The situation in Afghanistan, Ukraine, and Iran, as three crisis hotspots, three lines of confrontation, and three fronts of competition between East and West, remains volatile and decisive. In Ukraine, the war is moving toward a war of attrition; a relative balance has been maintained on the battlefield, and the prospect of its end remains ambiguous. In Iran, the possibilities of war, peace, or a continuation of the existing situation, all of which are products of bargaining among great powers and regional balances, are simultaneously observable. In Afghanistan as well, alongside growing concerns about the fragility of the current situation, the gradual and creeping presence of state and non-state actors continues to push this geography closer to becoming a potential flashpoint for the collision of Eastern and Western interests.
As a result of this trajectory, the crisis hotspots, which potentially and simultaneously play a central role in intensifying the rivalries, collisions, and strategic bargaining among great powers, have remained active. In other words, what is unfolding today in Afghanistan, Iran, and Ukraine forms part of a larger puzzle on the chessboard of global powers, a puzzle being assembled over the shaping of the future world order and the determination of the coordinates of a new international system.
In this emerging order, not only will the hard dimensions of power and military confrontations play a role, but a combination of economic components, media influence, advanced technologies, cybersecurity, cognitive warfare, and the competition over control of public perception will steer the world from its current structure toward a new and complex post-polar order. In such an environment, the actors who will prove more successful are those who, in addition to possessing hard power, also command the capability to build regional coalitions, manage public opinion, sustain economic resilience, and develop multi-layered security capacities. These actors will be able to shape the equations of the future and write the pages of the world’s coming history to their own advantage.
A noteworthy point about these three crisis hotspots is that all three lie along the geopolitical belt of Eurasia, a fact that once again revives the classical theories of geopolitical competition based on the Heartland and Rimland, not in their traditional form, but in a manner consistent with the new security, economic, and geopolitical requirements. The theory of “crisis hotspots” demonstrates that instability in these regions has a high capacity to spread insecurity to the surrounding environment and even to the entire international system, and it can play an undeniable role in determining the nature of the future global order. In practice, these crisis hotspots reflect the logic of a cold, silent, and low-cost rivalry among the great powers, a rivalry that, although lacking broad confrontation, bears in its essence many similarities to a new version of the Cold War and has taken shape along the path of securing the strategic interests of the great powers.
Beyond these three active hotspots, semi-active crisis-prone regions with the capacity to exert influence will also gain greater importance in the future. Taiwan, Latin America, Africa, and even the Far East, as new arenas of competition among global powers, will gradually become activated. Alongside these regions, the Arctic, the question of Greenland, the Panama Canal, and the Strait of Hormuz, situated along the geopolitics of strategic passages, have already entered the bargaining tables of the great powers and, in accordance with environmental developments, are automatically activated or deactivated.
Within these crisis hotspots, there are specific regions that, based on the theory of regional security complexes, play their role within a complex competitive framework. According to this logic, the security of Europe, the Middle East, Central Asia, and the Far East is no longer a separate phenomenon from one another, but, within the general rules of the game among great powers, are deeply interconnected and possess a contagious quality. Alongside the expansion of new security threats in these regions, mutual security interdependence, increasing reliance on regional coalitions, and the necessity of collective responses to threats have gained greater importance. Under such conditions, managing crises and threats without extensive regional and trans-regional cooperation will face serious difficulties.
Ukraine is moving on a path of transition from a purely military confrontation between East and West to a geopolitical, civilizational, and identity-based competition. For this reason, the current stalemate on the battlefields, rather than being merely the product of military pressures, stems from the caution of the principal actors in a larger geopolitical and civilizational game, a game in which the slightest miscalculation could push the trajectory of future global developments toward unpredictable outcomes.
Iran, too, despite the experience of the six-week war and its consequences, has become one of the most active crisis hotspots in the field of global rivalries. Competition in the Middle East, more than being merely a civilizational confrontation, is an arena for competition over energy security, the establishment of regional deterrence, control of strategic routes, and the drawing of the future lines of balance between East and West.
Meanwhile, Afghanistan, following the withdrawal of the United States, has turned into a space for silent intelligence, security, and geopolitical competition among various axes of power. This country, despite its fragile stability, the absence of broad political legitimacy, and the failure to establish a reliable order acceptable to both sides of the global rivalry, continues to be susceptible to intelligence games, hidden security competitions, the direction of forces in the form of proxy groups, the transfer of crises to surrounding regions, and the role of a connecting link among security belts, divergent geopolitical identities, and conflicting civilizational lines along strategic fault lines.
From this perspective, the continuation of the crisis in Ukraine, the dynamism of the situation in Afghanistan, and the simultaneous effort to manage peace and war in Iran reflect the logic of creating a Eurasian security depth in the face of Western geopolitical pressures. In response, the West, too, relying on the strategy of controlled destabilization, the attraction of new regional allies, and the exploitation of the capacities of opportunistic or vulnerable actors, is striving to maintain its management of the competition from a distance.
A divided East, in the form of an unwritten convergence among Iran, Russia, and China, and a multi-layered West, within the framework of traditional understandings among the United States, Britain, Europe, the Arab countries, and Turkey, are each striving to alter the equations of power in their own favor. In this context, containing the geopolitical and strategic capacities of the Eastern bloc through the creation and continuation of security crises in sensitive locations has become one of the principal objectives of Western actors.
Ultimately, what is unfolding today in Ukraine, Iran, and Afghanistan is not merely a collection of independent and separate crises but part of a broader competition over the shaping of the future world order. The world is moving from a unipolar structure toward a tense and complex multipolar system, an order in which wars are no longer defined solely on military fields, but in which the economy, media, technology, cybersecurity, cognitive operations, and the competition over the control of narratives have gained importance equal to that of military power.
Under such conditions, the actors who will succeed in this great competition will be those who, in addition to possessing hard power, also command the ability to manage perception, build effective coalitions, enhance economic and security resilience, and adapt to the rapid transformations of the international environment.
You can read the Persian version of this analysis here:
