What Iran is doing now can be understood as an attempt to break the economic pressure against it by targeting the energy market and raising the cost of any international policy designed to constrain Tehran. At this stage, a direct military confrontation does not appear to be Iran’s most effective option. Instead, creating instability around maritime routes, energy infrastructure and international markets may offer Tehran a lower-cost way of disrupting its opponents.

 

This approach helps explain, to a large extent, why Iran has not moved directly to rescue Hezbollah, even as the group has lost a significant part of its capabilities and its infrastructure and logistical networks have come under sustained attack. Tehran has not tied its own military posture to Hezbollah’s fate, nor has it entered into a direct confrontation with Israel.

 

Its calculation appears to follow a different principle, the lowest possible cost to impose the highest possible cost on its opponents. This is where the Yemeni and Iraqi fronts become increasingly important. The fronts where Israel itself is directly present are more sensitive for Iran and more likely to trigger a direct Israeli response. Tehran therefore has an incentive to avoid turning them into fully open battlefields. Iraq and Yemen, by contrast, offer more room to pursue a strategy of raising the cost without necessarily triggering a direct war.

 

In Yemen in particular, pressure around the Bab el-Mandeb carries significance far beyond the Yemeni theater itself. Threatening one of the world’s most important maritime routes does not necessarily require sophisticated military operations. Raising the risks to shipping through relatively limited tools like missiles, drones or fast boats, may be enough to create the perception that passage through the area is no longer safe.

 

At that point, the issue moves from a regional security crisis to an international one. Higher risks around Bab el-Mandeb, combined with threats linked to the Strait of Hormuz, could quickly affect trade flows, insurance and transportation costs, and most importantly, energy prices. If this is accompanied by threats against oil and energy infrastructure in the Gulf, the region could once again face a period of oil-price instability, an environment Iran can use to increase the economic and political cost of the pressure imposed on it.

 

This is not an entirely new Iranian strategy. For years, Tehran has sought to turn the consequences of pressure against it into a problem that extends beyond Iran itself, making sanctions and economic restrictions an international concern. What is changing now is the nature of the tools available to Tehran.

 

As some fronts become more difficult and costly to exploit, the value of fronts that can be activated with relatively limited resources increases. Iraq and Yemen therefore become not separate considerations, but potential components of a broader strategy aimed at increasing the economic and security costs faced by Iran’s opponents.

 

That is why treating Iraq and Yemen as isolated regional issues is no longer sufficient. Leaving these theaters in a state of security vacuum or paralysis does not eliminate the threat. It may instead give Iran greater room to use them when it believes the circumstances are favorable.

 

Iran does not need to control the energy market; it only needs to make it more unstable. It does not need to close Bab el-Mandeb completely; it only needs to make navigation more dangerous. And it does not need to destroy energy facilities; it only needs to make the possibility of an attack credible. This is where the danger of the next phase lies.

 

The protection of energy infrastructure and maritime routes will increasingly become part of the regional security equation. Arab states therefore need to move beyond simply intercepting attacks toward raising the cost of using these tools in the first place.

 

The international community, meanwhile, cannot continue to treat the Strait of Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb as separate regional issues. Maritime routes become international security concerns when their disruption threatens global supply chains and energy markets. Iran may have reached a point where direct military confrontation is more costly than the use of indirect tools. As a result, chaos itself has become an instrument of power.

 

The equation is clear, if Tehran is attempting to break the pressure against it by raising the cost for everyone else, the response cannot be limited to containing the threat. It must also focus on raising the cost of the threat itself.

 

The next phase will not be decided only on traditional battlefields. It will also be decided in maritime corridors, energy markets, and in the ability of regional states and the international community to prevent chaos from evolving from a temporary instrument into a permanent strategy of pressure.