No One Knows How to End the War with Iran

The United States and Iran appear locked into their six-month-old war, with both lacking a clear path to victory and each clinging to unrealistic ideas about what their adversary will accept to end the conflict.

Iranians are already suffering immensely. Thousands have been killed in strikes by America and its allies, while thousands more have been murdered by Tehran’s ruthless security apparatus, and the country’s economy has been devastated by decades of sanctions and war.

More than 750 U.S. service members have been wounded since the war began on Feb. 28, with 18 killed in action. America is spending tens of billions of dollars on military operations in the region. The Pentagon is now focused on protecting the transit of oil through a chokepoint in the Persian Gulf, in an effort to return maritime trade there to its pre-war levels.

It’s a resource-intensive effort whose effectiveness is hotly debated while independent data begins to accumulate. But even if the effort is working as successfully as the White House claims, only a fraction of the daily volume of pre-war oil traffic is passing through the Strait of Hormuz.

Negotiations brokered by multiple third parties have led nowhere. Iran does not trust the United States, nor vice versa. Experts say Tehran’s goal now is to make the conflict costly enough that the United States and Israel are deterred from carrying out future attacks.

“The lesson in Tehran is that neither diplomacy nor a temporary ceasefire has yet produced durable restraint from the United States. That deepens the argument that Iran still has not established enough deterrence,” says Negar Mortazavi, a senior non-resident fellow at the Center for International Policy, and the host of The Iran Podcast .

“Iran’s doctrine is now shifting from primarily defensive deterrence toward a more offensive form of coercion. The thinking is that simply responding when the United States escalates is not enough,” she says.

While its regular military has been eviscerated in the conflict, Iran has other tools at its disposal. Editor’s picks The 250 Greatest Albums of the 21st Century So Far The 100 Best TV Episodes of All Time The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time 100 Best Movies of the 21st Century

“Iran definitely still retains the capacity and will to conduct asymmetric operations outside the region,” says Colin Clarke, the executive director of the Soufan Group. “Iran has been very deliberate and proportional with its [asymmetric] responses, and so could be holding a terror attack in the West as an ace up its sleeve, if the situation escalates again or Trump tries to send ground forces to Kharg Island.”

There have been indications that Tehran wants to expand the conflict outside the Gulf, and both Iran and its adversaries are already engaged in a shadowy game of hybrid warfare , regularly carrying out cyberattacks, sabotage, and disinformation campaigns.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or IRGC — which protects the regime in Tehran — maintains multiple departments dedicated to actions abroad. It has also in the past carried out terror attacks aimed at U.S.