The Iran War is Going Poorly

Despite repeated tactical victories, strategic goals remain elusive.

The Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz famously wrote that “War is the mere continuation of politics via other means.” I know it is annoying to rehearse clichéd dicta like these, but von Clausewitz’s observation has a tedious importance for assessing the war in Iran.

This is because, while the administration of U.S. President Donald J. Trump and many of the war’s most ardent supporters are fond of remarking on the impressive tactical success of the joint U.S.-Israel air campaign, they have been less consistent in articulating their precise political or strategic goals.

Trump and those close to him have at points hoped for a popular revolution in Iran, for the “unconditional surrender” of the Iranians, and for a “change” to the “threat” posed by Iran’s ballistic missile programme and its proxy network. In the early days of the war, when the administration was still struggling to refine its war messaging, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth developed a more minimal catalogue of goals that they are wont to emphasise whenever the question of war aims arises. This catalogue is subject to minor variation but generally contains four or five points; the latest iteration, drafted after Trump’s Wednesday speech, looks like this:

Now the Iranian air force and the Iranian navy never mattered much at all, and I imagine they are mentioned merely to fill out the list with eminently achievable things that the Americans and Israelis indeed went on to achieve beyond all cavil. Destroying Iranian nuclear and ballistic missile capabilities is nearer the mark, because it touches on the clear political goal of eliminating Iran’s ability to threaten its neighbours. Alas, these aims remain unrealised and will probably prove unrealisable via the simple tactic of blowing things up from the air. Iran will simply rebuild when the bombing stops, newly incentivised to develop a nuclear arsenal for real this time.

All of this raises the question of what was supposed to happen.

The purpose was plainly not to inaugurate a new era of semi-annual air strikes to kill Iran’s leaders and dampen their capacity to project force. Mowing the grass in this fashion would entail accepting as the new normal indefinite restrictions to shipping through the Strait of Hormuz and an unceasing drumbeat of ballistic missile attacks on Israel and the Gulf states.

Something has clearly gone wrong, and we now have very good reporting on what that something was. Operation Epic Fury was a serious high-stakes gamble that failed to pay off. Since this failure, the goals of the Iran war have shifted, becoming less ambitious and more diffuse.

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