The war between Iran and Israel, and behind it the United States, is another armed conflict in the Middle East. At its core, this crisis reflects a series of straits the region is traversing: straits of geography, the straits of ideology, and the straits of international law.
If the Strait of Hormuz is the most visible image of the strategic bottleneck we are witnessing, developments around it go far beyond control over this vital maritime corridor. It embodies a broader struggle over the very concept of statehood and the limits of ideology’s capacity to shape the regional order.
Straits have always been major chokepoints: from the Dardanelles and the Bosporus to Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb. What distinguishes this moment, however, is that the strait is no longer a purely geographical issue; it has become an ideological matter as well. Since its 1979 revolution, Iran has been building a sphere of influence in the region on a formula that combines statecraft and transnational ideological networks, turning its political project into a pursuit that cannot be placed into the traditional framework of the nation-state through its cultivation of militias and armed proxies across multiple Arab arenas.
However, that is not the whole picture. Israel, for its part, is also standing in an ideological strait. This is evident from in the rise of a policy that views military superiority and geographic expansion as the sole guarantors of security and that effectively rejects any serious discussion of a two-state solution or a stable historic settlement with the Palestinians. This mindset expands its power but narrows, in turn, the political space needed to allow for a balanced and stable regional order.
The Strait of Hormuz thus becomes a geographic metaphor for a deeper conflict suffocating statehood and fueling ideological or expansionist projects.
The most dangerous strait of this crisis, however, may be neither military nor geographic, but legal. The ultimate question is how to contain the Iranian project. Its subversive enterprise has, for decades, relied on transnational networks and armed instruments that have been undermining regional stability. The war has been accompanied by contradictory justifications: from confronting Iran's proxies to regime change or destroying the nuclear program. Yet the clear legal basis for these operations has remained tenuous, and they come at a moment when the rules-based international order appears to be retreating before the logic of force.
Containing the Iranian project may be a legitimate objective for many countries in the region, but this pursuit becomes more durable and effective when pursued within a regional framework that integrates regional actors and follows the rules of international law, rather than unilateral decisions. Indeed, shows that the containment of expansionist projects becomes sustainable through efforts that respect regional balances and international norms.
The international order that emerged after the Second World War was founded on the idea that relations between states must be governed by shared rules. In recent years, however, respect for those rules has eroded, whether through wars justified on security grounds or through flexible political interpretations of international law. This erosion becomes all the more visible when foreign policy is rendered a direct extension of domestic conflict, with major decisions sometimes taken unilaterally, to address domestic political constituencies rather than the balances of the international order.
And yet a world without rules is not a safer world. International law, for all its flaws, remains a key bulwark to preventing the international order from crumbling and our world from sliding into open conflict. Medium and small states are particularly dependent on international law to protect themselves from the sheer logic of great-power domination.
Amid these interlocking straits, a different model of crisis management stands out. From the very first moment of the war, Saudi Arabia has firmly maintained its commitment to statehood as the reference point: calling for de-escalation, upholding international law, and avoiding reactive alignments. This was less a neutral stance than it is a strategic assessment of the nature of the conflict.
Ideological wars are, by nature, long wars of attrition in which everyone loses, though to varying degrees. Political wisdom lies not in achieving total victory but in minimizing losses. The states that have preserved the logic of the state, rather than the logic of ideology, seem best placed to emerge from the storm with the least damage.
When this war ends, we may, as with many wars before it, not see the map redrawn as some expect. Throughout its long history, the Middle East has shown considerable resistance to the idea of being radically reshaped from without, and this conflict will probably consolidate the real weight of regional powers and reaffirm history's burdens and geography's constants, which reassert themselves after every storm.
Saudi Arabia has once again demonstrated that political wisdom dictates avoiding storms and maintaining balance. From its longstanding tradition of crisis management, a quiet strength has emerged. This strength, in times of turbulence, renders it the power most capable of safeguarding stability and shaping the future.
