The Iran Endgame

When Bluffing Meets Reality

Another U.S.-Iran crisis, another round of carrier deployments and ultimatums, another set of predictions about imminent warfare. Yet here we are again, watching Washington and Tehran engage in their familiar dance of brinkmanship—a choreography that has become depressingly predictable over the past four decades.

The current confrontation, triggered by Iran’s brutal crackdown on domestic protests and America’s deployment of the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group to the Persian Gulf, follows a script we’ve seen before. President Trump threatens “something very tough” while simultaneously acknowledging talks are underway. Iran’s Supreme Leader warns of “regional war” while his foreign minister pursues “fair and equitable” negotiations through Omani intermediaries. Regional powers—Turkey, the UAE, Saudi Arabia—scramble to prevent a conflict none of them want.

How will this end? The same way these standoffs always do: not with a bang, but with a grudging return to the status quo ante, dressed up as strategic victory by both sides.

The fantasy that maximum pressure plus military threats will produce Iranian capitulation has been tested repeatedly and has failed each time. The Trump administration’s withdrawal from the JCPOA in 2018 and subsequent “maximum pressure” campaign did not bring Iran to its knees—it brought us enriched uranium at near-weapons-grade levels. The Israeli and American strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities in June 2025 did not eliminate Iran’s nuclear program; they likely accelerated Tehran’s determination to acquire a deterrent capability.

Now we’re told that deploying additional carriers and threatening sustained bombing campaigns will somehow achieve what previous pressure failed to accomplish. This reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of how coercive diplomacy actually works. You cannot bomb a country into submission while simultaneously demanding it negotiate from a position of weakness. The contradiction is not just tactical—it’s strategic.

Consider the operational realities that our saber-rattlers prefer to ignore. Even if the United States launched a sustained air campaign against Iranian nuclear and military facilities—which analysts suggest could require weeks of operations—Iran possesses formidable retaliatory capabilities. Tehran’s missile arsenal can reach every U.S. base from Qatar to Iraq. Its proxies, though weakened, retain capacity to strike across the region. The Strait of Hormuz, through which 20 percent of global oil passes, remains vulnerable.

More fundamentally, ask the critical question that seems to elude Washington’s planning: what happens after the bombing stops? Does anyone seriously believe that pulverizing Iranian facilities will produce a pliant regime eager to accept American terms? The more likely outcome is a nationalist backlash that strengthens hardliners, accelerates nuclear weapons development (now with domestic political legitimacy), and transforms what is currently a manageable adversarial relationship into a genuine blood feud.

The historical parallels should give us pause. American military interventions in the Middle East—from Lebanon in 1983 to Iraq in 2003 to Libya in 2011—have consistently produced outcomes worse than the problems they aimed to solve. The region is littered with the wreckage of grand strategies that looked brilliant in PowerPoint presentations but collapsed upon contact with Middle Eastern realities.

Iran’s domestic upheaval, while significant, does not fundamentally alter this calculus. Yes, the regime faces genuine legitimacy challenges. Yes, the protests reflect deep-seated grievances. But the notion that American military action would somehow empower democratic forces rather than rally Iranians around the flag betrays a stunning ignorance of nationalism’s power. Ask yourself: when foreign powers bomb your country, do you blame your government or the foreigners dropping the bombs?

The regional dimension compounds these difficulties. Despite their differences with Tehran, neither Turkey, nor the Gulf states, nor even Israel’s current leadership shows enthusiasm for a full-scale U.S.-Iran war. They recognize what Washington seems determined to ignore: such a conflict would destabilize the entire region, disrupt energy markets, potentially draw in Russia and China, and create chaos that makes the Syrian civil war look manageable by comparison.

So how does this crisis actually resolve itself? Through the unglamorous process of diplomatic engagement that both sides are already pursuing even as they trade threats. The talks in Muscat represent the only realistic pathway forward. They won’t produce a comprehensive solution—the U.S.-Iran relationship is too complex and antagonistic for that. But they can establish temporary arrangements that address immediate concerns: some restrictions on Iranian enrichment in exchange for limited sanctions relief; understandings about regional behavior; mechanisms to prevent military incidents from escalating.

This outcome won’t satisfy anyone completely. Hawks will denounce it as appeasement. Iranian hardliners will claim vindication. But it beats the alternative: a war that America cannot win militarily, cannot afford politically, and cannot sustain domestically. Recent polling shows 85 percent of Americans oppose war with Iran. That number won’t change just because we’re told this time will be different.

The Trump administration faces a choice. It can continue pursuing the fantasy that threats and pressure will produce Iranian collapse, risking a conflict that serves neither American interests nor regional stability. Or it can embrace the messy reality that sustainable arrangements with adversarial powers require mutual accommodation rather than unilateral demands.

This doesn’t mean abandoning American interests or ignoring Iranian malign activities. It means pursuing those interests through sustainable policies rather than maximalist positions that sound tough but prove unenforceable. It means distinguishing between core security concerns—preventing nuclear weapons, protecting American personnel—and broader regional competitions that can be managed through diplomatic and economic tools rather than military force.

The current crisis will likely end where most such crises do: with both sides stepping back from the brink, claiming they achieved their objectives, while the fundamental tensions remain unresolved. Iran will continue enriching uranium at levels that maintain nuclear threshold capability without quite crossing into weapons production. The United States will maintain military presence and sanctions while pursuing episodic diplomatic engagement. Regional powers will continue their own chess games with both Washington and Tehran.

This is not a satisfying conclusion. It doesn’t offer the clean resolution that policymakers crave or the dramatic victory that would justify carrier deployments and congressional resolutions. But it reflects the reality that some problems cannot be solved—only managed. And in the Middle East, where American attempts at problem-solving have consistently made things worse, management begins to look like wisdom.

The alternative—another American war in the Middle East, this one against a more formidable adversary than any we’ve faced in the region—would accelerate precisely what Iran most desires: American disengagement from a region where our military presence has become more liability than asset. That would be the supreme irony: we bomb Iran to demonstrate strength and end up hastening our strategic retreat.

Better to recognize now what we’ll eventually acknowledge later: that dealing with Iran requires not the fantasy of military dominance but the hard work of diplomatic engagement, regional coalition-building, and the kind of patient, differentiated approach that accepts outcomes short of total victory. The current confrontation will end this way eventually. The only question is how much damage we inflict on ourselves and others before accepting that reality.