Latest Articles

This study examines how the 2023 Gaza War reshaped maritime security dynamics and geopolitical rivalry in the Red Sea, particularly in the Bab al-Mandab Strait, through a complex interplay between great powers and non-state actors. It demonstrates that the Houthi (Ansar Allah) attacks on commercial vessels –framed as support for Gaza – transformed the strait into a global flashpoint that exposed the vulnerability of international supply chains. The study also shows how these developments reactivated U.S.–China rivalry in the Red Sea: the United States adopted a military–security approach in support of Israel's war on Gaza and to reaffirm its role as guarantor of the maritime commons, while China favored a cautious strategy centered on economic influence, calculated non-involvement in military operations, and securing the passage of its vessels through discreet diplomatic channels. The study concludes that the Red Sea has become a space where U.S. naval dominance intersects with China's rising economic power, and where non-state actors increasingly shape regional and global security.

The Islamic Republic's foreign policy, grounded in a revolutionary commitment to Shi ʿ i transnationalism, has long been viewed as a central mechanism for securing Iran's regional influence and post-revolutionary identity. Yet recent developments, most notably the June 2025 war with Israel, raise critical questions about the sustainability of this approach. While much scholarship has explored Iran's identity-driven foreign policy, less attention has been paid to the chronic contradictions it generates within Iran's ontological security framework, or how these contradictions both shape and constrain Iran's regional conduct. This study approaches the problem by theorising Iran's predicament as an ontological trap, a condition in which identity-affirming foreign policy routines produce chronic insecurity rather than stabilisation. It introduces the concept of a security dilemma of influence to explain how transnational networks (once strategic assets) now provoke nationalist contestation and narrative fatigue in Iran, Iraq, and Lebanon.