MITUL „PĂCII PRIN PUTERE” ȘI CONSECINȚELE PERVERSE ALE NOULUI RĂZBOI AMERICAN ÎN ORIENTUL MIJLOCIU
THE MYTH OF ‘PEACE THROUGH POWER’ AND THE PERVERSE CONSEQUENCES OF THE NEW AMERICAN WAR IN THE MIDDLE EAST

Summary/Abstract: On February 28, 2026, the United States has joined Israel in an all-out war on the Islamic Republic of Iran. The sustained military attacks were aimed on Tehran and other Iranian cities, destroying military and other official targets and killing the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and several high-ranking members of the clerical regime. In response, Iranian forces launched missiles and armed drones against Israel and US military facilities in all six Gulf Cooperation Council countries. In Israel, Iranian missiles caused serious damage, killing and injuring scores of people. Iran also struck civilian infrastructure in the Gulf, including ports and airports. The war caused a chain of unexpected consequences (a phenomenon known in sociology as ”perverse consequences”), the most important of which, with global impact, was the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. Yet, the list of unintended consequences is also completed by other developments, such as the strategic repositioning of some Gulf states, the emergence of geostrategic premises that would favor the reconfiguration of a post-American Middle East, the increase in the risk of nuclear proliferation – at regional and global levels –, the worsening of the Lebanese crisis, the configuration of the Third Islamic Republic, the erosion of relations between Israel and the Gulf states, the horizontal escalation and vertical failure of regional and global policy, the reconfiguration of the posture of American forces in the Indo-Pacific or the impact on the strategic balance between Egypt and the USA. Initiated at a time considered a window of strategic opportunity, the American war in Iran is often framed within the ”peace through power” doctrine, a geopolitical doctrine and realpolitik strategy proposing that maintaining overwhelming military, economic, and strategic power deters aggression and prevents war. However, just shortly after the start of the war, its developments have rather highlighted the weaknesses of this doctrine, especially in the case of a poorly conceived strategy that failed to truly assess the Iranian response. Moreover, the failure to anticipate the set of perverse consequences generated a crisis in the global energy market, affected regional and international security, and led to the possible reconfiguration of a new security architecture in the Middle East, which no longer has the US at its center. These variables validate the initial research premises of this article: the “peace through strength” doctrine is not universally valid, and the unexpected effects of this war generated a global polycrisis.

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