The Price of the US Gamble

Welcome to the Audere Atlas, the Audere Group’s fortnightly update on global geopolitical trends, how we engage with them, and what they mean for your organisation.

This week we examine the rapidly escalating crisis in the Middle East. US-Israeli strikes on Iran have prompted widespread Iranian retaliation across the Gulf. The conflict is evolving into a broader regional confrontation with profound and global implications, leaving energy markets, maritime commerce and corporate operations across the region are in limbo.

The Audere Atlas offers timely, actionable insights that both support key decision-making and highlight areas for further exploration and understanding.

The Brief

In last month’s Atlas report we presented three scenarios for Iran as tensions mounted amid stalled nuclear negotiations. One of the most likely outcomes, we noted, was a “short, sharp external shock”: a limited US-Israeli strike triggered either by a catalytic event or the collapse of diplomacy. That scenario then materialised when, on 28 February, the United States launched a campaign of coordinated strikes alongside Israel. It appears that the final catalyst was the failure of negotiations to yield concessions acceptable to Washington.

As anticipated, US officials framed the operation as time-bound and limited, with President Trump signalling an intensive strike phase lasting roughly four to six weeks. Despite some flirtation with regime change in Trump’s first statement on the operation, the objectives of the campaign were similarly narrow: rather than a ground invasion or occupation, the strategy focused on destroying Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, degrading its missile arsenal, and disrupting command-and-control networks that underpin Tehran’s regional power projection.

Yet the principal risk identified in our previous analysis was rapid escalation driven by compressed decision-making, ambiguous signalling and a crowded operating environment. That risk, which threatened to bring about the worst case scenario for the region and global markets, was almost immediately realised. The turning point? The killing of Iran’s Supreme Leader during the opening phase of strikes. Until that moment Tehran had exercised significant restraint during tensions with the US and Israel, directing limited retaliatory attacks at Israeli targets and US bases that were relatively well protected by air defences. The leadership decapitation removed that restraint.

Facing what it perceived as an existential threat from the inception of the conflict, the Iranian regime immediately shifted to a strategy of maximum disruption. Rather than concentrating on heavily defended US or Israeli targets to score rhetorical points, Tehran has directed the bulk of its retaliatory activity toward the more vulnerable Gulf states and the region’s largely unprotected critical infrastructure. Energy installations, ports, and commercial shipping routes have become primary targets.

The logic of this strategy is straightforward. Iran cannot defeat the United States militarily, but it can impose escalating economic costs on the global economy –  and thereby increase political pressure in Washington to terminate the conflict. The Strait of Hormuz sits at the centre of this calculus. Even intermittent attacks or credible threats against shipping can render passage through the strait commercially untenable, pushing insurance costs sharply higher and disrupting the flow of roughly one-fifth of global oil supplies.

The United States appears to have underestimated this dimension of escalation. US Central Command has acknowledged that it cannot fully secure shipping through the Strait of Hormuz under sustained Iranian harassment. That reality was well understood before the conflict began, suggesting Washington did not anticipate the extent to which Tehran would escalate once the regime itself was directly threatened.

The result is a strategic impasse. The United States retains overwhelming military superiority and will likely exhaust its pre-planned target sets in the coming weeks. Iran, however, retains the ability to sustain disruption through asymmetric means – including UAV strikes, missile attacks, cyber operations, and maritime harassment – for months or even years. Its UAV stockpiles are large, and it is yet to activate its foreign sabotage and terror cells to spread the conflict to new regions. In many ways, Iran has more options for escalation that the US and Israel, whose campaign is limited to targets within Iran.

Absent a diplomatic settlement that guarantees the survival of the Iranian regime, Tehran has little incentive to halt this strategy. The conflict therefore risks evolving from a short war into a protracted phase of episodic instability across the Gulf.

So What?

Even if large-scale combat operations subside in the coming weeks, the structural dynamics unleashed by the conflict suggest instability will persist well beyond the initial strike campaign. The US–Israeli strikes have triggered a strategy from Tehran centred not on battlefield victory but on sustained economic disruption, particularly in the Gulf energy system and the maritime corridors that underpin global trade.

The most immediate impact is on global energy markets. Roughly 20% of globally traded oil and around one-fifth of liquefied natural gas exports pass through the Strait of Hormuz each day. Even intermittent attacks against shipping or offshore infrastructure can therefore have disproportionate effects. Insurance premiums for tankers transiting the Gulf have already surged, while several shipping firms have begun rerouting vessels or suspending calls at exposed ports. The disruption has forced precautionary shutdowns across parts of the Gulf energy system, with regional output estimated to have fallen by more than half at the height of the strikes. The resulting supply uncertainty is already feeding into oil prices, freight rates and inflation expectations across energy-importing economies. Prices of plastics, petrochemicals and refined fuels have been the first to experience rising costs, but these will soon flow further downstream. We are far from the peak if disruption continues.

More troubling in the long term, the crisis exposes the structural vulnerability of Gulf infrastructure. Much of the region’s energy and logistics architecture – ports, refineries, desalination plants, pipelines and export terminals – was designed for efficiency rather than resilience. Iran’s extensive arsenal of relatively inexpensive UAVs, combined with its demonstrated ability to target fixed infrastructure, creates an asymmetric threat environment in which modest attacks can generate outsized economic disruption. Even limited strikes on desalination plants or power facilities could produce cascading effects across industrial zones and urban centres that depend on uninterrupted energy and water supply. Geopolitical risk premiums will surge as far as confidence in Gulf economies’ as business hubs sinks.

The conflict also risks embedding persistent instability across region’s waterways. Maritime arteries, particularly the Strait of Hormuz, the Bab el-Mandeb and the Red Sea shipping route, carry not only hydrocarbons but also a significant share of global container traffic linking Europe and Asia. The present crisis reinforces a growing pattern in which regional conflicts spill into global trade routes – first in the Red Sea through Houthi attacks on commercial vessels, and now potentially in the Gulf itself. The cumulative effect is to raise the baseline risk for shipping, logistics and insurance providers operating across the wider Middle East maritime system for as long as tensions persist.

For businesses with personnel, assets or supply chains connected to the region, the operational implications are immediate. Companies must now account for heightened risks to personnel safety, air travel, logistics networks, energy supply and critical infrastructure. Contingency planning, evacuation readiness and real-time monitoring of security developments are rapidly becoming operational necessities rather than precautionary measures.

Audere Group is actively supporting organisations navigating these challenges. As the security environment across the Middle East continues to evolve, our teams are currently conducting evacuations and supporting organisations and individuals with structured crisis preparedness and response capabilities. Our teams are providing threat monitoring and intelligence reporting, escalation frameworks and trigger matrices, contingency and extraction planning as well as standby evacuation capabilities. If your organisation has people, assets, or operations in the region and would benefit from additional support, Audere is available to assist.

Keen to Know More?

The Audere Group is an intelligence and risk advisory firm offering integrated solutions to companies in complex situations.

We specialise in mitigating the financial, reputational and physical risks faced by our clients in markets across the world through a 360-degree range of services incorporating security advisory, crisis management and strategic intelligence to inform decision making around transactions, supply chains and disputes.

Contact us to learn how our bespoke risk advisory services can work with your unique circumstances to navigate high-risk environments and changing landscapes through the provision of hard-to-reach intelligence and clear analysis.

_{Disclaimer: The content of this report is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal or financial advice. For further details or specific inquiries, please reach out to our team directly.}