From Kennan to Kerman ...
Reconceiving Containment in a Compound Era of U.S.–Iran–Israel Conflict.
By Dr. Isaiah (Ike) Wilson III | June 2025
“Nations, like individuals, do not go mad by degrees. They leap into the abyss, clutching old certainties.”
— Adapted from George Santayana and modified for the compound age
Introduction: The Echoes of a Long Telegram
In 1947, George Kennan’s anonymous “X” article cracked open the shell of burgeoning Cold War tensions by positing that patient, psychologically informed containment—not naive confrontation—should be the West’s governing posture.
This seminal piece reframed a bipolar world through a lens of strategic realism, avoiding fire for fire in favor of steady, calibrated resistance.
Fast-forward to 2007 and my own reinterpretation: Iran needed a diplomatic Long Telegram—not oblivious engagement, but a strategy that recognized how American behavior feeds into Iranian reaction.
Today, we stand at a much higher stakes crossroads.
The Israel–Iran flashpoint has radicalized into a compound war, replete with cyber sabotage, proxy strikes, refugee flows, energy shocks, political fracturing, and mortgaged democratic agon—conditions far graver and globally entangled than anything I, or even Kennan, anticipated.
We must not only return to containment but reconceive it for an age of overlapping domains and fluid alliances.
A Transregional Crisis Ignited
On June 13, 2025, Israel launched Operation Rising Lion, deploying over 200 aircraft—including F-35s, drones, and electronic warfare platforms—to target roughly 100 sites across Iran.
Precision strikes hit three categories of locations: underground nuclear facilities (for example, at Natanz’s Pilot Fuel Enrichment Plant and centrifuge halls), heavy-water and reactor sites around Arak, and Iran’s surface-to-air missile (SAM) networks. Israel also reportedly eliminated dozens of Iranian air-defense batteries—some 70-plus systems—to establish air superiority.
Notably, several IRGC commanders and nuclear scientists, including Maj. Gen. Mohammad Bagheri, Hossein Salami, and Fereydoon Abbasi, were killed in these precision-targeted attacks.
Within 24 hours, the conflict rippled beyond Iran's borders. Iran responded with ballistic missiles and drone barrages aimed at northern Israel and U.S. military installations in the Gulf region. While advanced missile defenses in Israel intercepted a large share of incoming threats, several drones penetrated civilian areas, causing infrastructure damage, injuries, and at least several dozen casualties.
Simultaneously, a cyber campaign—widely attributed to Iranian hackers—targeted key Gulf-area financial and energy entities. Security analysts reported widespread infiltration attempts using a sophisticated RAT dubbed “GhostShell,” disrupting banking systems and sowing misinformation across social platforms.
Disinformation narratives, from both states, intensified on Twitter, X, and Telegram, expanding public fears across Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, and Pakistan.
As of June 22, the conflict has escalated further with the United States joining Israel in a coordinated follow-on strike targeting Iran’s Fordow nuclear facility and associated infrastructure.
Announced by President Donald Trump in a late-night 21-June press briefing, the strike was framed as a decisive measure to “obliterate Iran’s nuclear ambitions.”
The attack, carried out by long-range bombers and submarine-launched precision-guided munitions, has dramatically widened the scope of confrontation.
Iran has since declared a state of national emergency, vowing “asymmetric and proportional retaliation,” and voting for war-widening activities aiming at frustrating maritime transit and commerce through the Strait of Hormuz.
The compound character of the crisis—spanning kinetic, cyber, financial, and psychological domains—confirms that what began as an Israeli preemptive operation has now morphed into a multi-actor, transregional ‘preventive war’ confrontation with global implications.
The net effect is not a contained conflict, but a compound conflagration—layered across multiple domains (air, cyber, proxies), geographic zones (Middle East, Persian Gulf, Levant), and national boundaries. It is designed not as a duel, but as a test of regional and global resilience under multi-domain pressure.
Strategic Context: Great Power Stakes
China and Russia are watching this crisis unfold like seasoned pragmatists. Beijing offers diplomatic cover for Tehran at U.N. fora—attached to economic “peace dividends”—while avoiding the direct cost of war.
Russia has formally and resolutely condemned the United States’ strikes on several nuclear facilities in the Islamic Republic of Iran, issuing the Foreign Ministry Statement:
“This reckless decision to launch missile and aerial strikes on the territory of a sovereign state, regardless of the justifications offered, constitutes a blatant violation of international law, the UN Charter, and relevant resolutions by the UN Security Council, which has consistently and unequivocally deemed such actions unacceptable. Particularly concerning is the fact that the strikes were executed by a permanent member of the UN Security Council.
The consequences of this action, including potential radioactive effects, have yet to be determined. However, it is already evident that a dangerous escalation is underway, one that threatens to further destabilise security both in the region and globally. This has drastically increased the likelihood of a larger conflict in the Middle East, a region already plagued by numerous crises.
The attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities have dealt a substantial blow to the global non-proliferation regime built around the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), which raises particular concerns. They have significantly undermined both the credibility of the NPT and the integrity of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) monitoring and verification mechanisms that underpin it.
We expect the IAEA leadership to respond promptly, professionally, and transparently, avoiding vague language or efforts to hide behind political ‘equidistance.’ An unbiased and objective report from the Director General is required, to be submitted for consideration at the Agency’s upcoming special session.
Obviously, the UN Security Council must take a firm stance as well. Confrontational and destabilising actions taken by the United States and Israel must be collectively rejected.
We call for an immediate end to aggression and for stepping up efforts to bring the situation back onto a peaceful, diplomatic track.Moscow moves Su-34 bombers to Syria under the guise of “Syria stabilization,” while funneling Iranian oil through clandestine barter channels. GCC states, especially UAE and Bahrain, maintain telephonic proximity to Israel as proxies for cautious security assurances—yet privately urge Washington to restrain military escalation.”
‘Foresighting Forward’ even farther, …. Turkey and Pakistan, historically wary of regional hegemony, monitor the situation so quietly they border on inaudible. Not only is this wide diplomacy—they’re betting on simultaneous engagement with all sides.
The war of 2025 is transregional not only in action, but in alignment.
“Speculative Futures” …
Economic Shockwaves: A Global Pain
Never has strategic escalation carried such broad economic consequences. With Brent crude spiking to $140/barrel, commodity traders watched global inflation jump 125 basis points in just ten days. Container ships circled Africa to avoid the Red Sea chokepoints, upending global supply—and English steel and Indian textiles alike.
European energy strategists cite "the third oil shock wave," and developing economies in sub-Saharan Africa warn of social unrest fueled by food-price inflation.
In global policy hubs, the G20 communique trade council is already planning an economic resilience fund, while central banks revise forecasts down. This is not collateral damage. This is strategic economic contagion—a hallmark of modern compound warfare.
Civilian Toll: Lives in the Crossfire
The human dimensions are harrowing: Tel Aviv nights filled with air sirens; the IRGC launches into Gaza turn obstacles into rubble. In Tehran, underground metro shelters echo human-powered triage, as midnight mortar fragments pierce civilian quarters.
Gaza’s hospitals—already overburdened—report 12-hour surgery backlogs and repeated lack of power. Families flee northern Iran in panic, their cars lined up 50 kilometers from the border. Social media fragments: in Farsi, Arabic, English. Videos of children taking classroom shelter among school bags go viral.
The casualties aren’t just medical—they’re civic. Civic infrastructure is being destroyed in the bloodstream of war, fracturing societal trust and civic resilience.
Strategic Psychology Redux: A Return to Self–Reflection
In 2025, that cyclical entrapment has flared into full-scale escalation. U.S. officials label Tehran a “terrorist super-corridor,” while IRGC leaders describe Washington as neo-imperial overlords.
The result is entrenchment—negotiation is “appeasement,” restraint is “cowardice,” and moderation is “blasphemy.”
At its core, this is “narrative entrapment:” a politics of identity masquerading as geostrategy, shackling both sides in mirroring mental prisons.
Containment Reimagined: From Static Defense to Compound Deterrence
Kennan’s containment was spatially defined—West vs. East, zones of influence, spheres—but 2025 demands a different anatomy.
‘Compound Deterrence’ integrates multi-layered and multi-channel tools.
Missile shields can't stand alone; they require cyber resilience, diplomatic backchannels, targeted development, and anchored commercial cooperation.
One example: a missile defense shell for Israel, paired with quietly subsidized desalination plants in Gaza, increased water access in southern Iran, and Gulf-funded solar farms in Basra, Iraq. These linked efforts—deterrence by denial “and” civic reassurance—could constitute the architecture of compound deterrence.
The absence of such integrated civil-military action, however, undermines both purpose and legitimacy.
Let’s pick back up with the “Speculative Future” WHAT IF? …
Transregional Entanglements: A Theater in Motion
This is not a Middle East crisis—it is a shifting global alignment. UAE and Bahrain openly offer reconnaissance data to Israel. Qatar and Oman shuttle peace messages between Tehran and Washington. China offers deeply discounted oil via the Shahid Komeini port, buying leverage in Iran without military strings.
Pakistan, wary of Islamic solidarity, stays neutral—it doesn’t want to antagonize Iran, nor the U.S. Jordan quietly strengthens its northern defenses while urging legal oversight via the Arab League. Germany and France begin direct diplomatic engagement with Iran on nuclear terms even as Atlantic divisions grow.
Russia positions itself as a crisis manager—flirting with the idea of a Moscow-launched Middle East Security Dialogue. The result is: this is a global network, and the crisis is as dispersed as it is deep.
The Nuclear Puzzle: Living on the Brink
Iran remains a threshold nuclear state: sophisticated centrifuges spin, missile systems napalm-crippled reactors, and low-yield weapon plausibility rises. U.S. intelligence signals that Tehran now needs around 2–3 months to weaponizable fissile material. Israel responded with targeted airstrikes—blowback missiles that scar rather than shred, aimed to buy time. But every strike tightens the timeline.
Tehran may see delay as abandonment: either they weaponize or they are strategically neutered. Nuclear examiners warn this may be the most dangerous form of equilibrium yet—one anchored in ambiguity, anxiety, and acceleration. Containing that requires new doctrine: one that values risk hedging over threat escalation, practicality over ideology.
A Way Ahead?: From Escalation to Managed Stability
Avoiding a broader regional war demands more than ambition—it requires achievable, incremental steps grounded in realism.
A compound security response should rest on five modest but concrete actions:
Focused Defensive Coordination
Rather than expansive regional systems, start by improving missile defense and cyber threat coordination between the U.S., Israel, and a few key Gulf allies. Quiet technical cooperation—like intelligence fusion and early warning systems—can reduce surprise, while avoiding formal entanglements that escalate perceptions.
Backchannel Diplomacy
Reopen discreet U.S.–Iran communication lines, ideally via neutral facilitators like Oman or Switzerland. Quiet dialogue—focused narrowly on de-escalation mechanisms and red-line management—can stabilize without needing full-scale negotiations.
Targeted Humanitarian Cooperation
Launch small-scale joint humanitarian efforts: a regional health corridor for vaccine distribution, or collaborative logistics on water delivery to high-risk zones in Syria or Iraq. These efforts build trust and signal restraint without political posturing.
Tone-Setting, Not Messaging Campaigns
Encourage restraint in official rhetoric from all sides. A few consistent signals—avoiding demonizing language, reducing war metaphors—can influence media tone and lower public tension, even without formal “information campaigns.”
Crisis Monitoring Cell
Rather than a new institution, embed a conflict-monitoring unit within an existing multilateral body like the UN or IAEA. Focus it specifically on tracking proxy escalations and nuclear risks. This builds early warning capacity with minimal bureaucracy.
Conclusion: Pragmatism at the Precipice
The Israel–Iran crisis is not an isolated tactical dispute—it is the unfolding of strategic path dependencies that first emerged at least nearly six decades ago. These path dependencies have now metastasized into a larger map’s bigger war between the US and Iran.
We stand at a pivotal historical intersection.
Will we fall into the gravity well of unchecked escalation and fracturing alliances? Or can we build—a path of disciplined deterrence, quiet diplomacy, civic reinforcement, narrative clarity, and institutional oversight?
This is less a policy question and more a test of existential capacity: do we have the strategic integrity to contain chaos and foster order?
The world may wait, but history will not.
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