Most of what we have heard from the administration as it pertains to the Iran War is swagger and bro-talk. A few days into the war, the White House released a social media video that combined footage of the bombardment with clips from video games. Not long after, it released a second video, titled “Justice the American Way,” that mixed images of the U.S. military with scenes from movies like Gladiator and Top Gun Maverick.
Speaking to reporters at the Pentagon, War Secretary Pete Hegseth boasted of “death and destruction from the sky all day long.” “They are toast, and they know it,” he said. “This was never meant to be a fair fight... we are punching them while they’re down.”
Not to be outdone, President Trump said the Iranian regime had been “decimated” and demanded unconditional surrender. This came not long after he praised the United States and Israel for continuing to “totally demolish the enemy far ahead of schedule and at levels that people have never seen before.”
Even in the face of soaring gas prices and plummeting poll numbers, Trump is leading with a brotesque bravado. "We're achieving major strides toward completing our military objective. And some people could say they're pretty well complete," he said during his first press conference after the War began. "We've wiped every single force in Iran out, very completely; most of Iran's naval power has been sunk."
Likewise, in a call with NBC’s Kristen Welker, he said that although the U.S. had “totally demolished” Iran’s military capabilities, he could “hit it” a “few more times, just for fun.”
He is not wrong when it comes to the advantage the U.S. has on the battlefield. By almost every measure, with a yearly budget around $1T, more than 700 overseas bases, unmatched prowess in terms of technology, airpower, and naval strength, the American military is the most powerful fighting force the world has ever known.
Despite this, under Trump’s leadership, the U.S. has been unable to weaken the Iranian regime, which today is more entrenched and hardline than ever. We are in this position because the president does not understand several key lessons of war, including the most basic: brute force is not enough. Carl von Clausewitz famously made this case in his early 19th C. classic, On War. Military action only succeeds when military aims and political objectives are aligned, when force serves a political purpose, and when the enemy’s will can be broken in a way that produces an outcome that can hold. Administrations that have carried out successful military campaigns throughout American history have understood this.
This is not the case in Operation Epic Fury. Instead, it is a war started by people who have not been able to tell a story as to how we can win. In law, we often apply a reasonable person standard to determine liability. The same is true when it comes to war; prior to any action, those who support it must be able to tell a story of how it can be won, and that narrative must be one a reasonable, ordinary person deems plausible.
When this is not done, the result is what we see today, a war that is wildly unpopular. A recent average of surveys shows the war is supported by just 38% of Americans. Another compilation of polls shows that the president is 5% underwater when it comes to support for the war, a number that threatens to only get worse as the number of service men and women killed and wounded rises, along with the price of gas and other goods.
As a result, Trump has only a few options at his disposal, and none of them are good.
The best of the bad options is de-escalation. If he takes it, it would not be the first time. Last March, he went to war against the Houthis, loudly berating Joe Biden for failing to do so. After months of bombing, however, he recognized what his predecessors already knew – the attacks were to no avail, and he backed down.
De-escalation in the case of Iran could take one of two forms. It is less likely that Trump will back down and return to the negotiation table to secure a deal he can boast is bigger and better than the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear deal President Obama struck. We heard Trump tease this possibility recently on Fox News, saying he was willing to talk with Tehran. Unsurprisingly, Iran rejected his advance. Given how brutal the campaign has been, the fact that they did go back to the table after the U.S. strikes last year, only to be hit again, not to mention the fact that the entire family of the newly installed leader was killed in the operation, Tehran’s reaction is not unexpected. Nor would it be to Trump, had he internalized another basic Clausewitzian lesson, “the enemy has a vote.”
A more likely de-escalation scenario is what we began to hear from Trump early this week, hints that the war was close to ending, and this was nothing more than an “excursion,” mixed with bellicose declarations of victory. The war, he told a CBS reporter, “is very complete, pretty much,” noting that Iran’s military had been largely destroyed. “If you look, they have nothing left. There's nothing left in a military sense.” He echoed this later, declaring victory but then hedging. “We’ve already won,” he said, “but we haven’t won enough... we go forward more determined than ever to achieve ultimate victory that will end this long-running danger once and for all.”
Prior to moving in this direction, however, Trump will have to ensure the Strait of Hormuz is reopened to shipping. This is why he has exerted so much energy in the last several days trying to get our NATO allies and countries around the world to lend support to that effort. Despite his attempts to strong-arm, chastise, and threaten our allies into entering the conflict, so far, no one has come forward. In fact, to the contrary, all have adopted a position best summed up by Germany’s Prime Minister Friedrich Merz, “This war has nothing to do with NATO. It is not NATO’s war. Participation has not been considered before the war and is not being considered now.” This is another reminder of a life/war lesson Trump should have learned long ago: build the lifeboat before the ship begins sinking – or, in this case, forge and nurture alliances in advance of crises.
If Trump goes down either de-escalation path A or B, even his hyperbolic claims and public pronouncements of victory cannot mask the reality, by the administration’s own fluid measure, little will have been achieved. Despite the shifting public pronouncements, three goals have always made up the core of the administration’s objectives: dismantling Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs, and ending its support of proxies such as Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis. None of this is possible, however, without regime change; and it is not just any change that is needed, but the installment of a regime that is uninterested in reconstituting its weapons programs or reestablishing ties with its proxies, in addition to being friendly to the U.S. and Israel.
What has happened, however, is exactly the opposite. Far from capitulating, days after the US and Israel decapitated the regime, killing the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khmeni, the Assembly of Experts chose his son, Mojtaba Khamenei, to succeed his father as the third leader of the Islamic Republic. U.S. intelligence reports over the last few days suggest that after more than two weeks of strikes, the Iranian regime has not only “consolidated power” but is more entrenched and “hardline” than ever before; in addition, they speculate it will likely remain in place for some time.
The second option is to incite an uprising. So far, however, there are few signs of one. Indeed, the United States has arguably made that outcome less likely by hollowing out instruments of soft power such as the Voice of America (VOA) and by carrying out bombings that have killed many innocent civilians. The same Iranians that the president said he hoped would rise up have not only been subject to constant bombing but have also been relegated to sheltering inside and watching funerals of innocent school children killed as a result of the joint US/Israeli attacks. Under those conditions, even Iranians who loathe the regime have little reason to align themselves with Washington or Jerusalem.
Moreover, history tells us that despite the president's call for a popular uprising, revolution in Iran is most likely to come from those who have access to guns and ammunition – namely, the Kurds and the Azerbaijanis. Yet, even the president has said this is unlikely.
The final option also involves escalation, putting American boots on the ground in a limited or more extended capacity. While the latter is almost unthinkable given Trump’s campaign pronouncements that he would end forever wars, neither has been taken off the table. The more likely of the two would involve limited incursions by Special Operations Forces. And if the US and Israel have any hope left of achieving even a portion of their stated goal of dismantling Iran’s nuclear capacity, they will have to send troops and other experts in to safely remove the more than 900 pounds of enriched nuclear material currently buried under the mountain that Trump bombed last year.
Whatever option Trump goes with, the U.S. is in this position because he began a war in the Middle East despite the fact that he was unable to pass the most basic test required of all successful war leaders: prior to engaging militarily, make sure you can tell a plausible story of how your limited goals can successfully be achieved. Moreover, make sure the narrative is one that passes muster with most reasonable people.
Jeanne Sheehan Zaino is a professor of political science at Iona University, a democracy visiting fellow at the Harvard Kennedy Schools' Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, senior democracy fellow at the Center for the Study of the Presidency & Congress, & a Bloomberg News political contributor.
