The U.S. is stumbling through an escalating confrontation with Iran without a clear strategy, raising risks for global energy markets and setting up China and Russia as the largest beneficiaries even before the dust settles, foreign policy experts said Tuesday at S&P Global's CERAWeek conference in Houston.
From Tehran's vantage point, U.S. policy over the last month has appeared improvised and reactive, according to Vali Nasr, professor of Middle Eastern
Studies at Johns Hopkins University. Iranian leaders believe President Trump initially viewed the region through a narrow commercial lens and "had "no strategy of actually how" to protect interests in the Persian Gulf region, he added.
Iran has reorganized itself to survive leadership "decapitation" and fight asymmetric wars, while shifting the contest to where it has global leverage: energy and shipping, Nasr said.
Tehran sees the war as an opportunity to rewrite the regional order, he continued, adding that Iranian leadership wants sanctions relief, economic compensation for damages, control over the Strait of Hormuz and guarantees against future attacks.
Saudi Arabia and its Gulf neighbors pushed hard to prevent the war, arguing that if Washington's priority was "money," the region wanted peace, but now that the war has started the U.S. is obligated to see it through, Nasr said.
"There has been a regime change in Tehran, it's just not the regime change the U.S. wanted," he added. "Some of them are basically telling the U.S...well, you shouldn't have started it, but now that you started it, you need to finish."
European-supplied Patriot batteries and other weapons systems are being depleted faster than they can be replaced, limiting Western support for Ukraine, Angela Stent, a senior fellow with American Enterprise Institute, told the conference.
"Russia is, as we understand it, providing intelligence to the Iranians on targeted U.S. assets, and, on dealing with the Shahed drones, even though the Iranians were the initial suppliers of these drones to Russia, but they have gotten more sophisticated since then. So right now, Russia is doing very well from this war."
The world's attention has been taken away from the Russia-Ukraine conflict, essentially putting a pause on peace negotiations [and] reinforcing Russian President Vladimir Putin's belief that his country is winning the war with Ukraine, Stent added.
Russia has offered to take back enriched uranium and act as a mediator, she said, suggesting Putin sees conflict management as a way to "overcome much of the isolation that [Russia has] experienced in the last four years."
And if Russia turns out to be the largest beneficiary of the war, China gets the silver medal, Richard Haass, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, said.
"China's done a really good job of insulating itself, very disciplined, with their equivalent of a strategic petroleum reserve," Haass said. "To the extent this crisis is a boon for alternatives, China will pick up there because they are more advanced than anybody else.
China may also benefit if regional allies question the ability of the U.S. to broker peace in the region, he said.
Haass said he believes U.S. officials risk overemphasizing the significance of metrics like targets hit or assets destroyed, adding that Iran's tolerance for economic pain appears to be higher than that of many energy-dependent nations.
"For Iran, this is an unlimited war, and for us, in some ways, it's a limited war," Haass said.
Ultimately, Gulf nations and Iran will have to reach an agreement that can satisfy all parties, including a possible U.S. withdrawal from the region, Nasr said.
Longer term, Haass suggested that a "Strait of Hormuz User Authority" be created to allow Gulf Cooperation Council states and Iran to share oversight and transit fees.
This content was created by Oil Price Information Service, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. OPIS is run independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.
Reporting by Bayan Raji, braji@opisnet.com; Editing by Jeffrey Barber, jbarber@opisnet.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
March 25, 2026 10:52 ET (14:52 GMT)
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