With incompatible war aims, no definition of victory, and a battlefield that keeps expanding, the US-Israel onslaught is doomed – and Iran only needs to survive to prevail
Sami Al-Arian is the Director of the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA) at Istanbul Zaim University. Originally from Palestine, he lived in the US for four decades (1975-2015) where he was a tenured academic, prominent speaker and human rights activist before relocating to Turkey.
Cross-posted from Middle East Eye
Photo: Screen Grab
The aggression launched by the United States and Israel against Iran has produced a striking strategic paradox. While the American-Zionist axis relies on brute technological force and indiscriminate fire, it remains blind to the historical and sociopolitical realities of the region.
Thousands of targets across Iranian territory, including military facilities, infrastructure and command structures, have been struck and may have suffered significant damage. The US maintains air dominance, while the Zionist regime continues to expand its campaign with unceasing strikes.
Yet these tactical gains have not translated into political success. The central objectives of the aggression remain out of reach, leaving the US and the Zionist regime winning battlefield engagements while steadily losing the strategic contest.
In asymmetric confrontations, victory is measured by whether military force can compel the adversary to accept the political outcome sought by the attacking power. By that standard, the American-Zionist campaign is already encountering serious limitations.
The war across the region, now in its third week, is characterised by a profound strategic deadlock. The US, Israel and Iran each hold fundamentally incompatible visions of how this onslaught should end.
Iran has made its position unmistakably clear. Tehran refuses to surrender as demanded by the US president and rejects negotiations while under attack. It insists that the aggression must first end before any diplomatic process can begin. Any settlement, Iranian officials have indicated, would also require sanctions relief, war reparations, recognition of Iran’s rights and firm international guarantees against future strikes.
Iran has also signalled that it is prepared for a prolonged confrontation and is willing to absorb the costs necessary to defend the country.
Israel has adopted a maximalist posture. Israeli officials have declared that the campaign will continue without a time limit until all objectives are achieved – objectives that include neutralising Iran’s power and potentially forcing structural change within the Iranian state itself.
Meanwhile, the US has adopted an ambiguous position, reflecting the absence of a coherent strategy. Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s admission that Washington knowingly allowed itself to be dragged into a confrontation dictated by Israeli desires underscores the subservience of American policy to Zionist interests.
The Trump administration’s incoherent approach – alternating between hollow demands for surrender, calls for internal unrest in Iran, and appeals for negotiations – reveals a profound misunderstanding of Iranian political culture. More importantly, Washington has failed to articulate a coherent definition of victory. Without a clear political end state, the aggression risks drifting into prolonged escalation without strategic resolution.
An unwinnable war
Central to the failure of the US-Israeli aggression is the irreconcilable asymmetry in war aims. The two countries are pursuing ambitious and overreaching objectives. Their strategy seeks to remove Iran as the central pillar of resistance to Zionist hegemony in the Middle East. This goal would require either the collapse of the Iranian political system or the neutralisation of its ability to project influence across the region.
Iran’s objective, by contrast, is far simpler. Iran does not need to defeat the US militarily. Nor does it need, at this stage, to eliminate Israel’s military capabilities or overthrow its government.
Iran needs only to survive.
If the Iranian state remains intact, if its leadership maintains political control, and if its regional alliances continue to function, then the primary political objective of the aggression will have failed. In confrontations defined by such asymmetry, the side with the simpler objective often holds the strategic advantage.
The war has also exposed a stark contrast between the military strategies employed by each side. The American-Zionist axis relies on vertical escalation – or escalation dominance. This approach emphasises the overwhelming use of firepower, including air dominance, precision strikes, decapitation operations, and attacks against strategic infrastructure. This doctrine assumes that sufficient destruction will force the adversary into political submission.
Iran has adopted the opposite approach: horizontal escalation. Instead of confronting American air power directly, Iran has sought to expand the battlefield geographically.
Missile attacks against cities and infrastructure within the Israeli state, pressure on American military bases and interests across the region, threats to maritime routes and disruptions to energy markets are all designed to transform the confrontation into a broader regional crisis.
By widening the theatre of aggression, Iran increases the economic and political costs for the American-Israeli axis. This strategy exposes a fundamental limitation of American military power: while the US can dominate the skies over Iran, it cannot control the broader strategic geography of the region.
Gaza and the limits of force
The ongoing low-intensity aggression in Gaza, following a two-year genocidal campaign, continues to shape the political environment of the broader confrontation. For many across the region, the confrontation with Iran cannot be separated from the unresolved Palestinian question. The Zionist regime’s ongoing campaign in Gaza reinforces the view that the regional struggle is rooted in historical injustice rather than isolated geopolitical rivalry.
Palestinian resistance continues to impose constraints on Israel’s military planning. As long as Gaza remains an active front, it cannot concentrate its full military capacity elsewhere. Gaza, therefore, functions not only as a battlefield but as a central political symbol that continues to mobilise regional and global opinion.
Iran’s strategic depth is further amplified by the regional network of the Axis of Resistance, which includes Hezbollah in Lebanon, Palestinian resistance movements in Gaza, Iraqi resistance factions and the Houthis in Yemen. Each of these actors possesses the capacity to open additional fronts against Israeli and American interests.
The aggression cannot remain confined to Iran alone. The significance of this network, therefore, lies in its ability to extend the battlefield across multiple countries and fronts simultaneously.
Hezbollah’s missile arsenal poses a particularly serious challenge to Israel. Sustained confrontation along the northern front could force it to fight on multiple fronts while exposing its core population centres to prolonged strikes.
Similarly, the Houthis retain the ability to disrupt global shipping routes and energy infrastructure. Their potential entry into the confrontation would significantly raise the economic cost for global hegemony, particularly if regional Arab regimes align themselves with the American-Zionist axis and actively join the war.
For President Trump, this aggression presents a profound strategic dilemma. Escalation risks a wider regional conflagration that could destabilise global energy markets, disrupt financial systems, and expose American forces to sustained retaliation.
Withdrawal, however, would expose the failure of the aggression and leave the Zionist regime confronting Iran and its regional network alone. This dilemma explains the contradictory signals emerging from Washington: public rhetoric projects strength, while diplomatic channels quietly search for an exit.
Israel faces deep structural constraints of its own. Its military doctrine relies on rapid, decisive confrontations. Its limited geographic size and high population concentration make prolonged attrition particularly dangerous. Nearly half of its population resides within the narrow Tel Aviv-Jerusalem metropolitan corridor.
Sustained strikes against such concentrated infrastructure would produce significant disruption even under a defensive posture. In prolonged confrontations, small entities with concentrated infrastructures face vulnerabilities that larger states do not.
Iran’s strategy, by contrast, reflects decades of preparation for precisely such a confrontation. Iran is a vast country – larger than Western Europe – with significant geographic depth, rugged terrain and dispersed urban centres. Its defence doctrine emphasises resilience and decentralisation. Command structures are designed to function under sustained attack, and local units retain operational autonomy.
This allows Iran to absorb initial shocks while maintaining operational continuity. In essence, Iran’s strategy is one of endurance. Each passing day increases pressure on Washington while demonstrating Iran’s capacity to withstand sustained aggression.
The decisive question is not which side can inflict greater destruction –- it is which side can endure greater pain. By expanding the battlefield and increasing economic costs, Tehran aims to exert political pressure within the American-Israeli axis long before it reaches its own threshold.
Endgame scenarios
As the strategic deadlock persists, the US-Israel axis finds itself trapped within a narrowing set of options, none of which can deliver the total victory it seeks.
Scenario one: The “mission accomplished” exit. Washington may attempt to manufacture a face-saving exit for domestic consumption while leaving the regional reality unchanged. Trump could declare victory by claiming that Iran’s capabilities have been degraded. There is precedent: despite a pledge to annihilate the Houthis in March 2025, Trump was forced to end the campaign weeks later after failing to achieve his objectives, despite spending $7bn.
Scenario two: A forced nuclear deal. Western powers may attempt to impose a new nuclear arrangement on Iran under military pressure. However, given Tehran’s refusal to negotiate under attack, and its insistence on sovereign rights under the Non-Proliferation Treaty, such capitulation appears highly unlikely. The very foundations of diplomatic engagement have been foreclosed by the indiscriminate nature of the current onslaught, making any such deal politically untenable.
Scenario three: A diplomatic formula. A third-party mediator, such as Oman, Russia or China, could attempt to broker a temporary ceasefire. Yet even this outcome is uncertain, as Iran has little incentive to accept an arrangement that could reproduce the same cycle of combined US-Zionist aggression at a later stage.
Scenario four: Prolonged attrition. The most probable trajectory is a prolonged confrontation. Iran’s decentralised defence doctrine and the broader Axis of Resistance are structured precisely for such endurance. Over time, domestic pressure within the US and economic strain on its allies are likely to intensify, while Iran’s capacity to absorb and respond remains intact.
Scenario five: Regional escalation. The confrontation could widen significantly, spiralling into a broader regional catastrophe. The most chilling dimension of this scenario lies in the potential for Zionist desperation: as the threshold of pain is surpassed and the myth of invincibility crumbles, the world may have to confront Israel’s execution of its so-called “Samson Option” – the use of nuclear weapons as a last resort – a horrifying prospect that would represent the ultimate moral and political bankruptcy of the American-led global order.
Global stakes
The implications of this aggression extend far beyond the region. As American strategic resources are stretched across multiple fronts, rival powers such as China and Russia are closely observing the confrontation.
The inevitable byproduct of imperial overextension is the opening of strategic vacuums, which rival powers are already beginning to fill.
China is studying the confrontation as a real-time test of American military capabilities and limitations. A prolonged engagement in the region may alter its calculations in the Indo-Pacific.
Russia, meanwhile, is assessing whether extended American involvement may provide Moscow with greater freedom of manoeuvre in Europe and beyond. At the same time, Iran’s relations with Russia and China contribute to a broader alignment that challenges global hegemony.
Strategic overextension increases the probability that miscalculations in one theatre could spill into others. A naval confrontation in the South China Sea, a crisis in the Taiwan Strait, or renewed escalation along Nato‘s eastern border could intersect with the Middle Eastern conflict in unpredictable ways. The war on Iran has therefore become one front in a broader global struggle over the distribution of power in the 21st century.
Ultimately, the greatest threat to the US lies not in a deliberate global confrontation but in the accumulation of crises and miscalculations across multiple regions that gradually erode its ability to project hegemony or even manage crises.
Such confrontations rarely end in decisive military victories. They end when one side recognises that its political objectives are unattainable. For the American-Zionist axis, the challenge remains in defining what victory means.
For Iran, the definition is clear: if Iran survives, it wins – and survival increasingly appears the most likely outcome.
Israel would have demonstrated that it can destroy but cannot compel surrender. The US would have exposed the limits of its ability to reshape the region through force. The Axis of Resistance would emerge strengthened, convinced that endurance can defeat overwhelming power.
Such an outcome would mark a historic shift in the regional balance of power, signalling the erosion of Zionist strategic dominance, the weakening of American coercive authority, and the emergence of a new regional order in which survival and perseverance – not submission – define the logic of resistance.
And in that new order, the Palestinian cause will remain the unbreakable moral core of resistance
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