Category: Iran

Posted on

The Eagle May Have Fleas: Military Leaders Warn Hegseth Against Extending Iran War Operations

The Washington Post recently published an article titled “Military leaders warn Hegseth against extending Iran war operations,” based on what appears to be leaked internal military reporting. The article is interesting, but the bigger issue is what it reveals: the longer the Iran conflict continues, the more the United States must draw from the same limited pool of ships, aircraft, air defenses, munitions, and personnel needed elsewhere. Links to the reporting are provided at the bottom of the page.

The leak sends a clear message to U.S. adversaries. Sustained pressure is producing measurable strain. The message they may take is simple: keep doing what you are doing, because the longer this continues, the more it drains the U.S. military.

The central problem with this article isn’t the article itself, but what’s going on. The first issue is that one can argue CENTCOM is eating the global reserve. As indicated, the United States has kept more than 50,000 personnel in the Middle East available for the Iran conflict, with some deployments being extended through September and others apparently into 2027. At the same time, it has pulled ships, surveillance assets, air defenses, and munitions from other theaters.

This comes down to the requirements of the Iran operation versus the available global military capacity. Now, when you combine the two and consider that after six months the problem becomes cumulative, it isn’t simply the number of ships or aircraft physically present in CENTCOM on a given day. It is deferred maintenance, crews held beyond normal deployment cycles, as we’ve seen with the USS Lincoln, disrupted training cycles, declining ammunition inventories, replacement units committed earlier than planned, and other combatant commanders losing their contingency forces. In other words, to strengthen one force, you have to weaken other forces. Too much for too long does matter.

The most significant part of the article is probably the strain now being placed on the Navy. Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Daryl Caudle reportedly told Hegseth that the Navy warned that maintaining the current operational commitment without a defined endpoint was unsustainable, especially because there’s no known termination point for the Iran operation. The admiral’s job is to define the military risk, not necessarily the political end state. If the mission is A, B, C, and D, then his responsibility is to explain what A, B, C, and D will cost the Navy and whether his force can sustain them. His concern is the force under his responsibility. He may not be privy to every larger political calculation, strategic purpose, or evolving objective being formulated, revised, or reconsidered in Washington. On top of that, The Washington Post says only one quarter of the destroyer fleet is currently ready to deploy. That doesn’t mean three-quarters of American destroyers are broken. Ships rotate through deployment, post-deployment, maintenance workup, certification, deployment, rinse and repeat. However, if you repeatedly extend ships or accelerate replacements, yes, you begin cannibalizing the future force to sustain the present force. Once again, it comes back down to: to strengthen one force, you’ve got to weaken another somewhere else. So overall, you get something very similar to operational overstretch through time rather than simply through geography. That’s the major distinction. The United States can certainly mass naval power against Iran. However, the question becomes, how long can it maintain that concentration without seriously reducing its ability to mass elsewhere?

Of all this, INDOPACOM is probably the most strategically important concern. Adm. Samuel Paparo reportedly objected to continuing to provide an aircraft carrier strike group and destroyers from the Pacific. The Washington Post does note that the Navy’s dedicated Pacific carrier was moved toward the Middle East to relieve another carrier that had already been deployed for more than 300 days. This is where Iran becomes much larger than Iran. From a Chinese perspective, the question isn’t whether the United States can defeat Iran. Of course it possesses a vastly greater military power. The relevant question, or the question that should be asked, is how much American combat power is tied down in the Gulf if a crisis begins in the Western Pacific? That is the opportunity cost problem. Iran doesn’t necessarily have to destroy American military power. It can absorb American military availability. The larger strategic effect becomes cross-theater reallocation: the United States grows stronger in one theater while accepting greater exposure in another.

This brings us to EUCOM, which has the same problem, particularly regarding missile defense. European Command reportedly warned that transferring naval and surveillance assets to CENTCOM is degrading its ability to carry out its own responsibilities. That becomes especially consequential because Iran has forced the United States to expend expensive defensive munitions. The article specifically identifies pressure on Patriot interceptors, THAAD interceptors, and Tomahawks, and states that roughly 25 percent of the Pentagon’s Reaper drone fleet has been lost during the conflict. The Patriot/THAAD issue may actually be more strategically important than losing aircraft or ships. The reason is that Iranian ballistic missiles force the United States into an unfavorable exchange where relatively cheap offensive missiles may require very expensive and relatively scarce interceptors. Those same interceptor inventories matter for Europe against Russia, Israel in the Middle East against Iran, and U.S. territories, Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines in the Pacific in the event of a war with China, as well as for U.S. bases supporting homeland and regional defense. Every theater begins competing for ammunition.

One could make the argument now that Iran appears to have created an attritional problem without defeating the United States conventionally. This deserves emphasis. Iran does not need to beat the United States Navy or shoot down the U.S. Air Force. It doesn’t even necessarily need to close the Strait of Hormuz permanently. If Tehran can repeatedly generate threats requiring the United States to maintain carrier groups, destroyers, air defense batteries, ISR (intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance), aircraft, troops, interceptors, etc., then Iran is imposing continuous readiness costs by slowly draining the United States. The conflict’s character has changed. What began as a high-intensity strike campaign is evolving into something more like: strike, Iranian retaliation, defensive reinforcement, maritime enforcement, prolonged deployment, replenishment/maintenance costs, reduced global readiness, etc. Kinetic intensity can decline while strategic costs keep mounting. In other words, endurance and resilience matter more than raw power or initial aggression.

One interesting part of the article is the 82nd Airborne detail. It says about 2,000 troops from the 82nd Airborne mobilized for the war, and according to the article, elements of the division could now remain deployed for a year. Patriot units may receive extensions as well. The Post calls those airborne troops potentially central to any invasion. I don’t know if I’d interpret their presence as evidence that an invasion is imminent. I’d interpret it more as a contingency force held because Washington cannot eliminate the possibility of ground escalation. Whether the ground invasion is real or not, the option must be available. Washington must keep the option available, and it must also make a potential invasion believable to Iran. That creates another burden. Forces reserved for one option become unavailable for other operations, home or abroad, even if that option is never exercised. That’s important strategically. A reserve tied down by contingency planning is still tied down. On the flip side, though, it creates the illusion of the possible.

Now, this doesn’t mean the United States military is running out of weapons. That’s an interpretation to take with a grain of salt. Yes, the Pentagon disputes reports that it faces ammunition shortages, and there is an enormous difference between “we have no missiles left” and “continued expenditure is pushing inventories below levels commanders consider prudent for other war plans.” The article is describing the second problem. Military planning doesn’t wait until magazines are empty before declaring risk. INDOPACOM might say it technically still has enough interceptors to fight, while also saying it no longer has enough to execute its Taiwan contingency plan with the confidence level it considers acceptable. Both things can be true, by the way.

The real danger is strategic concurrency. This is where the story becomes larger than Iran itself. The United States is balancing several potential theaters simultaneously: Iran/the Middle East, Russia/Europe, China/the Western Pacific, and homeland defense. The Iran operation draws on assets that aren’t easy to duplicate. Destroyers are especially important because the same ships can provide air defense, missile defense, Tomahawk strike, escort, ASW (anti-submarine warfare), surveillance, and maritime security. But you can’t manufacture another Arleigh Burke-class destroyer next Thursday, because CENTCOM wants one. Likewise, you cannot rapidly regenerate experienced crews, Patriot batteries, THAAD interceptors, or carrier availability. All this takes time to replenish, train, retrain, etc. So the limiting factor isn’t total American military power. It is simultaneously available military power. That’s a much more meaningful measure. And then something happened yesterday that makes the report even more important. The warning contained in the 14 August document predates the latest renewed exchange. On 30 August, U.S. forces struck Iranian missile launchers on Larak Island after CENTCOM said Iranian forces were preparing a threat involving sea mines. Iran then retaliated with ballistic missiles against U.S. forces in Jordan. So the military was reportedly warned: don’t let this become an indefinite force commitment. Two weeks later, the conflict sparked another exchange. That showed exactly why commanders worry about an open-ended commitment. Even during periods of reduced fighting, the force posture cannot easily disappear because Iran retains the ability to regenerate a crisis. Across the many articles I’ve already written on this conflict, it fits into my earlier analysis and strengthens something I’ve been circling for months. The war has moved from destruction of Iranian capabilities toward a struggle over whose system absorbs prolonged pressure better. Iran has suffered greater physical destruction, but Tehran doesn’t have to achieve military parity. Iran’s strategic opportunity is to make Washington continuously expend resources to maintain the situation it created.

The current phase could be summed up as follows: The United States and Israel achieved the initial military advantage and degraded much of Iran’s conventional capability. Iran then adapted by dispersing, absorbing punishment, and relying more heavily on asymmetric retaliation. This forced the United States to maintain a large regional presence around the Strait of Hormuz. As deployments extend, maintenance demands rise, munitions inventories tighten, and readiness pressures accumulate. The battlefield may remain centered on Iran, but the strategic risk increasingly migrates outward into Europe and the Pacific.

Overall, overextension describes the symptom. Strategic concurrency describes the system producing it. In other words, it means you are fighting a multi-front war with a single pool of forces.

Links

The Washington Post — “Military leaders warn Hegseth against extending Iran war operations”

The Guardian — “Pentagon plays down report of Hegseth regularly overruling military advice”

Just the News — Pentagon response to the report

The Jerusalem Post — U.S. military chiefs warn Iran war is eroding readiness

Times of Israel — U.S. military warns prolonged Iran campaign could affect other theaters

IranWire — “U.S. Military Commanders Warn of Attrition in Iran War”

Posted on

The Decapitation Carousel of Iran

Strategic decapitation doesn’t automatically produce political moderation or collapse. You’d be a fool to believe this. In some cases it does, but in others it doesn’t. Sometimes it makes it harder for a regime to survive; other times, the surviving regime becomes less suspicious and more willing to compromise. It’s a balancing act, usually on their end, since they’re the receiving end of all the violence. Now, Washington can say what it wants. They make the argument: we tried negotiation, and they attacked us anyway. Well, it works both ways, and there’s political logic to it.

The strategic importance is that the United States and Israel may have altered the Iranian regime without replacing it. However, that’s different from regime change. One could argue that it was an involuntary internal political selection process, destroying parts of one elite configuration and thereby increasing the relative power of another. Basically, put the entire country under new management until you get the right management to run it. I think the important part is that Iran is not the Islamic Republic we knew, but something else. The decapitation carousel appears to be transforming Iran into something far more radical: a harder authoritarian system in which the internal balance has shifted further toward the security establishment.

So when you break it down, if you look at the strategic logic in all this, yes, you can destroy the command structures, the missile infrastructure, the nuclear infrastructure, political leadership, and its economic capacity, and still fail to eliminate the enemy’s ability to impose costs. It’s a tit-for-tat game. What it really is, though, is a war of the fleas.

This intersects with something I’ve discussed in previous articles: physical destruction becomes functional destruction only when the destroyed physical system can no longer perform its function. Killing commanders is physical destruction. Destroying missile launchers is physical destruction. But if replacement commanders assume control, those dispersed systems will continue operating. Proxies will remain in place, waiting for further notice, and Iran can switch to other means of coercion. Then you’ve destroyed components without necessarily destroying the broader strategic function.

That’s the biggest issue. The campaign has been extremely successful in terms of physical destruction, including much of Iran’s military and civilian infrastructure. But it’s incomplete strategically in terms of political conversion. Washington may have destroyed much of Iran’s previous military-political architecture without creating the political conditions necessary to produce the behavior Washington wants.

One of the biggest things people forget in the minutiae of war and politics is this: never confuse removing people with removing the system, and never confuse destroying capability with achieving the political outcome that destruction was meant to produce. Overall, wrecking Iran is easier than determining what political and strategic system occupies the wreckage afterward. It’s always about the day after.

Posted on

The Phantom Invasion of Iran?

Countryside Looking toward Iranian Border – Outside Halabja – Kurdistan

Iran’s greatest weakness may have been the static posture it maintained while its external defense in depth was progressively dismantled. However, that comes with a caveat.

(See my article What Would War with Iran Look Like?

Its regional network through Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon had once resembled a modern strategic ribat, extending Iran’s defensive frontier outward and pushing the battlefield away from Iranian territory. When that network weakened, Tehran remained dependent upon fixed facilities, such as established command structures, hardened positions, and long-range retaliation. This allowed its enemies to determine the tempo and sequence of the war.

That does not mean Iran would remain static if foreign troops entered the country. This is where my caveat comes in. Because a ground invasion would likely activate a different form of defense in depth, Iran could fall back through mountains, cities, and tunnels. This, in turn, could help preserve and fortify its internal-security networks, militias, and other irregular or conventional units. The Iranian state appears suppressed under aerial attack for the time being and likely will be for the foreseeable future. The question, and the concern, is whether, if boots were to hit the ground, Iran would shift from a static defense to a mobile defense in depth.

However, the greatest danger to Tehran may not come from American troops advancing directly toward the capital. Rather, it may come from the interaction between external pressure and internal fragmentation. Kurdish forces and other opposition groups could create disturbances along the periphery, forcing the government to divide its forces and attention. However, Iranian command would know better than to venture out en masse to confront a much smaller enemy. The reason for this is that it would expose Iranian forces to U.S. fighters, drones, bombers, and missiles. More consequentially, factions within the Iranian military, bureaucracy, and political establishment could decide that the survival of the present regime no longer coincides with their own survival. In other words, the regime may lose the faith of the very institutions expected to defend it.

Such internal fragmentation could arise by Iran’s own hand or be encouraged through outside assistance. Understand that foreign black-operations personnel may already be operating inside Iran, supported by a much larger clandestine intelligence system working through the country’s institutions, commercial networks, political factions, and administrative structures. Yet the bureaucracy does not end with the institution. Every person encountered represents a bureaucracy of his own. What do I mean by that? Each person has a network of loyalties, ambitions, grievances, fears, obligations, and personal relationships waiting to be understood and, where possible, exploited.

As for the American presence, it is almost phantom-like. It surrounds Iran without presenting a single conventional army for Iran to confront. It appears through air, sea, and cyber, causing sudden destruction against selected targets. Its physical body remains largely outside Iran, while its effects are felt inside the country. It is not merely a phantom, but a deadly phantom: difficult to locate, difficult to engage, and capable of reaching deep into a state that cannot strike it with equal precision.

The strategic purpose of such a presence is not necessarily to conquer Iran from the outside, but to create the conditions under which Iran begins to conquer itself from within. External attacks weaken the connections holding the state together, peripheral factions generate movement, and political uncertainty forces every component of the system to reconsider where its loyalty and survival truly lie. The decisive moment would arrive not when American troops entered Tehran, but when Tehran could no longer be certain which Iranian forces would defend it.

The broader objective is to cripple Iran. The operational apparatus presently employed is largely air, sea, and cyber. A land campaign may eventually follow, but even the possibility of one can serve as a weapon in itself. The threat of American forces entering the country, combined with Kurdish activity and other pressures along the borders, could force Tehran to look in several directions at once while confronting no single conventional invasion force. In other words, Tehran could be forced to defend against deliberately exaggerated or ambiguous armies that might appear.

While Tehran searches for the physical body of the invasion, the United States can continue striking the systems that serve as the regime’s eyes and ears and enable it to defend itself.

Therefore, a land invasion does not have to occur to produce operational effects. Its possibility alone can compel and expose movement, divide attention, and deepen uncertainty. Iran is forced to defend against something that remains largely absent while absorbing punishment from capabilities that are already present. The phantom is not simply the American force itself, but the invasion that Iran must continually anticipate without knowing whether, where, or when it will materialize.

Posted on

NATO Isn’t Breaking. It’s Being Repriced.

Introduction

On 12 April 2026, President Trump announced a move to close the Strait of Hormuz effectively, but with a twist. This isn’t a literal blockade of all shipping. It’s a coercive strategy aimed at undermining Iran’s ability to control and monetize the strait. However, those in the EU, particularly Britain, do not agree. Sky News quoted a British government spokesperson who stated, “We continue to support freedom of navigation and the opening of the Strait of Hormuz, which is urgently needed to support the global economy and the cost of living back home”, the spokesperson said, according to Sky News. “The Strait of Hormuz must not be subject to tolling”, the official added.

The current tension has put the alliance’s unity to the test.

As the United States is moving toward enforcement. The EU is signaling restraint. The question is whether NATO can hold together under pressure.

That is the wrong question.

Understand that NATO is not on the verge of collapse—at least not yet. It is not even necessarily weakening in the conventional sense. What we are seeing instead is a shift in how the alliance functions under stress.

The issue is not whether allies agree.

It is whether they are willing to pay.

Because beneath unity and cooperation, a more basic dynamic is emerging: Security is no longer assumed. It is being priced.

This is not just a temporary disagreement over Iran, maritime enforcement, or escalation risk. Rather, it is a shift in how alliances work when the costs of keeping things running get unevenly distributed.

The United States is not asking for support.

It is attempting to preserve control over the system that governs the movement of energy, capital, and coercion—and to determine who bears the cost of enforcing it.

Europe, for its part, is trying to preserve that system while limiting its exposure to escalation and domestic political risk.

Those positions overlap.

But they are not the same.

And the gap between them is where the real change is taking place.

Before proceeding, a brief clarification of what is meant here by “the system.”

The system is the U.S.-led framework that keeps global trade, energy flows, and financial exchange functioning. It is an order the United States pays to enforce—and expects others, particularly within NATO, to help sustain rather than free-ride on.

Strategic Level — System Over Solidarity

The United States is not trying to “get Europe to help.”

That framing is too narrow.

What it is trying to preserve is control over the system that governs the movement of energy, capital, and coercion. The Strait of Hormuz is not just a geographic choke point—it is a test of whether that system can still be enforced under pressure.

From Washington’s perspective, Europe supports open sea lanes—but hesitates to enforce them when contested. Washington’s question for the EU or NATO is, “What are you worth?”

The issue shifts from disagreement to imbalance. Imbalance creates uncertainty—and uncertainty sends mixed signals. A system built on credibility, mixed signals become a liability.

The question now becomes: who pays to maintain the system?

U.S. strategy has to shift under those conditions. From alliance cohesion to enforcement; from shared values to cost distribution; and from unity to tiered participation.

This does not mean abandoning the alliance.

It means redefining it in functional terms.

In some respects, this begins to resemble older political structures more than modern alliances. Not in form, but in behavior. A loose collection of states, unequal in capacity and commitment, cooperating when interests align, diverging when costs rise. At times unified, at other times fragmented, they are constantly negotiating their place within the larger system.

The pattern is familiar, but the comparison is not exact.

Operational Level — Coalition, Not Community

Operationally, the alliance is still holding together. But it’s starting to split into different roles — some countries stepping up, others stepping back.

Willingness to act begins to matter more than formal membership.

In practical terms:

1. The core group (U.S., UK, FRA, DEU, etc.) conducts enforcement operations, deterrence, and escalation management.

2. The secondary group (NLD, SVK, HUN, etc.) contributes indirectly through escort missions, intelligence, and stabilization.

3. All others remain politically aligned but operationally absent.

Collapse?

No.

But a task-organized alliance.

Uniform participation?

No.

Selective contribution.

Pay to play, in one sense.

Political Level — Negotiated Obligation

Politically, the shift is visible.

European governments emphasize restraint and legality. The United States emphasizes credibility, deterrence, and enforcement. Both positions are valid and rational within their respective frameworks.

However, those two approaches do not always line up. And when they do not, the whole character of the alliance starts to shift. What used to be treated as firm, agreed-upon obligations are now quietly renegotiated — made conditional, hedged, or even reversible depending on the moment. Support is no longer something you can count on. It gets evaluated, case by case.

Not in the abstract sense — but in terms of cost:

What does this require?

What does this risk?

What does this return?

The alliance begins to resemble a market. Not because countries have become mercenaries, but because the value of commitments is no longer taken for granted.

Economic Level — Coercion Without Participation

The final layer is economic—and it is decisive.

European states may choose to limit their military role. But they cannot opt out of the system’s economic consequences.

Disruptions in Hormuz translate into:

Energy price volatility

Industrial strain

Insurance and shipping cost increases

Even without direct participation, costs are still imposed.

From a U.S. perspective, this creates leverage.

If allies do not contribute to enforcement, they will still experience the consequences of instability—and may be compelled to align through financial, industrial, or regulatory pressure.

In this sense, strategy extends beyond military action.

It becomes systemic.

NATO is not breaking.

NATO is adapting to pressure in a way that reveals something deeper about how alliances function when costs rise.

The question is no longer whether allies agree—it is whether they are willing to contribute, and at what level.

That shift changes the character of the alliance—not in form, but in function.

What was once assumed is now negotiated.

What was once shared is now distributed.

What was once taken for granted now has a price.

Posted on

To Kharg, or not to Kharg—that’s the Question. But Kharg is not a solution—it’s a trigger.

For many weeks, there has been a common argument about any operation around Kharg Island that always lands on the same concerns: it’s just too hard, too exposed, too squeezed by the terrain and the Strait. Because of this, drones will fill the sky, and the defender has every advantage; every movement gets funneled into kill zones. So people conclude the whole thing would fall apart under its own weight. It very well could. But the real issue isn’t whether it could fail—it’s what you’re actually fighting.

The issue is that a decision isn’t the same thing as an outcome. Seizing Kharg is just a decision. It’s the outcome that we question. The question that follows is how the whole system responds, as in the day after. The answer, as we see now, is that markets will flip-flop, shipping reroutes, insurance goes nuts, proxies get involved, escalation ladders light up, and perception shifts. Of course, it could stay the way we see it now, or it could draw back or escalate into a whole new beast. You control the move. You don’t control how the system rearranges around it.

Terrain + Geography = Real Constraint

The Strait of Hormuz is narrow, cluttered, and exposed, lying between Iran to the north and Oman’s Musandam Peninsula to the south. According to the IEA (International Energy Agency), it’s between 21 and 24 miles wide at its narrowest point. Despite this, the shipping traffic is constrained to two narrow lanes, each 2 miles wide.

The southern Iranian coast (Persian Gulf/Gulf of Oman) is characterized by a very narrow or non-existent coastal plain. In many areas, the Zagros Mountains fall directly into the sea, forming rocky cliffs and leaving little room for a coastal foothold—if any—and if so, minimal.

And even if a force pushes past the coastline, the terrain does not open up uniformly.

The only area where it meaningfully opens is to the southwest—the Khuzestan Plain, a low-lying, marshy, triangular extension of the Mesopotamian plain that stretches inland before abruptly meeting the Zagros foothills. Khuzestan is a strategically vital province in southwestern Iran, bordering Iraq and the Persian Gulf. It serves as a major industrial and agricultural hub centered on its capital, Ahvaz, one of the core pillars of Iran’s oil-rich economy.

Overall, one has a minimal foothold at best along most of the coast due to the mountains, which provide elevation dominance and interior depth. Even where the terrain opens, it does so in limited and predictable ways. This creates a strong ISR (intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance) vantage point.

Now, from an operational point of view, this translates into a few realities, starting with terrain.

Elevated terrain provides clear lines of observation and favors missile and drone launches into the Strait or into any nearby body of water. You factor that in with limited coastal space, which creates difficult amphibious landing conditions, restricting maneuver and concentrating forces into predictable zones. Thus, any force operating near the coastline would likely be continuously observed and targetable from the interior.

In short, this is defender-favorable terrain.

Take maritime insurance, for example. The moment Kharg turns into a battlespace, insurers will second-guess. They’ll either pull coverage completely or jack up war-risk premiums so high that shipping becomes untenable. Traffic will slow and reroute—not because anything has been destroyed yet, but because the system is already bracing for the punch. The effect is immediate and mostly beyond the control of the actors involved. There are always exceptions—but they don’t change the pattern.

The Part People are Missing: It’s an Island System, not an Island

1) The Strait is the real battlefield, not Kharg

The decisive terrain isn’t Kharg—it’s the Strait of Hormuz and the islands that sit inside and around it—whoever controls them controls access, denial, shipping lanes, and escalation leverage. Kharg only matters if the US can operate freely in the Gulf.

2) The actual islands that matter (operationally)

Qeshm Island is the largest island in the Strait and sits right along the Iranian coast. Its mountainous and broken terrain is ideal for missile batteries, drone launch zones, and ISR coverage. Therefore, the operational reality is that one does not bypass Qeshm—you either suppress it or live under it.

To the southwest of Qeshm is the smaller disputed island of Abu Musa. The sovereignty of Abu Musa is under Iranian control, but the United Arab Emirates disputes it. The operational role is to provide early warning, forward fire, and serve as a disruption node. In other words, the island serves as a tripwire + sensor platform.

Between the Qeshm and Abu Musa Islands lie the Greater & Lesser Tunb—choke point enforcers. They sit near the narrowest part of the Strait. These islands are small—but that’s the point. What these smaller islands provide is extended denial coverage. This creates overlapping fires and complicates naval movement. Think of it this way, they’re not big—they’re positional.

3) Why this matters (and why Kharg fixation is wrong)

Most online takes assume: “Hit Kharg and the problem is solved.” But operationally, it’s more like if you try to move into the Strait, you’re under constant missile and drone threat, ISR tracking from multiple islands, not to forget also from the mainland. One may suppress one node, but others still function. One may clear islands, but the mainland still dominates. One may move deeper, but the exposure increases.

The real geometry is not linear—it’s layered.

The outer layer: naval access (Hormuz Strait)

Middle layer: island network (Qeshm, Abu Musa, Tunbs)

Inner layer: mainland fires (mountains + depth)

Final node: Kharg

So Kharg is not the door — it’s the room at the back of the house.

Think in operational terms, not target terms. The correct framing is this isn’t about taking an island—it’s about breaking a defensive system of positions. That system is distributed and mutually supporting. It forces troops into progressive exposure.

Kharg isn’t the objective—it’s the consequence. The real fight is the Strait—an island system backed by a continent.

Overall, whether this remains pressure or turns into action, the geometry doesn’t change.

Posted on

Pressure Without Victory: The Strategic Stalemate with Iran

Introduction

This is a follow-up to my last article titled What Would War with Iran Look Like?, published on February 25th, 2026. In that article, I outlined what a conflict with Iran might look like militarily and strategically.

In this somewhat shorter article, I want to examine what has actually been done strategically and tactically since then, among other things. What has become increasingly clear is that pressure campaigns do not necessarily produce strategic collapse. In many respects, they work exactly as intended, yet the outcome remains unresolved.

So let’s first examine the U.S. pressure architecture.

U.S. Pressure Architecture

With any nation the United States puts in the crosshairs, it essentially becomes part of a pressured network. So what do I mean by this? What exactly do I mean by U.S. pressure architecture?

Let’s start with economic pressure. What does the United States do first?

Sanctions.

Sanctions are economic, non-military punishments. Think of them as trade bans, asset freezes, financial transaction blocks, travel restrictions, arms embargoes, or even export controls imposed by one or more countries. This is often led by the United States, the UK, the EU, or the UN against a particular country. So basically, take Iran. You have certain groups or individuals pressuring them into changing their behavior—whether that means stopping aggression, halting a nuclear program, addressing human rights abuses, or ending support for terrorism—without actually going to war.

SWIFT exclusion: if you don’t know what that means, it stands for the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications. SWIFT basically removes you from the global WhatsApp group that banks use to send each other money. Suddenly, your international payments just bounce with a big “user not found” error.

This brings us to energy export restrictions. An example would be Russia. Because of sanctions, Russia is often forced to sell its oil—especially crude—at steep discounts. Sometimes prices fall $10 to $30 per barrel below global benchmarks like Brent crude because buyers know Russia has fewer options and faces higher risks and costs from sanctions.

And lastly, secondary sanctions.

Secondary sanctions, in a nutshell, are when the United States tells foreign banks and companies worldwide: if you keep doing major business with Russia’s military suppliers or Iran’s oil sector, we’ll cut you off from the U.S. financial system—even if you’re not American and the deal technically has nothing to do with us.

Take Russia again as an example. Outside firms helping Russia’s war economy have been forced to drop deals to avoid losing access to dollars and U.S. markets. For Iran, it’s a classic case of non-U.S. banks having to choose between Iranian oil trade and their U.S. correspondent accounts, massively slashing Iranian export revenues.

This brings us now to military pressure, much of which I discussed in my last article: precision strikes, carrier groups, airpower, and ISR surveillance. That in turn overlaps with cyber and intelligence pressure, including cyber operations, assassinations, intelligence disruption, and infrastructure sabotage.

To make all of this work, the United States usually relies on outside help. When it comes to Iran, Washington has been fairly effective at regional containment through Israel, the Gulf states, maritime patrols, and missile defense networks.

All of these arrows point toward Iran.

Why?

Because the objective is the systemic degradation of Iranian power.

IRAN

This brings us to the article’s target: Iran. When it comes to the Iranian regime, you cannot look at it as a single knot. Rather, think of it as multiple smaller circles connected together and labeled. You have the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the Qods Force (lit. “Jerusalem Force”), the political leadership, the energy economy, the security apparatus, and ideological legitimacy. All of these represent what is essentially a distributed internal structure.

Iran’s Distributed Response

Iran’s distributed response radiates outward rather than pointing inward. Now, what do I mean by that?

Let’s start with the proxy-warfare network they maintain: Hezbollah, Iraqi militias, the Houthis, Syrian militias, and Palestinian groups. Iran has a rather large network of proxies outside its borders that it can rely on. And it is without a doubt that many of these proxies have networks of their own. They also do not have to be kinetic all the time.

Then there is Iran’s economic adaptation: the shadow oil fleet, China trade networks, smuggling routes, and sanctions evasion. All of these have helped fund the Iranian regime and continue to do so.

So what is Iran’s strategic deterrence in all of this? They rely heavily on missiles—lots of them—and drones as well, which allow for maritime disruption. Think of the Strait of Hormuz. Iran still maintains leverage there.

The reason Iran has been so effective overall, and why it has not really been nudged off course, appears to lie in a combination of nationalism, revolutionary ideology, and a deeply entrenched anti-Western narrative.

The bottom line in all of this is that when it comes to Iran, persistent strategic friction is neither victory nor collapse. It is simply continuous pressure and adaptation.

Taliban commanders once made the point clearly: “You have the watches, but we have the time.” Ambassador Ryan Crocker later echoed this sentiment when discussing Afghanistan: “Americans have the watches; the Taliban have the time—we ran out of patience… Failing to be ready to stay the course is a huge problem for American diplomacy.“

The same logic applies to Iran.

The United States and its allies may have the watches, but Iran has the time. They have been waiting it out since 1979, and it appears they are prepared to keep doing so.

However, I could be wrong.

Conclusion

The problem facing the United States is not the pressure campaigns. It’s not that pressure campaigns fail. Frankly, it’s the opposite. In many respects, they succeed. Take Iran, for instance. Iranian infrastructure is degraded, leadership figures are periodically eliminated, and the economy is continually squeezed, if not in some ways obliterated. On paper, therefore, Iran has already been defeated. But the difficulty lies elsewhere.

Understand that the Iranian system was never built around a single center of gravity that could be struck or collapsed. Instead, it resembles a distributed hydra, so to speak, capable of absorbing blows while shifting pressure outward through its proxies.

Economic adaptation under pressure produces ripple effects. As Iran scrambles to safeguard what strategic assets remain after repeated strikes, it doubles down on asymmetric pressure through its proxy networks across the region. This, in turn, forces surrounding markets and actors to adapt as well, spreading the disruption horizontally across the broader system.

What emerges is not victory, but a form of strategic fiction—sustained through a persistent pressure war in which neither side achieves decisive results, yet neither side disengages. Frankly, what we have here is a strategic standoff that could potentially put the broader global economy at risk.

There are two ways to look at how both the U.S. and Iranian systems are designed. The United States system is built for the decisive degradation of centralized adversaries. The Iranian system is built for distributed survival.

Both systems function exactly as designed. The result is strategic stalemate.