Can the U.S. Win the Iran War?

April 30, 2026

Tags: Carter Doctrine, Persian Gulf, Strait of Hormuz, Sykes-Picot
Posted in: Afghanistan, Democracy, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Military

“Tell me how this ends,” a young General David Petraeus asked early in Gulf War II, after the Iraqi Army had largely been defeated. The United States is extraordinarily good at the first half of wars and far less capable in the second. So how does this one with Iran end?

Gulf War I was fought on mostly contrived circumstances. Saddam Hussein thrived in power in Iraq in part due to U.S. support; he certainly survived the 1980s Iraq-Iran War due to behind the scenes U.S. involvement. But by 1990 Saddam morphed into a bad guy invading Kuwait, and the U.S. went to war against him supposedly to free Kuwait. Later we added on something about supporting the Iraqi people, but the real reason the U.S. went to war was to recapture and protect the oilfields, especially of Saudi Arabia. The U.S. was fully dependent on that oil, but our government could not say so, so white-washed all that happened with public justifications that obscured more material interests. We “won” that war by only fighting the part that really mattered to U.S. foreign policy, first half of it, the oil part, and declaring victory.

It is still contested why the U.S. fought Gulf War II, the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan following the events of 9/11. The stated goals shifted from counterterrorism to fake weapons of mass destruction to nation-building while broader ambitions of regional dominance remained in the shadows. Nation building proved a palatable sell to the American public. But the underlying reason for the war was hegemony, remaking the regional balance of power and surrounding Iran under what some came to call the Rumsfeld Doctrine. Ironically Iran did offer some sort of rapprochement in 2004 when it looked to them that America was going to be successful in both Iraq and Afghanistan and the entire U.S. military stood panting on Iran’s east and west borders. But that rapprochement did not happen, thanks to American hubris.

And now is Gulf War III. As before, the reasons on paper for this current war are unclear. Originally it was to free the Iranian people (sound familiar?) and then it was about nukes (remember that as a casus belli against Saddam?) but no one can really be sure. We picked up some ancillary reasons that did not exist a few months ago, specifically holding open the Strait of Hormuz and stopping Iranian harassment attacks against Israel and our Gulf allies. We also ended up with the job of assuring places we cooperate with economically like China, Japan, and India they don’t run out of oil.

You can walk this whole history back to the Carter Doctrine of 1980, which stated the U.S. would use force to protect American interests in the Middle East. Or 1979, the Islamic Revolution in Iran, when the U.S. lost the country as a military partner and oil supplier. Or even back to 1956, the Suez Crisis, which marked the handover of de facto power in the area from the decayed British and French Empires to the United States. Or perhaps 1945 when President Franklin D Roosevelt assured the safety of Saudi Arabia to secure access to its oil. Or maybe even Sykes-Picot in 1916.

But no matter what starting date you settle on, America’s strategy has been based on the idea that the Middle East is to be controlled by U.S. power. In various countries Washington selected then often abandoned dictators, supported nascent moves toward democracy only as long as they did not aim at overturning the broader status quo, fought wars large and small every 10-20 years as America’s domestic whims could be manipulated, sanctioned regimes, drew and discarded red lines, let the Russians in then kicked them out, etc. Yet the underlying assumption endured that with few exceptions nothing truly important happened without Washington’s say-so. Oil was once a powerful subtheme to all this but it is now down to pure power.

So the question hanging over the present U.S.-Iran war is whether we are witnessing the reassertion of American dominance or the continuation of its gradual displacement. The United States is still the meanest dog on the block. No nation can match our ability to destroy things, literally to erase a whole society off the face of the earth if we really wanted to. Even without our archipelago of bases worldwide, the U.S. can launch untouchable B-2s and other bombers from Missouri, bomb Tehran, and return them home safely. That is not the same as shaping what comes after,  primacy. The way the Iran War plays out says in part whether the U.S. is indispensable in reacting to nascent nuclear states or directing events on the very largest scales possible as was envisioned in the post-WWII world. Hats off to those insightful men who saw the end of WWII as a chance to reshape the world as boldly as was done in 1776, but we have not been led by such men for many years.

So how does this end?

History says we’re still on the wrong path. We failed to fundamentally alter Iran’s behavior since 1979, despite sanctions and more sanctions, CIA hijinks as yet untold, aiming Iraq at them in the 1980s, and more. Gulf War I ended in a return to status quo for all the effort. The 2003 invasion shattered the Iraqi state, empowering Iran further. Afghanistan ended in a tail-between-the-legs evacuation. Libya demonstrated a) having an alliance with America means little; b) having a nuke is the only sure way to protect yourself in a world of hegemons and c) if the U.S. can’t win outright, it can turn you into a failed state if it wishes to.

If “winning” today means regime change, elimination of Iran’s regional influence, and an end to its nuclear ambitions, it is unlikely the U.S. can win. History has proven airpower and grave threats, basically 19th century gunboat diplomacy, cannot alone accomplish those goals. Decades of sanctions have not crippled the regime. Whatever internal dissent exists in Iran, it is unlikely to reach the point of regime change. Limited strikes (“mowing the lawn“) invite endless proxy retaliation and destabilizing acts. Iran has spent decades successfully resisting such pressure.

An alternative is a vicious military punishment, destruction on a scale that drives Iran away from regional power status. Even then the level of destruction would have to be fully crushing, something outside the bounds of American morality if directed against civilian targets, less so if the destruction is of Kharg Island or Iran’s floating oil reserves outside the Persian Gulf.

If war with Iran ends with a return to the status quo (Gulf open-ish, nukes delayed but not forever gone, Islamic government in power, etc.) it will send a clear message the U.S. failed again in its broader, historical strategy. Iran will be further empowered. Gulf states will be forced to diversify their diplomacy. Countries like China and India may be forced to expand their diplomatic efforts. Israel will steadily act more unilaterally. This all will happen slowly, carefully, evolutionarily, with much less of an immediate impact than MSNOW and The Atlantic will proclaim. Washington will hopefully back away from the illusion the United States can engineer political outcomes in societies it only partially understands, a lesson it should have learned from the Vietnam War.

We are not at the end of a war that Trump began, but in the midst of something bigger. America must now look past blame and towards how it will adapt to the encroaching next chapter in the Middle East. The pressing question is not really if the United States can win this war. It is whether it can recognize that the kind of victory it seeks is no longer practically available.

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