by Cam Rea
With the Trump administration expanding its operations against Iran through Task Force Iron Gate, we may be witnessing the development of another form of strategic siege warfare.
We all know what a siege is, but what’s a neo-siege? First, there’s really no such thing as a neo-siege, at least not as an established concept of warfare. But we might be witnessing one developing.
Neo-siege applies traditional siege principles at the strategic level through sustained multidomain isolation, using military, political, and economic means to deny an adversary the ability to sustain or regenerate its power and to coerce a desired political outcome without physical encirclement or territorial occupation.
Siege warfare isn’t fundamentally new. Nor have its principles changed. What has changed is how they’re applied. Historically, an army surrounded a city, cut off its supplies, restricted movement, and attempted to exhaust the defenders until they surrendered or could no longer resist. The objective was denial through attrition.
The same principles apply to an entire state. Technically, we’ve already seen forms of state sieges in modern history, particularly following the 1991 Gulf War. Iraq is a good example. Sanctions, no-fly zones, maritime interdiction, military pressure, and economic isolation were all used to restrict Iraq’s ability to restore power. However, the twenty-first century has introduced additional means of applying those same principles on a much broader scale.
Sanctions could be considered a form of siege, though I would distinguish between a soft siege and a hard siege. A soft siege relies primarily on economic and political restrictions. A hard siege goes further. It combines economic attrition with military pressure, employing intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR), cyber operations, and other technological capabilities to enforce isolation and deny an adversary the means to circumvent it.
This is where neo-siege comes into play.
You no longer need an army physically surrounding a country to impose siege conditions. You can do it from afar through multidomain isolation. ISR, cyber capabilities, artificial intelligence, and other instruments become extensions of what an army traditionally accomplished on the ground. Instead of physically occupying territory to restrict an adversary’s freedom of action, you’re using those capabilities to impose restrictions without necessarily having boots on the ground.
In a sense, you’re technically occupying them through digital means.
But there’s another dimension to this, and perhaps a more interesting one. You’re turning the besieged state into its own occupying force. You’re making them do the job for you.
Consider what happens when sustained economic, cyber, and military pressure begins affecting a country’s ability to function. Its economy deteriorates. Resources become increasingly difficult to acquire. Communications, financial transactions, and commercial activity become vulnerable to disruption. At some point, the government must respond.
It may impose tighter restrictions on its population, industry, and resources. It may centralize economic authority, increase domestic surveillance, restrict communications, and deploy additional security forces to maintain order. Military and economic resources that could otherwise be directed toward external defense or rebuilding capabilities must now be diverted toward internal security and maintaining essential functions to keep the peace or what’s left of it.
The country begins occupying itself.
And the interesting part is that the government may not even recognize, at least initially, that it’s helping maintain the very siege being imposed against it. From its perspective, it’s responding to threats and attempting to preserve its authority. Yet those responses can compound the pressure already being applied from outside.
If the economy continues to deteriorate, public discontent may grow. Eventually, people may protest or rebel. The government responds by sending in the police or military. That requires additional resources, placing further pressure on an already strained system. Restrictions increase, surveillance expands, and the government becomes more concerned with controlling its own population than confronting the external adversary.
It becomes its own jailer.
And if you can produce another threat within that environment, what happens? You could potentially create a chain reaction. One restriction leads to another. One security measure creates additional economic or political consequences, requiring still more security measures. The state becomes increasingly occupied with containing the problems developing within its own borders.
This is a potential mechanism of indirect control. The besieging power doesn’t necessarily control the government directly. Instead, it puts the government under enough pressure that its own decisions begin reinforcing the restrictions imposed on it.
In effect, the besieger transfers part of the burden of maintaining the siege to the besieged state itself.
To be fair, states can become their own prisons without anybody imposing a siege upon them. North Korea and the Soviet Union are examples. Both developed extensive systems of internal control without an outside power imposing those conditions. However, under neo-siege, external pressure could produce or intensify similar conditions. The difference isn’t necessarily what the government does to its own population, but what causes it to do so.
This doesn’t require the targeted government to cooperate willingly. Quite the opposite. It may believe that every action it takes is necessary for its own survival. But the more resources it commits to internal control, the fewer resources it may have available to sustain or regenerate its power.
That is where denial, attrition, and coercion come together.
Iran presents an interesting contemporary example of how such a strategy might develop. American military, economic, and political operations to disrupt Iranian supply networks could create conditions resembling a modern strategic siege. Rather than attempting to occupy Iran physically, the United States can attempt to isolate it, restrict its economic activity, and deny it the resources necessary to rebuild its military capabilities.
But whether that pressure eventually produces the internal consequences described here is another question entirely.
We don’t know.
Iran’s institutions may adapt. They may absorb the pressure, find alternative ways to sustain themselves, or keep resisting despite the economic and military costs. Conversely, sustained pressure could lead to tighter internal restrictions, deeper economic deterioration, and a growing commitment of Iranian resources to maintaining domestic security.
We’re about to find out how this develops.
And that’s why neo-siege should be understood as a strategic theory rather than a prediction that Iran will collapse or surrender. Applying siege principles doesn’t guarantee the desired outcome. A besieged state can resist, adapt, or outlast the power attempting to isolate it.
The besieging power must also endure. Maintaining economic restrictions, military operations, intelligence networks, and continuous pressure isn’t necessarily inexpensive. The longer the siege continues, the more it may consume the besieger’s own resources, military readiness, and political will.
Ultimately, the objective remains what it has always been in siege warfare: to deny an adversary the means to sustain resistance and coerce a desired outcome.
The methods have changed, the geographical limitations have changed, and the instruments available have expanded considerably. But the principles remain recognizable.
What makes neo-siege particularly interesting is the possibility that a state can be besieged so thoroughly, without physical occupation, that its own government begins performing some of the functions traditionally carried out by an occupying army.
You’re not simply besieging the state. You’re creating conditions in which the state may begin besieging itself.
References:
Haulman, Daniel L. “Crisis in Iraq: Operation Provide Comfort.” In Short of War: Major USAF Contingency Operations, 1947–1997, edited by A. Timothy Warnock, 179–88. Washington, DC: Air Force History and Museums Program, 2000. https://media.defense.gov/2012/Aug/23/2001330108/-1/-1/0/Op%20Provide%20Comfort.pdf.
U.S. Central Command. “CENTCOM Launches Task Force to Disrupt Iranian Ground Transit Routes Supporting Illegal Shipments.” November 7, 2026. https://www.centcom.mil/MEDIA/PUBLIC-RELEASES/Article/4644250/centcom-launches-task-force-to-disrupt-iranian-ground-transit-routes-supporting/.