Abstract
<jats:p>This policy brief examines the evolving structure of the U.S.–Iran–Israel conflict across 159 analytical days using the Multi-Domain Conflict and Coupling Model (MCCM) v2.3.4, the Multi-Component Escalation Assessment (MCEA), non-negative matrix factorization (NMF), and exploratory k-means clustering. It finds that Phase III marked the conflict’s decisive structural shift: mean MCEA increased from 0.716 in Phase II to 0.840 in Phase III and reached 0.980 on Day 140. The shift was systemic rather than purely military, with kinetic escalation, rule contestation, information amplification, uncertainty, resilience erosion, and external-node exposure intensifying together. The brief concludes that effective warning requires monitoring cross-layer configurations, mechanism composition, and resilience loss rather than visible strike intensity alone.</jats:p>