U.S. and Israeli Triumphalism Against Iran Is Premature
After 12 days, Israel and Iran have agreed to a ceasefire in their war, one that was effectively and very publicly imposed on Israeli Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu by U.S. President Donald Trump this morning. Coming just three days after the U.S. bombed three Iranian nuclear facilities and a day after Iran responded with a telegraphed strike on a U.S. military base in Qatar, the ceasefire caps what has often seemed like a surreal sequence of events that has nonetheless reshaped the regional order.
The risk of escalation, particularly between the U.S. and Iran, now seems to have been avoided. But the nature of the conflict, the way in which it has ended and the wild card represented by Trump’s ad hoc and erratic approach to crisis management makes any attempt to assess its outcome vulnerable to being overtaken by events.
That said, as it became clear that the U.S. and Iran had chosen what amounted to a choreographed offramp to their conflict, there was a visible split in the initial commentary between security analysts on one hand, and political and nuclear analysts on the other, in terms of whether or not the U.S. strike and Israel’s campaign had succeeded. The various arguments they raise point to the as yet uncertain cost-benefit analysis that will determine the conflict’s long-term outcomes.
The benefits are mainly visible through the security lens. By this argument, Israel took a huge gamble that paid off twofold: It achieved impressive tactical successes against Iran and a strategic success in drawing the U.S. into the conflict, while absorbing manageable costs in terms of civilian casualties and damage at home.
By every indication, Trump’s gamble similarly paid off: It demonstrated resolve in the face of credible risks as well as the preponderant power of the U.S. military, all at no cost. Moreover, the combined campaign not only demonstrated Iran’s powerlessness to defend itself but further weakened it.
Through a purely military and security lens, then, all of these initial outcomes are clear successes that those who opposed the use of military force to address Iran’s nuclear program must confront. To be sure, they were only made possible by recent developments. And Trump is seeking to put out a fire he himself set by torpedoing the multilateral deal that had effectively constrained Iran’s nuclear program prior to 2018. But the fact remains that decisive military action worked—for now.
That said, however, a purely military and security lens is distorting when it comes to war, which is ultimately waged in pursuit of political objectives. And while the bombing may have stopped, the long-term conflict between Israel and Iran, as well as between the U.S. and Iran, almost certainly hasn’t. So, the fact that the military campaign worked “for now” is necessary but insufficient.
This is where the political and nuclear lenses enter the picture, and with them the potential costs of the campaign.
The political lens is both narrow and broad. On a narrow scale, the question that remains to be answered is whether Iran has accepted defeat or opted for regime survival to fight another day. There are reports indicating that the 12-day conflict has accelerated a shift in the balance of power in Tehran into the hands of hardliners opposed to any accommodation with the U.S. and Israel. Whether Iran agrees to resume nuclear negotiations and, if so, the posture it takes will be a leading indicator of what to expect moving forward.
Though the military phase of the Israeli and U.S. campaign against Iran was undeniably a tactical success, we have no clarity on all the things that would determine whether it achieved its strategic objectives.
If Iran chooses to fight another day, it will likely shift the conflict from the conventional spectrum, where it is at a huge disadvantage, to the asymmetric spectrum, where it can cause significant pain. If so, any triumphalism expressed today will have been premature. And if Iran does engage in a shadow war of unattributed cyber, kinetic and terror attacks, it could have major consequences across the region and beyond, depending on how broadly Tehran chooses to act.
That gets to the broader political scale, which is regional. As long as Iran exercised regional influence, Israel was never going to be able to adopt a “no problems with neighbors” posture. Instead, however, with its destabilizing military interventions in Lebanon, Syria and now Iran, Israel seems to have opted for a “no neighbors, no problems” posture. That comes with and creates costs.
First, it creates or sustains an arc of instability across those three states that is less threatening to Israel than the “Shiite crescent” it replaces but also more volatile and unpredictable. That’s a problem for Israel, which may end up having to conduct similar costly campaigns on a periodic basis in a region-wide version of its infamous “mow the lawn” approach to Gaza. But it’s also a problem for the region, which may appreciate a weakened Iran but not the added chaos of what Israel’s interventions leave in their wake.
Second, it creates a security dilemma for the remaining stable states of the region, particularly Turkey, whose sphere of interest in Syria now heightens the potential for friction and even confrontation with Israel. That Israel now claims an effective military veto on any adverse security developments across the region will be a source of discomfort and even alarm.
Third, the U.S. attack ended up being a best-case scenario, but Trump’s boldness in carrying it out could also be seen as recklessness by the Gulf states, which stood to take the brunt of a more robust Iranian response. The ease with which Netanyahu brought Trump into the fight will be eye-opening for them with regard to the limits of their influence on his decision-making. And Trump’s sudden changes in direction, not least that of this morning, add an element of uncertainty for actors on every side of the conflict.
Finally, and perhaps most concerning, is the nuclear lens. There is still no clarity on the degree to which the U.S. strike and Israel’s lengthier campaign set back Iran’s nuclear program. Nor is it known whether Iran managed to disperse and safeguard its stockpiles of highly enriched uranium and whether it maintains further enrichment capabilities that it can use to quickly bring those stockpiles up to weapons-grade fissile material.
In short, though the military phase of the campaign was undeniably a tactical success, we have no clarity on all the things that would determine whether it achieved its strategic objectives. And even if it did destroy the material components of Iran’s nuclear program, the knowledge to rebuild it remains.
For all those reasons, absent a major political breakthrough in the form of nuclear diplomacy that leads to a stable and sustainable regional accommodation, it is possible and even probable that the military campaign will end up being an ephemeral success, if a success at all.
That isn’t to say that Iran will return to being the threat it represented to Israel and the region as recently as 20 months or even 20 days ago. Indeed, it is possible that Iran has been permanently weakened. But it’s also possible this campaign traded in a powerful non-nuclear Iran for a weak nuclear-armed Iran.
It’s also possible that the changed regional order this campaign has both ushered in and consolidated is no more secure for Israel, in ways that may not be apparent for months or years. One need only look at how the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 unlocked and fueled Iran’s subsequent ability to expand its regional influence for a cautionary example.
The relatively brief Israel-Iran war, with its U.S.-Iran coda, may not have such disastrous effects. But the jury is still out on whether it will represent a strategic victory for Israel and the U.S., giving both proponents and opponents of the “military solution” to Iran’s nuclear program reason for pause—and a lot to consider.
Judah Grunstein is World Politics Review’s editor-in-chief. You can follow him on BlueSky at @judah-grunstein.bsky.social.