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The Iran war is beginning to resemble the Ukraine war in one important way. Operationally, the wars themselves are still very different — Ukraine is a large-scale ground invasion, while the Iran war is not there just yet. But their political logic after a failure to achieve a quick result is starting to look very similar. In both cases, a larger power expected its overwhelming military force to produce a quick political result. And in both cases, that expectation failed.
The targeted state adapted, outside supporters helped it remain afloat, and both conflicts moved from the promise of a decisive outcome to an open-ended contest over survival and leverage. Ceasefires barely interrupt the fighting without resolving it (or producing any settlement beyond arrangements that had already existed before both wars started); negotiations arranged by mediating countries coexist with coercion; and marine transit — in the Strait of Hormuz and in the Black Sea — as well as sanctions and “deep strikes” have become bargaining instruments of war.
The even more important development, however, is that the two wars are interacting materially — Iran has supported Russia’s war in Ukraine since 2022. And now Russia is helping Iran with military technology and targeting, Ukraine is exporting its anti-drone expertise and knowledge to Gulf states, and the same Western missile interceptors are being stretched by both wars. The result is not one merged war, but a “two-war proxy context” in which escalation in one theater increasingly changes the balance in the other.
Any ceasefire in Ukraine, or another such “ceasefire” with Iran, would not remove the comparison. Both conflicts are much closer to a state of “managed instability” than to the genuine search for resolution, while the rest of the world is apparently transitioning towards a new balance of power.
The “managed instability” term suggested here builds on rather than replaces existing theories of coercion and conflict. Thomas Schelling’s “The Diplomacy of Violence” already argued that “the power to hurt [your enemy] is bargaining power” and that “to exploit it is diplomacy — vicious diplomacy, but diplomacy.” And the existing literature on protracted conflict, “no war, no peace,” and grey-zone competition describes other parts of the same logic — bargaining continues during fighting. The Ukraine and Iran cases contain elements of all these dynamics.
What “managed instability” adds is a different configuration of analysis. It describes what happens when bargaining through violence stops being a way toward settlement and becomes the normal — or, better, preferred — operating condition of the war. Importantly, for this condition to persist, the war does not need to benefit everyone. It is enough that it remains more advantageous than settlement for a few key actors capable of blocking a deal.
James Fearon, in his “Rationalist Explanations of War,” asks why states fail to find that right bargain before war. “Managed instability” examines why they keep finding partial bargains during war without (sometimes, consciously) finding one that ends it.
William Zartman’s “ripeness theory” — while discussing that diplomacy may be merely a pause in rearmament — defines the ripe moment of a conflict exactly as “it can’t go on like this.” Whereas the danger in Ukraine and Iran may be the opposite conclusion — that key actors may decide that it actually and absolutely can “go on like this.”
Endemic wars have happened for generations, and my argument is not that they are new. What’s new is the environment that allows this kind of war to continue. Global political fragmentation is growing, but economic interdependence still exists. At the same time, there are clear limits on escalation, especially when two nuclear powers are directly involved. This makes decisive victory harder, while tariffs, shipping, sanctions, energy, technology, supply chains, and outside support create other ways to impose costs and create leverage.
A traditional stalemate is a condition of military balance. “Managed instability” is what happens when actors learn to use that condition politically and when a political regime is built around exploiting the stalemate. Once the battlefield stops producing a decisive result, the conflict does not just “freeze,” instead moving into other areas.
In this work, I argue that once instability becomes a source of leverage, reducing it means giving something up, for both sides of both wars, as well as their formal and informal allies. And no one has a strong incentive to do so, especially without clearly knowing which side has a strategic advantage. External actors further lock in this dynamic by remotely raising both the risks of escalation and the costs of settlement.
I admit that both wars remain difficult to grasp, describe, and define in real-time, especially when considered in their broader context and in every detail. Below is my attempt to demonstrate only the clearest patterns to inform further analysis with the ultimate goal of finding the way out of both conflicts before it is too late.
The Russo-Ukrainian war began with an expectation of a quick result, when Moscow planned for the Ukrainian state to collapse. And yet it did not: Ukraine survived, Western military support and alliances expanded, unprecedented sanctions followed, and both Kyiv and Moscow adapted. The Istanbul framework in spring 2022 (along with all “informal” communication attempts) is still remembered as the road not taken. From that point on, the conflict stopped looking like a quick war with a clear political ending in sight. Instead, it became a contest over leverage, political survival, import substitution, new logistics corridors, outside support, and the ability to keep imposing costs upon an enemy and its allies without triggering an escalation neither side wanted — or could — control.
Negotiations never disappeared, and neither did narrow agreements (the Black Sea Grain Initiative was the clearest early example), but they did not resolve the core conflict. Instead, it showed that practical arrangements and continued war could coexist for years to come.
After 2022, Russia has continued to attack along the front stretching roughly 1,200 kilometers, but it has struggled to achieve a decisive breakthrough. Ukraine has also been unable to restore all its territory by force. That deadlock naturally pushed the war elsewhere.
Kyiv and Moscow expanded the power struggle into the grain and energy transits, ports, energy infrastructure, deep strikes, and the “shadow fleet,” which have all become separate arenas of pressure and leverage. Those extensions may have imposed costs, forced rerouting, tightened domestic fuel balances, and changed the environment in which the next round of military and political decisions (and negotiations) were made. But they did not end the war and instead became part of how the prolonged war worked for everyone involved.
In Ukraine, managed instability serves the different interests of different sides. It does not mean that all sides benefit from the war or prefer war in the abstract. My point is that settlements available to them require key actors to give up leverage they still want to use (and use more and more with time as the war continues).
Russia can continue pressuring Ukraine without admitting the failure of its original campaign, while getting a justification for tightening domestic control as a wartime necessity; waiting for its own military production and mobilization efforts to speed up; as well as for political change in the West to improve its position. Ukraine cannot accept a settlement that locks in territorial losses and weakens the Western support on which its survival depends, so continued resistance preserves both its claims and the possibility of changing the balance at a later stage. Partial agreements over grain, prisoners, shipping, or infrastructure reduce immediate costs without forcing either side to abandon its central position.
Outside actors also have reasons to tolerate this conflict. China gains access to the discounted Russian internal market and resources. For the European Union, continued Ukrainian resistance may help contain Russia in the future. Some Central Asian states and the Gulf trade hubs have also benefited from rerouted trade, new logistics corridors, and inflows of capital, businesses, and skilled workers leaving Russia. Of course, none of these actors necessarily wants the war to continue indefinitely. But for many of them, managed instability may still be preferable to a settlement that removes these advantages or produces a less favorable regional (and global) balance.
The Iran war shows a similar pattern, only that it compressed years of the Ukrainian experience into months. Of course, the U.S.-Iran crisis is not identical to the Ukraine crisis, both from operational and ideological standpoints. But the structure is starting to rhyme.
The early expectation was strikingly similar: overwhelming military pressure, including the series of assassinations of top Iranian political and military leaders, would force Tehran into a deal. But instead, this overwhelming military force only created alternative bargaining instruments.
Why were these initial expectations wrong? Part of the reason could be that both Moscow and Washington treated the conflict too narrowly without properly considering the new international context these two conflicts operate (or would operate) in. They clearly underestimated not only the possibility of direct outside support, but also the role of alternative supply chains, new forms of military and economic leverage, and the possibility of a conflict moving into shipping, sanctions, energy infrastructure, and other areas. Those factors taken together made it much harder to translate military superiority into a quick political result for two very different — but in this regard, still very similar — conflicts.
Tehran made its leverage over the Strait of Hormuz central to the conflict exactly because of the use of military force by the United States — not before that. Both in Iran and Ukraine, transit access became leverage. In the Black Sea, grain corridors, ports, sanctions, and shipping insurance became part of the equation. In the Gulf, the same is happening around Hormuz in a more concentrated and globally dangerous form. The United States answered with a blockade of Iranian ports.
Talks so far produced pauses, but the pauses did not settle the nuclear question, sanctions, regional security, or even the rules governing passage through the Strait on terms clearly favorable to U.S. interests. In fact, they settled almost nothing that had not already existed before the war. The Islamabad framework extended an earlier ceasefire and created a 60-day negotiating window. It was designed to stop the immediate fighting, reopen Hormuz, and lift the blockade. But the hardest issues were explicitly pushed into the next phase. By mid-June, President Donald Trump warned that bombing could resume if he disliked the direction the negotiation process was taking.
And it did resume — along with the Iranian strikes against the Gulf states. By late July, after another two-week U.S. bombing campaign, Washington again paused strikes and Trump again said there were “good talks.” Meanwhile, Tehran continued to insist that it controlled passage through Hormuz and could determine how ships transit through it. And we were back to square zero.
The emerging Iran-Oman arrangement may potentially restore shipping (which Washington wants), but it will also seem to institutionalize a larger Iranian role in coordinating the Hormuz traffic (an outcome Washington resisted). Even if implemented, it is still unclear how long such an arrangement would survive, since the wider confrontation and the incentives to use the Strait as leverage would remain in place. It could also meet the same fate as the Black Sea Grain Initiative, which operated for roughly a year before Russia chose not to renew it (narrow agreements endure only for as long as the parties find them useful). This would also probably not end the conflict, only resolving one operational question and preserving the leverage within it.
This is nowhere near a peace process that sits above the war and could gradually end it.
The self-repeating sequence of strikes–ceasefire–negotiations–threats has become an integral part of how the war itself is being fought. And that is perhaps the strongest parallel with Ukraine — although after 2022, bargaining in Ukraine has more often focused on separate issues such as grain, prisoners of war, shipping, and infrastructure. Another parallel is the structure of incentives for all involved to continue the struggle.
For Washington, it may normalize a permanent military role in Hormuz and sustained (routine) military pressure on Tehran and expand direct surveillance over its nuclear program. For Tehran, continued external pressure may institutionalize its leverage over Hormuz and help justify tighter internal control and further securitization of political culture. It can also deepen its ongoing cooperation with Russia and China in military-industrial, trade, and even cultural terms.
Russia benefits from America’s inability to help both the Gulf and Ukraine — and higher oil prices. China — from discounted Iranian oil and even greater trade leverage over Tehran. And some Gulf states (including Saudi Arabia and Oman) — from reallocation of infrastructure and investment in the region in an attempt to move further from the conflict area.
None necessarily wants an uncontrolled war, but several may prefer a conflict that can be routinely managed to a settlement that removes these advantages.
However, the biggest change is not that the Ukraine and Iran wars are following similar patterns, but that they start to interact with each other, creating new knots that could complicate the resolution of both conflicts even further.
Start with Russia and Iran. This connection did not start with the 2026 Iran War. Iran had already become an important military partner for Russia in Ukraine after 2022. What is changing in 2026 is the scope of this relationship, as it is now linking two active wars.
U.S. officials have acknowledged that Russia may have provided Iran with targeting and other technical support to conduct drone attacks on CIA facilities in the Gulf last month. Ukraine, in return, after years of learning how to fight Iranian Shahed-type drones launched by Russia against its territory, has offered that experience to the United Arab Emirates and other Gulf states. Kyiv and Abu Dhabi have also signed a 10-year defense cooperation agreement. Kyiv said the United Arab Emirates would now “help Ukraine strengthen security in the Black Sea amid Russian attacks on Ukrainian ships.” And just last month, Ukraine reportedly received U.S. and French intelligence to conduct strikes deep inside Russia.
The result can be defined as a “two-war proxy contest” in which Russia helps Iran impose costs on the United States (and its allies in the Gulf) as the United States and its allies help Ukraine impose deeper costs on Russia (and Iran). The fact that two initiators are nuclear-armed states makes this environment even more dangerous. It does not always mean that nuclear use is likely, but it means that every failure to achieve the original political objectives (also still not very well-defined in both cases) creates additional pressure on leaders to search for new forms of escalation while pretending that escalation can be controlled.
What’s also happening is that technology and tactics driving the drone revolution in warfare can transfer directly from one war to another. The defenses against those emerging technologies heavily rely on the same Western weapons stockpile. And both wars have depleted U.S. arms stocks, leading to competing demands and pressure to expand production of air-defense missiles.
Taken together, these contact points fundamentally change what a ceasefire means for Iran — and what it would mean for Ukraine.
A ceasefire in Ukraine (if observed) would obviously be a positive development because it would mean people would stop killing each other. Regional and global markets would probably calm down a little, and many other immediate positive things would happen. But it would be a mistake to treat such a ceasefire as the opposite of war. As the war in Iran demonstrates, a ceasefire is only one mechanism of managed instability inside a longer and broader confrontation which the dynamics of the Ukraine and Iran wars do not explain by themselves, nor can they be reduced to a simple confrontation between the United States and Russia, China, or anyone else.
Finally, a “bad ceasefire,” as it was already argued many times, can simply prepare the next round of war. The problem is how to make the “managed instability” less attractive than a settlement that the main actors can live with.
Both wars are being fought inside the same wider transition we are witnessing, in which major powers compete not only over territory and security, but also over markets, technologies, energy routes, supply chains, and industrial capacity. These processes increasingly connect the two wars as well, sustain them, and make their settlement more difficult — until at least those broader processes are settled or agreed upon.
The obvious first step is to recognize this transition earlier. Both Ukraine and Iran entered this form when four things happened together — battlefield gains stopped changing the actual power balance; ceasefires stopped initiating an actual peace process; negotiations started fragmenting into separate tracks over transit, sanctions, prisoners of war, energy, or infrastructure; and the war started expanding geographically through outside allies’ support, deep strikes, and alternative supply chains.
The idea of a comprehensive final settlement becomes less realistic, or even elusive. The timeline shifts from weeks to months, or even years.
The second move should arrive not from the main belligerents, but probably from the outside powers that provide the resources making the continued coercion effective. They could make limited restraint materially worthwhile by tying those resources to reciprocal steps (by Russia, Iran, Israel, or Ukraine) — which would support a sequence of de-escalation rather than a system for organizing the next round of war.
One way out could be to reverse the sequence through which the war expanded: If the conflict moved from the battlefield into deep strikes, ports, shipping, rearmament, and outside support, then any ceasefire must move back through those same arenas, one by one. At the same time, any such separate “reverse agreements” should not become substitutes for a general settlement but serve as coordinated steps toward one. That could include fewer attacks on ports and energy infrastructure in exchange for eased maritime restrictions; limits on targeting assistance in exchange for limits on deep strikes; or sanctions relief linked to monitored limits on rearmament.
I admit, though, that the usable leverage is limited. While the United States has already tested this logic (when soon after Trump returned to office, Washington paused military assistance and intelligence sharing in an effort to pressure Kyiv toward negotiations with Moscow), which helped secure Ukraine’s acceptance of a U.S.-proposed 30-day ceasefire, it did not produce a settlement. Russia did not accept the restraint, while Europe continued supporting Ukraine, including because of its fear of an early settlement which would allow Moscow to pose a greater danger later. The episode demonstrated both the power and limits of this approach.
Effective settlement conditioning would therefore have to be coordinated and cooperative rather than unilateral (or even bilateral) and strictly coercive without strong enough positive incentives. Europe, Ukraine and the Gulf states would need guarantees that a ceasefire would not simply give Moscow or Tehran time to rebuild. China and other states sustaining Russian or Iranian trade and logistics would need to condition their own cooperation with Moscow and Tehran accordingly. To persuade China, the European Union and the United States would need to use their market incentives.
Yes, Russia, China, Iran, or even Ukraine may still reject such a bargain out of their own prestige or security concerns, but such coordinated conditioning can at least make “managed instability” more expensive for those who decide to preserve it. And then, that could be coordinated with some positive incentives to such parties, including sanctions relief, restored trade, security guarantees, and other benefits.
Finally, these conflicts — and therefore their resolution — cannot be seen in isolation. Together, they point to a broader global transition of power influencing how future regional wars may be waged and defended against in this century. Short of being resolved in the traditional sense, wars now persist as systems of managed instability — never fully escalating, never fully settled — at least until broader frameworks of global power struggle are settled too.
This does not mean all future conflicts will necessarily follow this pattern, for specific mechanisms must be used for the war to transfer from the military area to the broader geopolitical factors. Importantly, this form of conflict also does not mean that wars like those in Ukraine and Iran will never end. But the conditions that produce this pattern — ongoing global political fragmentation, still existing economic interdependence, and clear escalation limits — will become more common and inseparable from their resolution.
The Iran war may be becoming another Ukraine war, but the real challenge now is to make sure it does not become another managed instability arena everyone learns to live with, and no one knows how to end.
Unless the international community rejects being imposed managed instability, the next war involving a large power might produce a similar pattern in yet another region of the world.
Alex Kolbin is a London-based geopolitical risk analyst and director of ELSER Consulting, a boutique intelligence firm. After several years at the PIR Center in Moscow working on nonproliferation and arms control, as well as experience with the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute in Stockholm and in the global aviation industry worldwide, his work now focuses on the implications of regional conflicts for global supply chains and wider geopolitical competition.
Image: Midjourney
