PHOTO: Dynamic Wang on Unsplash
The 2026 US-Iran war escalated from long-standing historical tensions into direct military confrontation following joint US-Israel strikes on Iran in 2026. The strikes have catalysed into large-scale Iranian retaliation across the Middle East, affecting global oil flows and regional stability.
During the Iran and the US war, Iran was simultaneously positioned as both a potential target of coercive destruction and a sovereign actor, generating a paradoxical state of strategic ambiguity. This pattern has further intensified, emerging as a fragmented, nonlinear confrontation across multiple regional theatres. Rather than producing predictable outcomes, interactions among actors create uncertainty and unintended consequences.
This war can be seen as a convenient paradox similar to Schrödinger’s cat, a “Schrödinger’s War.” The experiment in quantum theory by Schrödinger posits a situation in which a cat could be both alive and dead, suggesting the superposition of atoms —that atoms can exist in two states until observed. This pattern is seen in the post 9/11 US, where the Bush administration positioned the US as both at war and not at war, also invoking an amplified state of ‘war-plus.’ Similarly, in the US-Iran war, the US is not legally at war with Iran in constitutional terms, yet it is widely described by scholars as engaging in active warfare operations, creating a gap between the legal status of non-war and empirical realities of practical war.
As such, quantum-inspired thinking offers a useful heuristic for understanding geopolitical uncertainty. The non-causal, probabilistic logic of quantum politics underscores its usefulness for explaining war, highlighting uncertainty, superposition, chaos and shifting alignments in the networked global system. In this light, international politics could be understood not through fixed outcomes but through unfolding possibilities, in which events are determined through action and reaction.
PHOTO: Entanglement, Gerd Altmann/geralt on Pixabay
Why does the US-Iran conflict defy linear explanation?
The US-Iran conflict is difficult to explain because tactical gains against Iran’s missiles, navy and nuclear infrastructure do not translate into strategic closure. Iran adapts through proxies and asymmetric retaliation, producing a conflict locked in a prolonged, unresolved state.
Earlier approaches to political problems assume structured solutions. This is reflected in Henry Kissinger’s argument that foreign policy can produce elegant solutions, suggesting that cooperation may yield beneficial outcomes under conditions of uncertainty. But in a rapidly changing global system, small states face heightened vulnerability as they navigate between larger powers with reduced strategic space. Global interdependence has compressed time and space, such that economic, technological and informational linkages influence the decisions across states. As a result, political conditions are rapidly changing, such that crises in one region reshape the strategic calculations elsewhere, causing political realities to shift overnight.
This challenges the classical rational and mechanistic approach to international relations. US President Donald Trump’s decision-making pattern, for instance, appears to rely on uncertainty, consistent with Armen Sarkissian’s argument that complex systems display quantum-like behavior. This condition is closely linked to Zygmunt Bauman’s idea of “liquid modernity”, in which social, political and institutional structures become increasingly unstable, dissolving more rapidly than in earlier “solid modernity”, reflecting the fluid and constantly shifting nature of the contemporary world order.
Quantum politics as an interpretive framework
Quantum politics is conceptualised as an interpretive framework that draws on concepts from quantum physics to analyse political systems as uncertain, interconnected and non-deterministic. It helps explain how multi-actor conflicts unfold through flexibility, networked engagement and strategic ambiguity. By focusing on tactical uncertainty and shifting alignments, it provides a better alternative to rigid bloc-based strategies. The unpredictable nature of the Iran conflict aligns with this interpretive lens. It also reflects the argument that interpretation influences political reality, consistent with postmodern critiques of objective truth.
Uncertainty: miscalculation and strategic ambiguity
Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle underscores the limits of precise prediction. Political outcomes remain uncertain too because observation and perception influence the actors’ behaviour. What appears immutable may reflect the limited temporal horizon of human perception; as such, future events cannot be predicted with certainty. Iranian strategic behavior relies more on asymmetric and hybrid methods, making escalation pathways difficult to assess and creating structural uncertainty within the conflict.
While the stated objective of the US was regime change in Iran, achieving it would have required ground forces, which were not deployed. Historically, governments have rarely been overthrown by air power alone and US regime change expectations appear to underestimate constitutional mechanisms and security forces.
Moreover, Israeli actions such as signalling unilateral strikes, sharing intelligence on Iranian leadership and conducting pre-emptive attacks that risk escalating Iranian attacks against US bases may have contributed to catalysing US involvement in the conflict, making Washington’s involvement appear reactive rather than strategically driven. From the 1967 Six Day War to the 2006 Lebanon War against Hezbollah and the 2026 Iran conflict, uncertainty has been Israel’s fundamental problem. When the political objective appears fragmented, particularly when the pursuit of dominance and degradation risks prioritising immediate military success over a sustainable political solution, military victory does not necessarily produce strategic results. Israel’s position reflects a gap between tactical victory and strategic success. This pattern also affects their allies. There is an argument that in seeking immediate support from the US, Israel has deepened American entanglement in an open-ended war, risking US diplomatic credibility and strategic stability.
Superposition and complementarity: transatlantic divergence and dual strategic positions
Superposition refers to a condition in which multiple states exist simultaneously until observation collapses it into a single outcome. In international politics, this applies when states do not have fixed positions but operate through overlapping preferences under economic and strategic pressures. State leaders and institutions exist in an uncertain space, where many policy options coexist until a concrete choice is made. For example, these states try to balance tendencies toward neutrality with commitments to collective defence.
During the US-Iran war, NATO members, despite their institutional and strategic dependence on the US, did not follow Washington’s lead, reflecting divergent preferences. Europe supported freedom of navigation and regional stability but refused to support the US military operation. As Stephen M Walt argues in The Hell of Good Intentions, alliances persist in shared interests and trust — both of which are affected when relationships become transactional, particularly under recent US pressure upon NATO members to contribute greater defense and operational spending. The crisis, therefore, brings into play possible trajectories: continued coordination, a shift towards interest-driven collaboration in which national priorities influence decisions, or fragmentation, where divergences weaken the coalition without formal dissolution. This highlights that alliance unity is contingent — only revealing its internal divisions during a crisis when forced to take decisive action.
Complementarity, in turn, explains how these coexisting positions are interpreted differently by actors within the political reality. Allied states exhibit interpretive divergence over the conflict, with several European governments emphasizing that it is not a NATO war, thereby justifying their reluctance to adopt an interventionist approach. This reflects a transatlantic divide in which deterrence and engagement logics coexist, and where the rift between the United States and European allies exposes a lack of coordination and different strategic priorities within the alliance. Moreover, the Gulf states are caught in a condition of strategic duality: they are vulnerable to Iranian coercion while also depending on US security guarantees. No single alignment resolves the security dilemma. This is reflected in the Iranian threats and attacks on Gulf infrastructure, oil facilities, and leverage over the Strait of Hormuz, alongside the Gulf States’ continued dependence on a sustained US military presence.
Networked world: from bloc politics to networked geopolitics
The idea of a networked world challenges the traditional “East versus West”, or Global North versus Global South divide, prioritising connectivity over polarity. These binary categories fail to capture the current geopolitical landscape as connectivity through trade and finance shapes state behavior. Alliances are driven less by ideology or identity than by economic interdependence.
In quantum politics, states act as nodes that not only align only through civilisational or political blocs, but can also maintain contradictory relationships. China’s response to the Iran crisis illustrates its attempt to balance economic and geopolitical interests across both the United States and the Gulf states, driven by strategic considerations rather than ideological commitment.
Rather than risking military or economic confrontation to support Tehran, Beijing appears to have a long-term strategy. Through strategic disengagement, China indirectly benefits as the US expends military and diplomatic capital, while China positions itself as a reliable economic and strategic alternative, expanding its global influence. Similarly, the limited engagement of US allies reflects the gradual erosion of cohesive bloc politics. These strategies create both the opportunities and uncertainties of a multipolar world order without guarantees. These states cannot be assured of support or protection.
Meanwhile, nuclear negotiations, marked by both tentative progress and sudden chaos, reveal the instability of cooperative arrangements in an interconnected global system. The interaction among states within a networked world produces flexible and uncertain relationships, in which states pursue national interests without any security guarantees.
PHOTO: Saifee Art on Unsplash
Chaos and the butterfly effect: from bilateral crisis to multi-theatre war
Chaos theory shows that complex systems are highly sensitive to initial conditions. The “butterfly effect” highlights that marginal events can trigger unpredictable consequences within interconnected systems. This suggests that political decisions can escalate into unexpected, large-scale regional transformations through dynamic chains of reaction.
A conflict initiated with the objective of regime change evolved beyond its original intent because of miscalculations, the widening involvement of external and non-state actors and escalating feedback loops. What began as a bilateral confrontation expanded into a multi-theatre regional conflict involving states and proxies such as Hezbollah and the Houthis, alongside mass killings of children. Russia benefits from the United States’ divided attention, and higher global energy prices are boosting Russia’s war economy. The absence of a clearly defined end-state further amplified the conflict, allowing pathways for escalation without constraint, creating a domino effect of intensifying violence and participation. This escalation dynamic reflects Robert Pape’s concept of the “escalation trap”, where early tactical gains create an illusion of control, encouraging further escalation despite limited strategic success.
Towards a quantum reading
Looking ahead, the Iran conflict reinforces the quantum politics framework, in which international outcomes remain probabilistic rather than predetermined. The Strait of Hormuz functions as a point that has sparked global realignment and intensified regional instability. The Gulf states further illustrate superposition by balancing security dilemmas and strategic risks without any stable alignment. This produces a fluid, continuously disrupted geopolitical order through action and reaction rather than expected outcomes. The US-Iran conflict remains unresolved not because it lacks logic, but because its logic is non-causal; it has unfolded into a complex, interconnected and unstable system where certainty, control and final victory appear increasingly remote because outcomes depend on unpredictable interactions rather than fixed plans.
