Beyond the bluster and carnage let’s look at the current situation in the war between the U.S. and Israel and Iran. I wrote most of this post before the overnight news that Trump is essentially suing for peace. But all of it still applies. And it comes down to one remarkable dynamic.
Despite the U.S. dominating the skies and almost every other combat domain, Iran has seized and holds the initiative in the war itself, forcing the U.S. to react to it and, in Trump’s hands, do so erratically and helplessly. Iran has the strategic initiative, despite constant and incredibly damaging attacks by the United States and Israel. Indeed, getting Iran to stop its primary retaliatory measure — throttling the Strait of Hormuz — now appears to be the main U.S. war aim. In other words, the main goal of the U.S. now is to get Iran to cease its retaliation for the U.S. starting the war in the first place.
The U.S. was already trying to get Iran to the bargaining table, according to this report last night from Axios. The fact that the U.S. is, reportedly, considering how to “package” cash payments to Iran (i.e. release frozen assets) is a testament to just how far we are from “unconditional surrender.” Meanwhile, this morning’s news confirms that the U.S. is getting talks started, or at least hoping to do so. Of course the simplest way to get Iran to release the strait is to stop the war. But the U.S. can’t do that, at least not openly, since that would amount to a massive and humiliating defeat.
Meanwhile it’s the U.S. — or at least Donald Trump’s Truth Social account — that keeps issuing threats to do things if Iran doesn’t immediately allow free passage through the strait. The latest was Trump’s threat to destroy Iran’s civilian power plants if Iran doesn’t comply within 48 hours. He’s now extended that deadline. This comes after earlier threats to take possession of Kharg Island, the oil depot through which almost all of Iran’s oil flows. The idea is to take it and then Iran will submit and open the strait because that’s how they sell oil.
There are two problems with this.
The first is that Iran is clearly willing to absorb vastly more pain than the Trump White House is on behalf of the American people. Of course that’s true. For Iran’s government, this is an existential conflict. It’s far from that for the U.S. Indeed, U.S. isn’t even clear on precisely why or for what it went to war in the first place. It was a war of choice to achieve aims that are, in the most generous view, preventing things from happening years or decades in the future. That is a critical strategic asset that can transcend the power of weapons systems. Yes, cutting off Iran’s ability to sell oil is a close to existential threat to the clerical regime. But can Iran absorb that cut off longer than the U.S. (or rather Donald Trump’s midterm election hopes) can allow the Strait of Hormuz to stay closed? Quite possibly.
Second, these threats violate a basic principle of how military force is effectively used to settle disputes between states. The U.S. wants to make Iran stop blocking the strait. The surest way to do that is to actually prevent them from doing that. (The U.S. could bomb civilian cities and infrastructure in Germany. But that was never going to compel Germany’s surrender. The U.S. had to invade Europe.) But for the U.S. to do this with Iran would be bloody and difficult and dangerous. It probably requires the U.S. to occupy a chunk of Iran’s coastline along the Persian Gulf and eliminate its ability to fire rockets from deeper in Iran. A lot of that is probably doable, but at immense cost.
So Trump is threatening to do basically unrelated things on the theory that those things are so threatening that they will force Iran to do what the U.S. wants. But you never want to leave your key goal to the other side’s choice. That’s very literally leaving the initiative to them. What if they don’t give in to the threat? And what if Trump goes through with the threat to grab this island and they still don’t comply? What do you threaten next? It’s an escalation trap which could lead to an immense amount to damage in Iran but still not get the U.S. out of the box that it’s in. And the critical thing to remember is that Iran has the strategic asset of being able to absorb far more pain. Because the stakes it faces are far, far higher. Iran also knows what it needs: to survive.
All of this is a way of saying Iran has the upper hand, or at least the strategic initiative. Trump doesn’t. They’re dictating the terms and Trump is responding. (Israel’s aims and pace of attacks seem different. We’ll come to that later.) We’re hiding that, maybe even from ourselves, by blowing up stuff. But they have the initiative. We’re responding to them. They’re setting the pace.
There is of course a more optimistic view of the whole situation. I suspect it governs the logic of Israel’s bombing campaign. For Israel, every degradation of Iran’s military capacity is a win. Every missile factory, every bit of command and control infrastructure, every military base, plane, drone, anti-aircraft capacity and of course whatever parts of Iran’s nuclear capacity can be destroyed. Those can all be rebuilt. But after a certain thoroughness of destruction that takes a while. And a regime so denuded of military teeth will be forced to focus on survival, even domestic survival, than projecting power abroad.
I’m not saying that overrides everything I’ve described above. I simply note this to make the real point that it’s not like the U.S. and Israel aren’t accomplishing anything in their own interests while Trump fumbles for a way to unwind the economic crisis he stumbled into. Again, Israel’s needs are more concrete and incremental. Every increment of degraded missile capacity is a win. But it’s Iran which is shaping the pace and direction of the conflict. It is forcing the U.S. to act. And remember, the entire U.S. focus at the moment seems to be ending a problem (blockage of the Strait of Hormuz) that didn’t exist when the U.S. launched its war. Even that may be optimistic. The news of the early afternoon suggests that “postponement” and “negotiations” are at least mainly another effort to coax down oil prices, a gambit won’t work for long as long as it appears that it’s yet more vaporware diplomacy which markets will figure out in hours or days. Trump is still trying to moonwalk his way out of a conflict he thought would be easy and lost control of almost immediately. Who’s in charge or who is winning is never a matter of how many explosions there are. It’s about how close or far each side is from achieving its critical ends and who is defining the terms of the conflict. On that measure, Iran is in control.