Shadow Strikes and Strategic Ambiguity: The Risk of a Wider Gulf war

By Elijah J Magnier –

The current war is already reshaping perceptions of American power. Iran’s ability to sustain confrontation with the United States and Israel has weakened the long-standing image of Washington as an untouchable and overwhelmingly dominant force. Even if the United States retains overwhelming tactical capabilities, the strategic perception of its power has shifted across the region.

At the same time, the battlefield is no longer confined to clearly defined fronts. It now extends across airspace, sea lanes, allied networks and the opaque domain of covert operations. Iran has acknowledged thousands of missile and drone strikes across the region as part of a broader war of attrition. Yet the number of recorded attacks across the Gulf appears to exceed the operations Tehran has officially claimed, raising a critical question: who is responsible for the additional strikes?

This discrepancy has fuelled growing speculation among regional observers and analysts. Iran has openly conducted large-scale missile and drone attacks on selective objectives in the Gulf states (UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Iraq, Qatar, Oman) in retaliation for US-Israeli strikes on Iran itself, including on energy sites, bases, and civilian areas. These are widely reported and directly attributed to Iran by Gulf governments, international media, and defence ministries, along with interception statistics and damage claims. Iran has not denied most of these; it frames them as legitimate responses. Indeed, most major strikes (e.g., on Saudi and Iraqi oilfields, Kuwait and UAE airports, and Qatari infrastructure) are widely attributed to Iran, which legitimises these attacks as a response to the Gulf hosting US assets.

However, several recent drone attacks targeting selective infrastructure and strategic sites in Gulf countries and Turkey have involved systems resembling Iranian-made drones. While such similarities might point toward Iranian involvement, they have also raised an alternative possibility: that some of these strikes may be part of deniable operations designed to mimic Iranian capabilities. The suspicion in some security circles is that Israel may be attempting to shape the battlefield indirectly by carrying out attacks that could plausibly be attributed to Iran. Such a strategy would aim not only to damage specific targets but also to manipulate the region’s political dynamics and further demonise Iran to create a larger coalition against it.

At the heart of this hypothesis lies a simple strategic calculation. If attacks across the Gulf can be perceived as Iranian actions, they could deepen even further mistrust and deepen the animosity between Tehran and Arab governments, particularly in the Gulf monarchies. The resulting political tension might push those states closer to direct involvement in the confrontation, thereby shaping the course of the war. Whether or not such operations are actually occurring, the logic behind them reflects a well-established pattern in modern warfare and a non-unusual one: the use of ambiguity to shape perceptions and alliances.