Naveed Ahmad Noorah
The author is a security policy fellow at the International Institute for Iranian Studies (Rasanah). He specializes in hybrid threats and the impact of advanced as well as disruptive technologies on geo-strategy and warfar
Abstract
This paper examines the 2026 US/Israel-Iran conflict as a critical test of the Trump administration’s national security architecture, analyzing the friction between the National Security Strategy’s vision of “unprecedented peace” and the National Defense Strategy’s “peace through strength” doctrine. The study examines whether the shift toward transactional realism, defined by the Department of War ethos and rigorous allied burden-sharing, effectively mitigated risks of regional entanglement. It also assesses if reliance on Israeli decapitation strikes against Iran inadvertently precipitated asymmetric retaliation, hence destabilizing the Gulf region…
