony in Iran’s conduct. The laws of armed conflict are grounded in the “principle of distinction” – the obligation to differentiate between combatants and civilians. In this case, the practical outcome of military activity is the consistent endangerment of those who are not only civilians but also Muslims and Palestinians; it reveals a profound callousness and strategic blindness.
It is difficult to see how this advances any coherent strategic objective.
Historically, efforts to exert pressure on a global power such as the United States have relied on leverage – economic or diplomatic – that directly affects decision-makers. By contrast, exposing vulnerable civilian populations to danger does not appear to meaningfully influence Washington’s calculus.
If anything, it produces the opposite effect: reinforcing existing alliances and justifying Western intervention.
No moral coherence
The optics are equally damaging. In an era where narratives travel instantly, actions that harm the very populations often invoked in Iranian rhetoric as deserving protection undermine the regime’s credibility. You cannot claim to act in the name of the oppressed when the outcome is impossible to reconcile with either strategic effectiveness or moral coherence.
If the goal is to alter American policy, the evidence suggests that this approach is failing.
If the goal is to project strength, it risks conveying something else entirely: a nihilistic desire to kill and destroy.
What we have been witnessing is an Iranian leadership so detached from its own stated values that it no longer matters whether the victims are Jews, Christians, or Muslims. This is not a liberation strategy; it is a cycle of violence that has lost its anchor while firing indiscriminately into its own backyard. This is not strategic ingenuity; it is strategic confusion.
None of this suggests that the region’s conflicts are simple, or that responsibility lies with a single actor. But clarity is possible in assessing outcomes. And the outcome here is impossible to reconcile with either strategic effectiveness or moral coherence.
The writer served as strategic adviser to Shimon Peres, 1990-2016, and is a member of the B’Yachad Natzliach political party.