The latest escalation in the Middle East is in many ways the inevitable culmination of a long-simmering rivalry. Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons capability and Israel’s determination to stop that from happening meant that such an outcome was always in the cards.

But it also provides an example of what scholars of international relations like me refer to as the “commitment trap.” Put simply, the concept is that states and governments feel compelled to continue with a promised course of action, even if doing so might be to their own disadvantage. Think, “if country X doesn’t do Y, we will do Z in response.”

The idea was popularized by political scientist Scott Sagan in a much-referenced 2000 academic paper looking at the U.S.’s apparent threat to use nuclear weapons should an adversary use biological or chemical weapons.

But the concept applies to a range of situations, from unilateral acts of aggression or preemptive strikes to promises of support to an ally.

Commitment traps are a feature of conflicts that go back, at least, to Ancient Greece. The Peloponnesian War was, in part, the story of how commitments made by Athens and Sparta to their respective allies turned local disputes into continentwide cataclysms; World War I began much the same way – an assassination in Sarajevo triggered a cascade of alliance reactions that no one could stop.

But unlike those past examples, in the Middle East of 2025, the commitment trap dynamic is playing out under the shadow of nuclear proliferation – the costs of miscalculation are apocalyptic.

An existential commitment

Each of the parties involved – Israel, Iran and the United States, too – are bound by their own commitments.

Israel has committed itself to the proposition that Iran must never acquire nuclear weapons. Having built its regional security doctrine around preemptive action, nuclear monopoly and deterrence through escalation dominance, it cannot now accept even the possibility of Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon.

Once you’ve declared something an existential threat, there’s no halfway response. And so Israel escalates now because it must; in other words, it is committed to do so.

The fact that Israel has now launched successive rounds of air assaults on Iran and in turn incurred losses of its own – as of June 17, at least 24 Israels have been killed in Iranian retaliatory strikes, which also undermined confidence in the country’s Iron Dome defense system – brings in a related concept: the “sunk cost fallacy.” As it refers to international relations, this concept stipulates that nations are prone to continue down a given path – a war or a diplomatic initiative, for example – once they have invested considerable resources in that effort, even if doing so is not in that country’s interests.

No backing away from the bomb

Iran is no less trapped.

Decades of ideological anti-Zionism and the enshrinement of nuclear development as a matter of national pride have made backing down that much harder.

The regime in Tehran long ago crossed its own Rubicon – perhaps not to build a bomb immediately but to preserve the option of one.

Faced with a direct military challenge from Israel, it too is bound by its commitments – to its regional proxies, to its domestic hard-liners and to the idea of the Islamic Republic as a revolutionary power that cannot be seen to fold under Western or Zionist pressure.

As to sunk costs, Tehran has invested effort, billions of dollars and credibility into building up its nuclear program.

Dragged into war

The United States, too, is caught in a web of commitments.

Washington has long pledged to defend Israel’s security and has sworn to prevent Iran developing a nuclear weapon.

And it has spent the past two decades attempting to deter Iran without triggering all-out war, a delicate balancing act that now seems to be collapsing under its own contradictions.

American troops across the region – in Doha, Jordan, Syria and Iraq – form part of Washington’s commitment trap, and its sunk costs, too.

They may now become targets. That’s what commitment entrapment looks like: You get dragged in not because you started the fire but because your allies are already burning.

No off-ramp

Once caught up in a commitment trap, it can be hard to escape.

International relations realists would argue that foreign policymakers need to disentangle themselves from the idea that every commitment is sacred, every ally is indispensable and every red line is inviolable.

For the U.S. that would mean not feeling committed to supporting Israel in actions that could put American national interests at risk.

Israel, too, must ask hard questions about its policies. It has the responsibility to distinguish between genuine existential threats and self-reinforcing cycles of escalation.

As for Iran, its nuclear ambitions have now triggered the very outcome it hoped to deter: open Israeli strikes on its most sensitive military sites.

For the moment, none of the players involved seem to be looking for a viable off-ramp, because their entire identity – national, ideological, political – is staked on seeing things through.

That’s the commitment trap. It’s how great powers, and aspiring ones, have made their gravest mistakes. Not because they don’t know better. But because, having already done so much, lost so much and promised so much, they no longer know how to stop.

This article is part of a series explaining foreign policy terms commonly used but rarely explained.

Andrew Latham does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.