Dr. Amer Al Sabaileh

The transfer of the crisis into Iran itself stands as the defining headline of 2026. Since October 7, 2023, the overall trajectory of events has clearly indicated that reaching this stage was only a matter of time, and that the accumulation of strikes and regional shifts would ultimately push the center of gravity from the periphery into Iran’s core.

In practical terms, the regional equation built around Iran’s “Unity of the Arenas” project has collapsed after more than two years of ongoing conflict. This strategy, designed to shift confrontation into Israel through adjacent geographies, simultaneous multi-front escalation, and internal penetration, produced the opposite outcome. Iran’s allies absorbed decisive blows, not due to geographic change, but as a result of a new Israeli security doctrine aimed at permanently denying the exploitation of these frontlines—thereby paving the way for the crisis to move inward into Iran in an unprecedented manner.

The confrontation between Israel and Iran unfolded through cumulative phases: targeted assassinations of Iranian figures and proxies, alongside ostensibly ambiguous incidents that nevertheless exposed the depth of Iran’s internal security breaches. The disappearance of President Ebrahim Raisi and his foreign minister, followed by the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh on the day of Iran’s new president’s inauguration—inside one of the most fortified locations—marked a critical turning point. This was followed by the twelve-day war, which demonstrated Israel’s capacity to penetrate Iranian territory and shift the battlefield inward.

The picture did not stop there. The United States carried out an unprecedented, high-impact strike against Iran’s nuclear program. Viewed collectively, these developments reveal a regime entering an advanced stage of internal exposure and external paralysis. Iran’s regional tools have been severely degraded, its ability to transfer the crisis into Israel has sharply declined, and the Iranian interior has become increasingly vulnerable to the direct consequences of its own policies.

After the twelve-day war, Iran ceased to be in confrontation with Israel alone and entered a broader standoff with the international community. The return of sanctions, deepening economic hardship, declining living standards, the inability to provide basic services—most notably water—alongside currency collapse and escalating security breaches, have all contributed to the emergence of conditions conducive to internal rupture, now manifesting in street mobilization on a scale difficult to compare with previous attempts.

Within this context, U.S.–Israeli coordination has resurfaced forcefully. President Donald Trump placed himself directly in line with the crisis, through close monitoring and explicit warnings against the use of force on protesters, stating clearly that the United States knows how to strike the Iranian regime “at its points of fatal vulnerability” without deploying ground forces.

Israel, for its part, is unlikely to miss the opportunity to push the Iranian regime toward internal collapse without incurring the tangible security costs seen during the twelve-day war. The primary risk lies in Tehran’s potential attempt to reopen regional fronts as a final bargaining card, reinforcing Israel’s drive to fully neutralize Hezbollah and end Lebanon’s role as a launchpad for threats, in parallel with escalation inside Iran.

Iranian threats to strike Israel and US interests further increase the likelihood of pre-emptive action, particularly given the Trump administration’s conviction that a fundamental change in Iran is necessary. This scenario places Lebanon, Iraq, and Yemen within the scope of direct targeting, while accelerating efforts to strip Iran of any retaliatory capacity and push toward an internal transformation centered on changing the head of the system while preserving its structural framework.

Reaching this stage was foreseeable. Iran’s gradual weakening has opened Israel’s appetite to capitalize on a moment that may not recur, based on the belief that Iran constitutes the core of the seven-front challenge—and that neutralizing this front would mark the beginning of closing the remaining open arenas and eliminating the primary sources of threat.