The ongoing US-Israeli war against Iran has showcased unprecedented coordination between the two militaries—and a number of novel strategic developments in the Persian Gulf region.

Many countries publish documents purporting to lay out their national security or military strategies. Yet a nation’s true strategy during wartime is rarely stated explicitly; it is revealed in the way power is applied. More than five weeks into the war between the United States, Israel and Iran, it is still too early to speak of outcomes. But the way this war began, and the logic that has followed, offer a set of key operational insights into American and Israeli strategy.

1. Decapitation Is Now an Accepted Opening Move

The war did not begin with a land invasion or a gradual escalation of tensions. It began with shock and awe: a sudden strike at the very top of Iran’s power pyramid. The elimination of senior leadership in the opening hours of a war between sovereign states constitutes a rare moment in modern conflict—not because leaders have never been targeted before, but because of when, how, and against whom the strikes were conducted. 

Attempts to remove adversarial leadership are not new. The CIA’s covert efforts under President John F. Kennedy to assassinate Fidel Castro in 1961, documented in declassified US archives, offer one well-known example. Similar covert attempts were directed at Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi in 1985. Decades later, in 2011, the killing of Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden demonstrated that the logic persisted, even as its methods evolved. 

The decapitation strikes at the outset of Operation Epic Fury had four notable features:

• They targeted the leaders of a sovereign state, rather than leaders of non-state actors such as bin Laden or Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah;
• Decapitation was used at the outset of the conflict, rather than during or the conclusion of the war;
• They were carried out against an entire leadership echelon, rather than a single individual; and
• They were overt—declared as a military aim, rather than executed covertly like previous assassination attempts against heads of state.

In this context, the opening move no longer signals the start of war, but rather defines its logic. Yet employing this framework to a large-scale opening strike against the leadership of a sovereign state stretches its conceptual limits. As Dr. Ophir Falk, the foreign policy adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, argues, such action must be assessed through the lens of “fair play”: the disciplined use of force within a legal and moral frame as a source of both legitimacy and effectiveness. In his book, Targeted Killings, Law and Counter-Terrorism Effectiveness: Does Fair Play Pay Off?, Falk argues that the Iranian leaders were not only political figures, but operational architects of terror and violence against civilians across the world—making their elimination seem less like political elimination and more like strategic prevention. 

This war may yet demonstrate a turning point, one that risks normalizing the targeting of a sovereign state’s leadership and stimulates a wider cycle of decapitation. As Professor Lawrence Freedman has argued, until recently, an informal taboo constrained such actions against sovereign states. Its erosion carries long-term implications; today’s innovation may quickly become tomorrow’s precedent, one that others will adopt and turn back. 

2. A Nation’s “Strategic Depth” Transcends Its Geography

If this war had begun differently, it would also challenge how resilience is perceived. For decades, strategic depth was nearly axiomatic for power. Tim Marshall notes in his book Prisoners of Geography that states are often “prisoners of geography,” whose power is shaped by terrain, distance, and depth. Israel—which occupies a narrow strip of land in the Eastern Mediterranean, roughly the size of New Jersey, surrounded by hostile neighbors—is certainly a prisoner of geography; its adverse geographic conditions shaped its security doctrine, set by its first prime minister Ben-Gurion, which focused on overcoming its lack of strategic depth through extreme military expertise and the ability to conduct dynamic offensive actions.

The current war does not invalidate this logic; it reframes it. Israel’s experience suggests that “strategic depth” is no longer determined solely by territory, but by an integration of multilayered systems. A dense, five-layered air defense architecture, combined with advanced early warning and civilian protection infrastructure, has enabled a geographically small state to absorb sustained missile attacks at scale.

From this vantage point, geography still constrains, but it no longer dictates a nation’s strategy as it once did. The broader consequence of this phenomenon is that strategic depth is increasingly systemic rather than territorial—meaning that it does not end at the border of the state, but extends through a nation’s foreign alliances.

3. US-Israeli Military Cooperation Has Become Integration 

Cooperation among allies in wartime is hardly new. Yet what is emerging in this war represents a qualitative shift, moving beyond coordination toward operational integration. More importantly, this shift isn’t merely operational, but structural. Consequently, alignment at the leadership level is now being reflected in bureaucratic and security organizations, creating coordination that is no longer episodic but systemic.

The alignment between the American and Israeli militaries is striking. In Jerusalem today, one can see American officers operating within Israeli command centers without restriction, while Israeli counterparts are embedded within US Central Command structures both in the region and in the United States. Recent reports further demonstrate this shift, as US and Israeli forces reportedly worked together to rescue a downed American navigator within a challenging framework requiring close intelligence and operational coordination. This shows a level of alignment that goes beyond planning into execution. This reflects a broader shift in American strategy: building a regional architecture rooted within capable partners and operational coordination, increasingly aligned with the logic of the Abraham Accords. This time, the relationship is overt, continuous, and structurally embedded.

The closeness of the United States and Israel denotes a clear departure from earlier patterns. In the past, while Washington was eager to work with Jerusalem on shared security matters, it hesitated to acknowledge that relationship in public due to political concerns. During the 1991 Gulf War, for instance, Israel was deliberately kept out of the US-led coalition—ultimately absorbing Iraqi missile attacks without retaliation—in order to preserve Arab participation. In 2007, Israel’s strike on Syria’s clandestine nuclear reactor at Deir ez-Zor was met with quiet American support, but also strategic distance, as Washington sought to avoid broader regional escalation. What we are witnessing now is of a new regional order: alliances are no longer a force multiplier, but are becoming part of the force itself.

At the same time, cooperation is not confined to the use of force. It shows a broader strategic outlook in which military action and diplomacy are used simultaneously. Even as pressure rises, President Donald Trump has continued to offer Iran a path to a negotiated outcome before escalation deepens. What makes the use of force in this case particularly notable are the parallel tracks: military force is used by one hand, yet a path to negotiation is continuously kept open in the other.

Such integration carries clear advantages: it enhances effectiveness, strengthens deterrence, and demonstrates a broader American effort to build a stronger, cohesive regional architecture. Yet integration also creates a quieter tension. The closer the alignment between the United States and Israel, the greater the potential consequences become when their interests diverge. In this context, Jerusalem’s reliance on a single foreign superpower may narrow the space for independent action as a regional power and gently reshape perceptions of its strategic independence.

4. “Strategic Ambiguity” Is No Longer Safe for the Gulf States

If the first weeks of the war have revealed a change in how power is applied, they have also exposed a change in how it is navigated. Across the Gulf, rivalries that formerly defined regional dynamics—including tensions between Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, as seen in their competing positions in southern Yemen—are being subordinated to immediate security demands.

More revealing, however, are those states that sought to maximize flexibility by maintaining relations across competing axes. Qatar’s experience illustrates the limits of strategic flexibility in a more evolving environment. Qatari policy has long been built on maintaining ties across rival camps—most notably by maintaining friendly relations with Iran while also hosting US forces at Al Udeid Air Base. This strategy was intended to maximize room for maneuver. In practice, it has done the opposite. Iranian drone strikes on the Ras Laffan LNG complex have reportedly reduced Qatari production capacity by around 17 per cent, with recovery expected to take between three and five years—implying tens of billions of dollars in lost output. At the same time, Israeli strikes on Iran’s South Pars facilities, part of Qatar’s shared gas field with Iran, have exposed the structural vulnerability of Qatar’s own energy infrastructure, which is inextricably linked to Tehran. What was meant to provide flexibility has instead created exposure to both sides of the conflict.

In a more realistic environment where power is the leading language, such strategies become harder to sustain. The Qatari case suggests that maintaining relations across competing axes may no longer provide insulation, but rather increase exposure, as states are increasingly pressured to align more clearly within emerging blocs.

About the Author: Gad Yishayahu

Dr. Gad Yishayahu is a visiting lecturer in the Department of International Relations at City, St George’s University of London, and a senior fellow, lead researcher on Security and Crisis at the Cambridge Middle East and North Africa Forum.

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