By Robbin Laird

China’s presence in Djibouti has usually been read through the familiar grammar of bases and bastions, a forward military foothold that extends PLA Navy reach toward the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf. That reading is not wrong, but it is incomplete. Djibouti matters less as a standalone outpost and more as a hinge in a wider system: a “parallel logistics universe” built from African waterfronts, differentiated flag treatment in contested waters, and political relationships that buy access when traditional chokepoints are under stress.

If we take that hinge seriously, the question is no longer simply “What can China do from Djibouti?” but “How does Djibouti connect China’s African ports, the Red Sea crisis space, and the Persian Gulf into a single adaptive access network?” That is the terrain on which the next phase of maritime competition is being defined, and it is where U.S. and allied strategy will either adapt or be overtaken.

Djibouti as a three-theater hinge

The starting point is geography under pressure, not geography on a map. In the abstract, Djibouti sits near the Bab el‑Mandeb, the narrow gateway between the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. In practice, in a world of Houthi attacks, U.S.–Iran confrontation, and selective immunity for certain flags, Djibouti becomes a hinge across three distinct but now tightly coupled theaters:

• The Red Sea and adjacent SLOCs, where non‑state and proxy actors test the limits of freedom of navigation.
• The approaches to the Strait of Hormuz, where tension with Iran shapes risk for every tanker and merchantman.
• The ring of African waterfronts, from East Africa around the Cape and up to the Gulf of Guinea, where Chinese-built ports provide depth, redundancy, and options.

Seen this way, the Chinese facility in Djibouti is not simply “a base pointing at Hormuz.” It is a sensor, staging area, and political symbol at the juncture of these three spaces. PLA Navy units alongside Russian assets in Djibouti bring China physically closer to the Gulf, but they also sit astride the re‑routing patterns that Western shipping has been forced to adopt when the Red Sea becomes too dangerous.

This is where the hinge metaphor bites. When Western-linked ships divert around Africa, their dependence on African ports and coastal infrastructure spikes, as do the costs and delays. Chinese-flagged vessels, by contrast, have in some cases been treated with greater restraint by Houthi forces and have been able to signal their nationality as a protective marker. The net effect is not a neat, total Chinese advantage, but a differentiated geography of risk. Djibouti, at the hinge, is where Beijing can observe, position, and quietly exploit that differentiation.

From Fixed Chokepoints to Adaptive Access

What Djibouti highlights is an ongoing shift in maritime competition: the move from fixed strings and static chokepoints to adaptive access. For decades, U.S. naval power has been conceptualized in terms of dominance at key maritime pinch points, the Suez Canal, Bab el‑Mandeb, Hormuz, and the capacity to “fight through” contested waters with carrier strike groups and escorts. China has not tried to mirror that architecture ship-for-ship. It has built something more diffuse and, in some ways, more resilient.

Across Africa, Chinese financing and construction have produced an archipelago of ports—Djibouti, Lekki, Walvis Bay, and others—that are formally commercial but strategically elastic. Under normal conditions, they underwrite trade and political visibility. Under stress, they become options: alternative refueling and maintenance points, bargaining chips in local politics, and material expressions of Chinese reach well beyond the first island chain.

In this model, Djibouti is the forward node of an adaptive access system. When U.S.-influenced chokepoints are contested, China does not need to fight its way through in the same fashion. It can:

• Lean on friendly or Chinese-operated ports along alternative routes.
• Use its base in Djibouti to maintain presence and situational awareness near disrupted chokepoints.
• Combine on‑the‑water flexibility with diplomacy to keep its merchant fleet moving, even as U.S. and Israel-linked shipping is squeezed.

The value of Djibouti under this model is less about sortie rates and more about continuity, keeping Chinese trade flowing when others are forced into ten‑day detours around the Cape. The competition becomes one of resilience under pressure: who can arrange access, escorts, and political guarantees so that their flag continues to move, at tolerable risk and cost, when the seas grow rough?

Converting Logistics into Leverage: Within limits

It is tempting to read this adaptive access system as a tightly orchestrated “string of pearls,” a single, coherent design with Djibouti as a kind of new‑model command center for the Western Indian Ocean and the Gulf. Reality is more textured. Chinese projects differ enormously by country, financier, and local political economy. Some are commercially viable; some are white elephants; some have clear dual‑use potential; others are far more ambiguous.

Djibouti itself is a good example of why we should be cautious about ascribing too much centralized intent. Beijing enjoys a significant footprint and has invested heavily, but it operates in a crowded strategic space. The United States, France, and other partners also maintain bases and have longstanding relationships with Djibouti’s leadership and security services. The host government has its own balancing acts, sensitivities, and interests.

That does not mean infrastructure is neutral. Debt, equity stakes, and operating concessions are forms of influence. In a prolonged crisis involving the Persian Gulf, Djibouti’s leadership would have to weigh the economic benefits of Chinese investment against the security reassurance and political cover offered by Western partners. The outcome would be negotiated, not dictated.

The same is true along the broader ring of African ports. Some governments have already shown that they can renegotiate terms, cancel or scale back projects, or diversify their partnerships when domestic politics or alternative financing permit. Ports are political ecosystems: unions, business elites, navies, coast guards, and parliaments all shape what can actually be done from these facilities. For China, the strategic question is not simply “Do we own a stake in the terminal?” but “What does the local ecosystem permit us to do when it really matters?”

Djibouti’s relevance to the Persian Gulf, therefore, is contingent as much as structural. It provides China with tools—presence, infrastructure, and a symbol of staying power near critical sea lanes but those tools are mediated by African agency and by the embedded interests of other external powers.

Selective Immunity and the Future of the Maritime Order

One of the most striking features of the current Red Sea–Gulf environment is the emergence of what might be called “selective immunity”: de facto differentiated treatment for certain flags and owners. Reports that Houthi actors have declared Chinese vessels safe, or at least have treated them differently from U.S. and Israel-linked shipping, are an early glimpse of a world in which not all merchantmen are equal in the eyes of non‑state or proxy actors.

Here Djibouti’s role is subtle but important. A Chinese base at the hinge, plus an array of African ports and a strong political channel into Tehran, gives Beijing both visibility and leverage over the security of its own commerce. Beijing can signal, negotiate, and, if necessary, redeploy to minimize risk to Chinese vessels, while others bear the brunt of disruptions or rerouting costs.

That does not mean China fully controls the behavior of groups like the Houthis. It does mean, however, that armed actors may see China as a distinct category, an actor whose ships are economically important, whose political relationship with Iran matters, and whose response is likely to be calibrated rather than overtly military. The combination of these factors can produce a tacit incentive to give Chinese shipping a different risk profile.

For the United States and its allies, this emerging practice of selective immunity poses hard questions. How do you sustain a rules‑based maritime order when some actors are both unwilling and unable to treat all legitimate commerce the same? What role does naval presence play in such an environment if presence alone does not equal protection for every flag? And how do you respond when a competitor can quietly insulate its traffic while your own or your partners’ shipping is targeted as a matter of strategic design?

Djibouti is not the cause of this new pattern, but it is part of the infrastructure that enables Beijing to play this differentiated game: a base for observation and liaison, a nearby platform for limited deployments, and a symbol that China is now a resident power in the hinge zone, not a distant observer.

The U.S.–China Contest Reframed

Once Djibouti is placed within this adaptive access and selective immunity frame, the U.S.–China contest around the Persian Gulf looks less like a race to park the most hulls near Hormuz and more like a contest over who can offer the most reliable, politically sustainable access in a crisis.

On the U.S. side, the traditional strengths remain formidable: carrier strike groups, preexisting basing networks in and around the Gulf, rich ISR and strike capabilities, and enduring partnerships with key Gulf monarchies. But those strengths sit inside an access model that assumes the ability to secure chokepoints by force and to treat all legitimate commerce as equally entitled to protection. That model struggles when adversaries or proxies selectively harass some flags and spare others, and when host nations are hedging rather than aligning.

On the Chinese side, the emerging model is not built around dominance at chokepoints. It is built around continuity: ensuring that, under most plausible crisis conditions short of a major power war, Chinese trade can continue to flow along at least some acceptable routes. Djibouti, African ports, and political relationships with actors like Iran are instruments in this continuity strategy. So are more mundane factors like diversified shipping companies, insurance arrangements, and the ability to signal nationality in ways that matter to armed groups making targeting decisions.

In that context, Djibouti reshapes the U.S.–China contest in at least three ways:

• It brings Chinese presence and observation into immediate proximity with U.S. and allied operations near critical sea lanes, adding a layer of intelligence competition and potential misperception.
• It strengthens Beijing’s argument to Gulf actors that China is now a resident stakeholder in the security of the approaches to Hormuz, not just a distant energy customer.
• It underwrites a narrative of Chinese reliability in crisis, “our ships kept moving; we did not abandon our trade”, that can be contrasted with Western rerouting and disruption.

For Washington and its partners, the response cannot be a mirror‑image attempt to recreate a Chinese‑style port network. It has to be an adaptation of their own strengths to a world where access is co‑produced with host nations and where flags are not treated equally by violent actors. That means deeper investment in port resilience with African and Middle Eastern partners, co‑designed security and emergency protocols, diversified financing to avoid single‑creditor dominance, and operational innovations—escorts, unmanned systems, distributed logistics—that make contested routes more manageable.

African Agency at the Center

One of the most important implications of this Djibouti-as‑hinge frame is that African agency is not peripheral to the Persian Gulf story; it is central. The logic of adaptive access assumes cooperation from hosts. Ports are not empty infrastructure waiting to be used; they are embedded in political economies, patronage networks, and security institutions that have their own agendas.

Djibouti’s leadership will calibrate China’s use of its facilities in light of domestic politics, economic needs, and the reactions of other external partners. Kenyan authorities will navigate Gulf trade risks according to their own priorities, not simply as collateral damage of other people’s rivalries. South Africa’s decisions about which naval exercises to host will reflect its foreign policy identity and regional ambitions as much as any leverage held by Beijing or Washington.

For China, this means that adaptive access is always adaptive in two senses: adapting routes and behavior at sea, and adapting relationships and arrangements ashore. For the United States and its allies, it means that efforts to blunt or compete with China’s logistics universe must begin with a willingness to treat African states as co‑authors of maritime order, not as pawns or victims.

Djibouti, again, is illustrative. It is not a Chinese command node in the way a home‑territory base might be. It is a negotiated space where multiple powers jostle for influence and where the host uses external interest to maximize its own options. How Djibouti chooses to manage that space in a prolonged Gulf crisis will tell us as much about African strategic agency as it does about Chinese intent.

Where Maritime Strategy now Begins

Seen through this lens, China’s Djibouti complex and its role in the Persian Gulf are best understood not as a final proof of a grand Chinese design, nor as just one more base in a crowded map of global deployments. They are an early, vivid demonstration of how ports, politics, and flags intersect in an era of adaptive access.

The questions that flow from this are the ones that should animate serious maritime strategy in the years ahead:

How do major powers design logistics networks that can survive selective harassment and contested chokepoints without either capitulating or escalating uncontrollably?

How can coalitions sustain freedom of navigation when some actors will be willing to differentiate among flags and when some commercial partners may quietly accept that differentiation as the price of continuity?

How can external powers work with African and Middle Eastern hosts to build port ecosystems that are resilient, plural, and politically sustainable, rather than brittle, debt‑loaded, and prone to capture?

Djibouti sits at the center of these questions because it sits at the intersection of the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf, and Africa’s waterfronts. Watching how China uses, and is constrained in using, that hinge in the next round of crises will tell us far more about the trajectory of maritime competition than any abstract debate about “strings of pearls.”

This article was stimulated by reading a recent LinkedIn post by Manish Acharya on African ports and China’s so‑called “parallel logistics universe,” which offered a useful provocation, one that deserves to be extended and reframed through the Djibouti–Gulf lens.

𝑻𝒉𝒆 “𝑺𝒕𝒓𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒐𝒇 𝑷𝒆𝒂𝒓𝒍𝒔” 𝑱𝒖𝒔𝒕 𝑮𝒐𝒕 𝑺𝒕𝒓𝒆𝒔𝒔-𝑻𝒆𝒔𝒕𝒆𝒅. 𝑯𝒆𝒓𝒆’𝒔 𝑾𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝑼𝑺-𝑰𝒓𝒂𝒏 𝑪𝒐𝒏𝒇𝒍𝒊𝒄𝒕 𝑹𝒆𝒗𝒆𝒂𝒍𝒔.

By Robbin Laird

What is the impact of the U.S.–Israeli war against Iran on Russia? With Washington forced to juggle a major confrontation in the Middle East while continuing to support Ukraine, it can appear as though Moscow has successfully shifted the strategic spotlight away from its own aggression in Europe. In public debate this often sounds like a tidy story: the West is overstretched and distracted; Russia gains time, resources, and leverage.​

Robert Czulda’s analysis points to something more complicated and ultimately more disturbing for Europe’s eastern flank. The conflict is less a clear geopolitical “win” for Russia than a warning about the fragility and volatility of Moscow’s position. Russia does gain certain tactical advantages from the war against Iran, but those gains are contingent, hard to sustain, and intertwined with deep structural weaknesses. That is precisely why the situation should be treated as a cautionary tale rather than a settled outcome.​

As Czulda emphasizes, Iran is not a marginal player for Russia but one of its most important wartime partners. Tehran has supplied Moscow with Shahed and Mohajer‑6 drones, hundreds of short‑range ballistic missiles, artillery ammunition, and a range of other military equipment that has been vital in sustaining Russia’s campaign against Ukraine. Russia has even moved to license‑produce Iranian‑designed drones domestically, further entrenching the partnership.​

The war against Iran therefore hits close to home for Moscow. A state in which it has invested considerable diplomatic, industrial, and military capital is now under intense U.S.–Israeli pressure. Yet Russia’s response, as Czulda underlines, has been highly constrained: rhetorical condemnation of an “unprovoked act of armed aggression” and limited intelligence assistance, but no meaningful effort to alter the military balance or deter further strikes. This is not simply a matter of choice.​

The Kremlin is constrained by its own war in Ukraine and by the structural limits of its defense industry. It must also balance relations with Arab monarchies and avoid a direct collision with Washington that could carry unpredictable risks. The result is an uncomfortable spectacle for states that have come to rely on Russian protection: a “near‑ally” under attack while Moscow stays largely on the sidelines. For regimes in Syria, Venezuela, Mali, or Cuba, this undercuts the narrative of Russia as a reliable strategic patron willing to incur serious costs on behalf of its partners.​

In this sense, the Iran war is exposing a reputational vulnerability. Russia wants to be seen as the alternative to the United States as a security provider, but its actual behavior suggests a power with limited margin for bold action and an acute awareness of its own weaknesses. That is not a stable foundation for long‑term influence.​

Tactical Gains Built on Western Vulnerability

Czulda nevertheless lays out several ways in which the war against Iran appears to work to Russia’s advantage. First and most obvious is the diversion of political and strategic attention. The Middle East once again consumes Washington’s senior leadership bandwidth, media focus, and crisis‑management energy. Events on NATO’s eastern frontier risk sliding from the top of the agenda to second place.​

That shift has operational implications. Czulda points to France’s decision to pull the aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle and its strike group out of the Baltic and send it to the eastern Mediterranean. For frontline allies such as Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Poland, and Finland, this is precisely the pattern they fear: high‑value Western naval and air assets being relocated away from the Baltic and High North just as Russia remains entrenched in its war against Ukraine. The symbolism of presence matters; when key platforms are redeployed, the perception of vulnerability grows.​

Second, the intensity of the Iran conflict accelerates the depletion of U.S. and allied munitions. Czulda notes estimates of more than 800 Patriot interceptors fired in just five days of hostilities, an extraordinary burn rate for one high‑end system. Reconstituting these stocks will take years, not months. In the meantime, promised or planned deployments of additional air and missile defense assets to Central and Eastern Europe risk being deferred. For states living under the shadow of Russian missile and drone forces, the prospect that badly needed systems will arrive later, or in fewer numbers, is alarming.​

Third, the energy dimension matters. Before the crisis escalated, key producers in OPEC+ and beyond had already begun adjusting production in anticipation of turmoil. Even so, oil prices spiked back toward 100 dollars per barrel, levels not seen since the immediate aftermath of Russia’s full‑scale invasion of Ukraine. Under pressure to stabilize markets and protect its own economy, Washington has already shown some willingness to relax elements of its sanctions regime such as allowing Russian oil stranded at sea to be redirected to India. If instability continues, Czulda warns that calls for broader sanction waivers or temporary relaxations will intensify, increasing the incentives for Western governments to normalize relations with Moscow.​

Yet this apparent energy windfall for Moscow rests on a narrowing and unstable set of external supports. Russia’s war economy has come to depend on a shadow ecosystem of discounted oil flows, sanctions‑evasion schemes, and politically aligned buyers that keep hard‑currency revenues trickling in despite Western restrictions. In that system, Iran and Venezuela matter not only as fellow revisionist states but as crucial nodes channeling cut‑rate barrels to Asian demand centres, above all China. When that network begins to fray at the very moment Russia is waging an industrial‑scale land war in Europe, the picture shifts from that of a resilient energy superpower to that of an overstretched petro‑state living off increasingly fragile work‑arounds.​

The effective elimination of Venezuela from the Russian orbit through internal crisis, negotiated openings to Western firms, and renewed U.S. leverage over Caracas’s access to global markets erodes one of Moscow’s more convenient hemispheric partnerships. What had served as an instrument of influence in Latin America and an auxiliary route for financial and energy transactions becomes, at best, neutral ground and, at worst, another case study for other clients in how quickly Russian “protection” can evaporate when circumstances shift. For a Kremlin already losing altitude in Syria and feeling pressure in places such as Mali and Cuba, this loss of position in Venezuela reinforces the broader pattern of a shrinking, not expanding, informal empire.​

At the same time, sustained pressure on Iranian oil exports to China whether through renewed U.S. enforcement, conflict‑related disruptions, or cautious hedging in Beijing cuts into a central pillar of the Russia–Iran–China triangle. Chinese appetite for discounted barrels has been one of the main shock absorbers cushioning both Moscow and Tehran from Western sanctions. If Washington can simultaneously constrain Iranian flows and discourage China from openly backfilling Russian exports, while President Trump ramps up U.S. oil and gas production, the global balance begins to tilt. Increased North American supply gives Washington and its partners more room to absorb shocks and to tighten sanctions without automatically triggering the kind of price spikes that previously forced retreats.​

The uncertainty surrounding the Gulf of Hormuz is the wild card. As long as Iranian and Houthi threats cast a shadow over the Strait, markets will continue to price in disruption risk, and some actors will be tempted to ease sanctions in search of short‑term stability. But the Gulf Cooperation Council states have powerful incentives of their own to keep the sea‑lanes open and to prevent Tehran from weaponizing the region’s main artery of commerce. Their naval deployments, quiet coordination with Western forces, and efforts to harden energy infrastructure are not gestures of charity toward Washington. They are moves to protect their own export lifelines and fiscal stability. In doing so, they narrow the window for Iran to use the Strait as a durable lever and, by extension, for Russia to rely on Iranian‑enabled energy turmoil as a structural advantage.​

From Moscow’s perspective, this convergence is sobering. Instead of a long‑term, structurally favourable energy environment, it faces a world in which key partners like Venezuela drift away, Iran is under unprecedented military and economic pressure, and China calibrates its exposure with increasing care. U.S. production growth and a more activist Gulf only underline the point. Russian leaders may still profit from episodic turmoil and price spikes, but those profits are opportunistic and contingent, not the fruit of a stable external support system.​

From the Kremlin’s vantage point, all of this is welcome: Western distraction, depleted arsenals, and high energy prices that boost Russian revenues. But, as Czulda stresses, these are opportunistic benefits, not products of a coherent Russian strategy. Moscow is not dictating the tempo or parameters of the conflict; it is merely exploiting the side‑effects of Western decisions. That makes these advantages inherently fragile.​

The Iran Campaign as Deliberate Architecture, Not Strategic Accident

Czulda’s analysis, valuable as it is, treats Western distraction from Europe as an unintended side effect of the Iran conflict, a windfall Russia did not engineer and cannot fully control. That framing is correct as far as it goes, but it understates the extent to which the campaign against Iran reflects a coherent strategic logic running across both Trump administrations. When that logic is understood, Russia’s apparent gains look even more contingent and fragile than Czulda suggests.

The Abraham Accords, the Riyadh speech, the calibrated approach to munitions transfers in Ukraine, and the current military campaign against Iran are not disconnected episodes. They are chapters in a single long-range strategy whose core objective is the containment and ultimate transformation of Iran and through Iran, the erosion of Russia’s most consequential partner in its global revisionist project. Iran is not merely a Middle Eastern problem. It is a key node in the alignment of Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea that defines the strategic environment of the current decade. Any serious effort to contest Russian revisionism must reckon with Iran’s role in sustaining it: as a sanctions-busting partner, a supplier of drones and ballistic missiles to Russia’s war in Ukraine, and a spoiler capable of driving energy crises and regional instability to Moscow’s advantage.

The Abraham Accords were, from inception, designed as architecture against Iran, intended to consolidate a U.S.-aligned regional bloc in which Israel and key Arab partners could cooperate on the strategic challenge posed by Tehran’s network of proxies, ballistic missiles, and nuclear ambitions. The “crown jewel” was always Saudi-Israeli normalization, because a deal between Riyadh and Jerusalem would have cemented a coalition spanning the Gulf, the Levant, and North Africa, leaving Iran diplomatically encircled by its own neighbors. That Hamas, an organization sustained by Iranian money, weapons, and training, launched the October 7 attack precisely to derail that normalization process only confirms how seriously Iran’s proxy network understood the strategic stakes. The architects of that attack were willing to risk a regional war to stop a diplomatic process, which is itself evidence of how threatening the Accords’ logic was to Tehran and, by extension, to Moscow.

This context reframes two of Czulda’s key points. First, on munitions: Trump’s calibrated approach to precision weapons transfers in Ukraine has generated criticism from those who read it as indifference to Kyiv or deference to Moscow. But the United States faces a genuine munitions constraint, and the campaign against Iran demands exactly the categories of capability that Ukraine has consumed in large quantities, long-range precision strike, integrated air and missile defense, and ISR architecture needed to prosecute a complex, distributed target set. Prioritizing the Middle East theater is not strategic negligence. It reflects a deliberate judgment about where those finite assets are most critically needed. Russia’s apparent windfall from depleted Western arsenals is, in this reading, a cost the United States has consciously accepted in pursuit of a larger strategic objective.

Second, on energy: Czulda correctly identifies rising oil prices and potential sanction slippage as benefits for Moscow. But sustained pressure on Iranian oil exports to China, whether through U.S. enforcement, conflict-related disruptions, or cautious hedging in Beijing, cuts into a central pillar of the Russia–Iran–China triangle. Chinese appetite for discounted barrels has been one of the main shock absorbers cushioning both Moscow and Tehran from Western sanctions. If Washington can simultaneously constrain Iranian flows, discourage open Chinese backfilling of Russian exports, and ramp up North American production, the global energy balance begins to tilt against the revisionist axis. Episodic price spikes may benefit Russia in the short term; structural degradation of the Iran-Russia-China supply chain is a different matter entirely.

In short, Czulda is right that Russia gains opportunistically from the Iran war. But the deeper point is that Russia is watching the deliberate dismantlement of the strategic architecture on which its revisionism has depended, the Iran partnership, the proxy network, the sanctions-evasion ecosystem. Those are not incidental losses. They are the target. And that makes Russia’s position considerably more precarious than a simple accounting of short-term tactical advantages would suggest.

​A Shrinking Network and Strategic Overstretch

The deeper message in Czulda’s piece is that Russia’s underlying strategic position is more precarious than the superficial narrative of “benefiting from chaos” suggests. Moscow is fighting a grinding land war in Europe that continues to drain men, materiel, and political capital. Its defense industry, while ramped up, remains under sanctions pressure and strained by wartime demands.​

At the same time, Russia’s broader network of partners and clients is under stress. Czulda notes that Moscow has already lost or seen its position weaken in Syria and Venezuela. It faces mounting jihadist challenges in Mali, where its influence has relied heavily on irregular formations, and it feels historical pressure in Cuba. Iran, in this context, is one of the few robust partners left where Russia can claim a mutually advantageous relationship.​

If the current conflict leaves Iran significantly weakened, internally destabilized, or forced into deals that cut across Russian interests, much of that regional leverage could evaporate. And if, as in the present crisis, Russia is seen to offer little more than rhetorical support and limited intelligence assistance, other partners will factor that reality into their own calculations. The image of a confident, globally projecting Russia starts to look more like that of a power juggling multiple fragile dependencies, seeking advantage on the margins of crises it does not control.​

From the perspective of Central and Eastern Europe, this combination, structural Russian weakness plus opportunistic behavior, is unnerving. It suggests a Russia that may feel compelled to exploit short‑lived opportunities aggressively precisely because it doubts the long‑term sustainability of its position.​

The “New Vietnam Syndrome” and Europe’s Risk Calculus

Czulda introduces another crucial concern: the risk that a costly Iran war could produce a “new Vietnam syndrome” in the United States. If the conflict becomes prolonged, bloody, and politically divisive, U.S. domestic appetite for further overseas commitments could erode sharply. For allies on NATO’s eastern flank, that prospect is not abstract for it translates directly into fears that Washington might hesitate to confront Russia in a future crisis.​

Lithuania’s reaction, as described by Czulda, is telling. Senior officials not only support strikes on Iran but signal a willingness to deploy troops to assist the United States. This is less about enthusiasm for a Middle Eastern war than about signaling: Lithuania wants to demonstrate that it is prepared to share risks now in the hope of keeping the U.S. strategically engaged later, when the threat may come directly from Russia.​

The problem is that this is ultimately a bet on U.S. domestic resilience. If a new generation of Americans comes to see Middle Eastern entanglements as proof that “foreign wars” are a costly distraction, isolationist currents could strengthen, undermining the credibility of U.S. commitments to Ukraine and NATO. That outcome would unquestionably benefit Russia in the short term. But it could also catalyze a deeper shift in Europe, as frontline states accelerate rearmament and move toward more autonomous defense structures focused squarely on deterring Moscow.​

The Iran war thus creates a dilemma: it may weaken American willingness to lead, but it may also trigger a more hardened, regionally focused European response. From Russia’s point of view, this is a highly unpredictable mix.​

A Warning from NATO’s Eastern Flank

Taken together, Czulda’s arguments show why the current conflict should be read as a warning about Russia’s strategic environment rather than a verdict in its favor. For Central and Eastern Europe, the war against Iran is not some distant theater. It is a crisis that is reshaping U.S. priorities, straining key military capabilities, testing Russia’s reliability as a patron, and shifting energy and sanctions dynamics, all in ways that can directly affect the balance of power on NATO’s eastern frontier.​

They see an adversary that is still willing to use force, that gains from Western distraction, and that benefits from high energy prices and sanction slippage. But they also see a Russia that is simultaneously overstretched, losing ground in parts of its informal empire, and unable or unwilling to decisively support a critical partner under attack. That tension between tactical opportunity and strategic fragility is exactly what makes the situation so dangerous.​

Czulda’s contribution is to insist that policymakers and analysts grapple with this complexity. The war against Iran may offer Russia short‑term openings, but those openings rest on fragile political and economic foundations. They may also accelerate processes, European rearmament, doubts about Russia’s reliability, renewed attention to NATO’s eastern defenses, that ultimately work against Moscow. In that sense, the Iran conflict is not simply another chapter in a story of Russian advantage. It is a warning that Russia’s strategic position is far less solid than it appears and that precisely for this reason, Moscow may be tempted to exploit volatile crises before its window closes, with NATO’s eastern members standing directly in the line of risk.​

The Iran Conflict and Russia’s Strategic Calculus: Risks, Opportunities, and the View from Central and Eastern Europe

For my recently relesed book on the global war in Ukraine, see the following:

The Global War in Ukraine: An Essay on the Changing Global Order

By Robert Czulda

For Central and Eastern European states (particularly Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Poland) as well as Northern Europe (notably Finland), the primary and enduring threat remains. Russia, which, despite strategic setbacks, shows no intention of halting the war in Ukraine. The outbreak of conflict against Iran also affects Russia, and by extension its position and interests on NATO’s Eastern Flank.

At the outset of the war against Iran, some commentators erroneously claimed that the conflict would disadvantage Russia by cutting off its access to Iranian weapons, including drones. Indeed, Iran has supplied Russia with Shahed and Mohajer-6 drones, as well as hundreds of ballistic missiles (such as the Fateh-110), artillery shells, and small-arms ammunition, worth billions of dollars. However, it is important to note that Russia now produces Iranian-designed drones under license and does not rely on imports from Iran.

The consequences for Russia arising from the ongoing war against Iran come from a different direction. For now, they are mixed, and a full assessment of long-term impacts remains premature, as the outcome of the war is still uncertain.

In response to the U.S.-Israeli strike, Moscow’s reaction was very limited. The Kremlin condemned the strikes as an “unprovoked act of armed aggression,” yet its actual involvement was minimal. Reports primarily cite the provision of intelligence to Iran, including the locations of American ships and aircraft.

This is hardly surprising, as the two countries cooperate closely but are not formal allies. No defense clauses obligate Russia to active engagement. Russia also has other reasons to avoid direct support for Iran.

Beyond its own military limitations and the inability of its defense industry to deliver large batches of weapons to Iran, geopolitical factors play a key role: the Kremlin is reluctant to antagonize relations with Arab monarchies by directly supporting Iran, and Putin is unwilling to jeopardize his direct relations with President Trump.

On one hand, the fact that a relatively close partner (albeit not an ally) has become the target of an attack is worrisome for Russia, which has recently lost allies in Syria and Venezuela. In recent years, Russia has invested considerable time, energy, and resources into cooperation with Iran. A scenario in which these gains are lost, whether due to military action or internal developments in Iran, would be disadvantageous for the Kremlin. The Russian partner is under significant pressure while Moscow remains largely passive, sending a negative signal to all of Russia’s partners. This is especially true when considering other challenges, such as growing problems with jihadists in Mali, which has also relied on Russian support, and increasing pressure on Cuba.

On the other hand, the war against Iran presents certain opportunities, particularly if the conflict is prolonged and therefore politically and financially costly for the U.S. and its allies. The Middle East crisis diverts global attention from the war in Ukraine; recent events in Europe, right on the continent’s doorstep, have taken a backseat.

At the same time, Russia’s supporters gain an argument highlighting perceived Western hypocrisy. The West has long criticized Russia for the war in Ukraine, yet the United States has now initiated similar actions against Iran.

This dynamic is not just rhetorical. A clear example is France’s decision to withdraw the aircraft carrier “Charles de Gaulle” and its strike group from the Baltic Sea and redirect it to the eastern Mediterranean.

This development heightens anxiety in Central and Eastern Europe, particularly among the Baltic states, which are most sensitive to potential Russian actions. This scenario aligns with Russia’s interests.

Lithuania’s response illustrates this: authorities regard the risk of hostile actions from Moscow as highly serious. For instance, Asta Skaisgirytė, chief foreign policy adviser to Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda, openly supported the strike on Iran and stated that Lithuania would consider deploying troops to assist the U.S.

Similarly, Raimundas Vaikšnoras, commander of the Lithuanian Armed Forces, echoed this stance. This narrative reflects both genuine concern and efforts to maintain U.S. attention on Central and Eastern Europe.

From the perspective of Central and Eastern Europe, an American failure would be alarming. A “new Vietnam syndrome” would further reduce U.S. willingness to engage in a potential war against Russia, should Moscow attack NATO or undertake other hostile actions.

U.S. setbacks and decreased commitment to serving as Europe’s security provider would benefit Russia, which could gain influence amid worsening U.S.-Arab relations in the Persian Gulf.

Russia’s expectations extend beyond the potential erosion of Western support for Kyiv: there are also practical implications. Central and Eastern Europe is concerned about the rapid depletion of U.S. munitions. According to available estimates, in just five days of hostilities with Iran, over 800 Patriot anti-ballistic missiles were fired.

Replenishing these stocks, for U.S. troops and allied forces alike, could take years. This means that deliveries of new launchers and anti-missile systems to Central and Eastern European countries, in both peacetime and crises, could be significantly delayed, increasing their vulnerability to Russia.

Another substantial benefit for Russia could be rising profits from energy prices. Even before the Strait of Hormuz disruption, OPEC+ members, along with some non-aligned producers, decided to increase daily oil production by 206,000 barrels. Saudi Arabia has been increasing production and exports by approximately 500,000 barrels per day in recent weeks, preparing for potential U.S. strikes on OPEC+ member Iran.

This tactic failed to achieve the intended effect, as oil prices rose, reaching $100 per barrel on March 9. It matched the peak seen in 2022, when Russia attacked Ukraine. In response, two days earlier, the U.S. government temporarily eased economic sanctions to allow Russian oil stranded at sea to be sold to India.

Continued instability may increase pressure to introduce further sanction relaxations or waivers. Under these conditions, the entire West could feel compelled to normalize relations with Russia.

In conclusion, the U.S.-Israel war against Iran exposes both risks and opportunities for Russia, while highlighting vulnerabilities and associated concerns in Central and Eastern Europe. Moscow’s restraint, coupled with Western distraction and strained resources, may strengthen Russia’s strategic position.

By Robbin Laird

For most of its history, U.S. Central Command has been an Army officer’s domain. Since its founding in 1983, CENTCOM has been led predominantly by Army and Marine generals whose careers were shaped by the grinding land campaigns of Iraq and Afghanistan. The combatant command that oversaw two of America’s longest wars naturally gravitated toward the warrior traditions of ground combat.

That era, for now, appears to have passed.

When President Donald Trump nominated Vice Admiral Brad Cooper to lead CENTCOM in June 2025, selecting him over Army General James Mingus who had been widely expected to receive the post it was widely interpreted as a deliberate strategic signal.

The Trump administration was signaling, well before Operation Epic Fury commenced, that what was coming would not be another ground war. It would be a maritime and air campaign against the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism.

And to fight it, they wanted the officer who understood these waters, literally and figuratively, better than anyone else in uniform.

Cooper took command at MacDill Air Force Base on August 8, 2025, becoming the first naval officer to lead CENTCOM since Admiral William J. Fallon in 2008.

He brought to that command something no recent predecessor could match: nearly three years living and operating in the heart of the region he would now command in war.

From 2021 to 2024, Cooper served as Commander of U.S. Naval Forces Central Command, U.S. Fifth Fleet, and Combined Maritime Forces, all headquartered in Manama, Bahrain. That triple-hatted role placed him at the center of the most consequential maritime geography on earth: the Arabian Gulf, the Strait of Hormuz, the Red Sea, and the Gulf of Aden. The three chokepoints that govern global energy flows and commercial shipping all fell within his area of responsibility.

But the significance of the Bahrain years runs deeper than geography.

As 5th Fleet Commander, Cooper was simultaneously the commander of Combined Maritime Forces, a multinational naval coalition that, under his leadership, expanded to encompass over forty nations. He also led the International Maritime Security Construct, another coalition architecture focused on the critical waterways now at the center of the Iran conflict.

In Bahrain, Cooper was not merely a forward-deployed American admiral. He was the operational hub around which the entire region’s maritime security architecture revolved.

During those years, Cooper made relationship-building the explicit centerpiece of his command philosophy. He spoke publicly and consistently about what he called ‘the four most important ships in the Middle East’: relationships, partnerships, friendship, and shared leadership. It was a framing that struck some observers as unusual for a combatant commander, more diplomat than warrior. But Cooper’s view was that in a region as complex as the Gulf, where trust between the United States and its Arab partners had been tested by years of perceived strategic retreat, those four ‘ships’ were operational prerequisites. Without them, no coalition would hold under fire.

The depth of Cooper’s regional investment during the Bahrain years is visible across multiple dimensions. He oversaw the expansion of Combined Maritime Forces when Egypt joined, bringing the coalition to 34 nations at that time. He established Combined Task Force 153, a new multinational formation focused specifically on the Red Sea, the Bab el-Mandeb, and the Gulf of Aden, the waters that would become, just months later, the killing ground of Operation Prosperity Guardian and then Operation Poseidon Archer against the Houthis.

His relationship with Bahrain itself went beyond the transactional. Cooper described the island kingdom as a ‘second home’ for Naval Forces Central Command and Fifth Fleet, noting that American and Bahraini families lived side by side, with children attending school together. He presided over exercises like Neon Defender, a bilateral training event covering maritime security, installation security, airfield repair, medical response, and explosive ordnance disposal that demonstrated the operational intimacy between U.S. and Bahraini forces. When he briefed Bahraini naval leadership on the capabilities of the newly established Task Force 59, he was not presenting to a distant partner. He was briefing allies who already shared his operational picture.

That operational picture was being transformed. In September 2021, Cooper established Task Force 59, the Navy’s first unmanned and artificial intelligence task force in Bahrain. Beginning as an experimental formation, TF-59 grew under his command into an operational entity that fielded unmanned surface vessels from multiple nations, conducted the world’s largest unmanned maritime exercise with over 80 unmanned systems from 10 nations, and achieved what Cooper described as the ‘first use of weapons aboard an unmanned platform’ in the region’s operational history. In 2022 alone, TF-59 was already integrating MARTAC Mantas T-12 unmanned surface vehicles with Bahraini naval assets in joint exercises, a harbinger of the mesh-fleet approach to maritime operations that would define the 2026 campaign.

The Gulf Cooperation Council states, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, and Oman, have historically maintained complex, sometimes contradictory relationships with U.S. military operations in their neighborhood. The 2023 Hamas attacks and the subsequent Gaza conflict strained those relationships further, as Arab publics and governments navigated the tension between their security dependence on Washington and their political exposure on the Palestinian question. Cooper understood these tensions firsthand. He was sitting in Manama when Operation Prosperity Guardian was assembled, when the Red Sea crisis deepened, and when the Biden administration’s Houthi response drew criticism for being too hesitant.

When the Trump administration began its diplomatic and military pressure campaign against Iran in early 2026, Cooper was already serving as CENTCOM Deputy Commander, then as its commander. He was present at the indirect negotiations in Muscat on February 6, 2026, a visual reminder, as the Center for Strategic and International Studies noted, that the USS Abraham Lincoln was operating just offshore. Iran’s refusal to renounce its nuclear ambitions across three rounds of negotiations set the stage for what followed.

On February 28, 2026, Cooper ordered the commencement of Operation Epic Fury, a jointly coordinated U.S.-Israeli campaign which is the most significant American military action in the Middle East since the Iraq War. The stated objectives were fourfold: prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, destroy its missile arsenal and production infrastructure, degrade its proxy networks, and eliminate its conventional naval capability. Cooper’s own framing was characteristically direct: ‘The goal of CENTCOM’s operation is to dismantle the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.’

What distinguishes Operation Epic Fury from CENTCOM’s recent history is not simply its scale, though the scale has been extraordinary, with over 50,000 U.S. troops, 200 fighter aircraft, two aircraft carrier strike groups, and strategic bomber packages from B-2, B-1, and B-52 assets all committed to the campaign.

What distinguishes it is its character: this is fundamentally a naval and air campaign, executed from maritime platforms, targeting maritime and missile infrastructure, in a theater where the Strait of Hormuz, the Arabian Gulf, and the broader Persian Gulf littoral form the decisive terrain.

Cooper has been at the podium describing the campaign’s progress with the precision of a commander who knows every nautical mile of his battlespace. By day six, he was reporting that ballistic missile attacks against U.S. forces and partners had decreased by 90 percent since the campaign’s opening, and drone attacks by 83 percent. The Iranian Navy, which for decades had harassed commercial shipping and threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz, was being systematically annihilated. Over 30 Iranian naval vessels were sunk or destroyed, including what Cooper described as an Iranian drone carrier ‘roughly the size of a World War II aircraft carrier,’ which U.S. forces struck and left ablaze. In a particularly significant operational milestone, Cooper confirmed: ‘There is not a single Iranian ship underway in the Arabian Gulf, Strait of Hormuz, or Gulf of Oman.’

This is a statement no CENTCOM commander has been able to make in the modern era. Its strategic significance extends well beyond the immediate campaign. The Strait of Hormuz has long been Iran’s most potent asymmetric lever, the threatened closure of which underpinned three decades of Iranian deterrence strategy. Cooper and the forces under his command have now, at least for this operational phase, removed that lever from the board.

Perhaps the most underappreciated aspect of the current campaign is what is not breaking down: the coalition architecture.

Iran, in its initial retaliatory phase, attacked twelve countries and launched drone strikes toward civilian residential areas in Bahrain, a direct strike at the hub of the regional maritime partnership Cooper spent three years building. The attack on Bahrain’s Fifth Fleet headquarters on February 28, which damaged satellite communications terminals and several base structures, was a direct targeting of the command architecture Cooper once led.

Yet Bahrain has held. The GCC states, whatever their private reservations about the broader political dimensions of the campaign, have not fractured from the U.S. operational framework. Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and other Gulf partners are not openly opposing Operation Epic Fury. This coalition resilience did not happen by accident. It is, in significant measure, the product of the patient, sustained relationship investment Cooper made during his Bahrain years, the exercises, the personal relationships, the shared operational experience of Task Force 59, the work of bringing forty-plus nations into Combined Maritime Forces and keeping them there through the Red Sea crisis.

Cooper’s critics on the Iran question, those who would have preferred continued diplomacy, point to the risks of escalation and the human costs of military action. These are legitimate concerns that serious strategists must weigh.

But the operational framework Cooper has constructed is notable for its precision as well as its power. His public statements have consistently emphasized the distinction between the Iranian regime and the Iranian people, and he has framed the campaign’s objectives in terms of capability destruction rather than indefinite occupation. When he told Iranian forces that their attacks on civilians ‘will not go unanswered,’ he was drawing a line that reflects both American resolve and his own understanding of what sustainable campaign objectives look like in a region he knows intimately.

The Trump administration’s decision to break with tradition and appoint a naval officer to lead CENTCOM reflected a clear-eyed assessment of the strategic environment. The next major confrontation in the Middle East was not going to be a counterinsurgency campaign requiring Army ground forces at scale. It was going to be a confrontation with a state adversary whose most dangerous capabilities, ballistic missiles, naval assets, drone infrastructure, nuclear program, required maritime and air power to defeat. In that environment, an officer who spent decades as a surface warfare officer, who commanded a destroyer and a cruiser, who led naval coalitions across 2.5 million square miles of contested water, and who built the unmanned maritime architecture now being used operationally, was not a departure from CENTCOM tradition. He was exactly the right commander for this moment.

There is also the question of what comes after the kinetic phase. Whoever holds power in Tehran when the shooting eventually stops will need to be engaged. The GCC states, who will be living with the consequences of this campaign long after American forces have drawn down, will need to be managed. The maritime architecture of the region, the task forces, the coalitions, the shared operating picture that Cooper built over three years in Bahrain, will be the foundation of whatever security order emerges. Cooper knows that architecture from the inside. He built much of it himself.

For four decades, CENTCOM was an Army command fighting Army wars. The appointment of Admiral Brad Cooper, and the campaign he is now executing, suggests that the command’s character is shifting to match a strategic environment defined less by occupation and counterinsurgency than by deterrence, maritime control, and the targeting of state military power. Whether Operation Epic Fury achieves all its objectives remains to be seen. What is already clear is that the officer leading it spent years preparing the ground, literally and diplomatically, for exactly this moment.

Featured image: From left, U.S. Navy Admiral Brad Cooper, U.S. Central Command commander and Egyptian Army Commander Mohamed Monatser assistant chief of staff of the Central Area pose for a photo after Cooper’s arrival for BRIGHT STAR 25 at Cairo East Air Base, Egypt, Sept. 8, 2025. The U.S. is one of over 40 countries participating in BRIGHT STAR 25, a multinational exercise, showcasing the ability of our collective partners to operate in a joint, high-intensity environment, improving readiness, responsiveness and interoperability. (U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Kevin Dunkleberger).

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