As the ramifications of the joint US-Israeli assault on Iran continue to spread, and as the war is already diverging from what clearly seems to have been the attackers’ “plan”, the only practical question that matters is how to bring the conflict to an end – and, ideally, restore a measure of stability to the region. These two issues are separate challenges, but neither can be addressed without the other: Ending the war requires a region-wide deal, and regional stability clearly depends on ending the war.
Like Trump with Iran, Vladimir Putin also launched his 2022 invasion of Ukraine, convinced of a quick victory, allegedly looking to take Kyiv in three days. Unlike Trump, when the original plan failed, Putin had the option of pivoting to open-ended attritional warfare as a viable strategy.
The US president cannot do that in Iran. One reason is because this is an expeditionary war being fought halfway round the world; Russia’s war is just over its border. This introduces huge sustainment burdens, strategic risks (through increased exposure in other theatres), and dependencies (on bases in Gulf countries). Another reason why a war of attrition is not a workable option for the US is because the economic damage from disrupted Gulf oil trade is global (with Russia/Ukraine it was also painful, especially in Europe, but ultimately manageable).
None of this is to say that the war cannot last a long time: It can, and likely it will. The US can technically maintain a level of airpower pressure on Iran indefinitely if it really needs to; but it won’t be at the same intensity and won’t lead to Iranian capitulation. America will also be able to deal with the economic pain too, technically, even with oil at $150. The politics of such a scenario would be devastating at home, of course, but in practical terms the US economy can power through it. The point is, though, that neither staying the course and trying to somehow outlast Iran via some attritional strategy, nor declaring “victory” and pulling out, is going to actually end the war.
Even if Trump (with or without allied help) reopens the Hormuz Strait, declares victory and then simply suspends US airstrikes, Iran will remain at war with the US. It will look for every opportunity to strike back at the US and its allies including the Gulf states, and will do so with increasing creativity. The ability – especially by the weaker party – to adapt during war has been amply shown in Ukraine to be a key feature of contemporary warfare, given modern tech flows and fast “solutioneering” particularly with support from major backers. Just as Ukraine has had the US behind it, so does Iran have China and also Russia in its corner, and over time is will likely begin to count. Already Russian assistance is being blamed for improved Iranian targeting.
The question thus remains: How to bring this war to a close, at least as far as the US is concerned? What might a “peace deal” look like with Iran? Trump’s real options have arguably narrowed to a binary choice: Radical escalation or radical de-escalation.
The first option, which with almost any other leader would be considered absurd, is either nuclear strikes on the key underground nuclear facilities and “missile cities”, and/or the complete destruction of Iran’s critical national infrastructure (energy, water, communications, transport nodes). The latter would, in theory, debilitate Iran not just as a “power” but as a functional state and turn it into a humanitarian case. Attempting this would most likely involve war crimes and thus be resisted at least by parts of the US military. The bigger problem, though, would be the impractical nature of the task. As I explained in the past with reference to the Ukraine and other wars, modern militaries lack the destructive capacity (i.e. not enough explosive ordnance, crudely put) to blow enough things up.
Mad as it sounds – though perhaps not much more so than this war itself – the nuclear option fits Trump’s problem rather well. Firstly, even low yield nukes should be able to crack the hardened Iranian facilities that this war is all about, and that cannot be destroyed with conventional bombs. The core Iranian military-strategic threat would be eliminated. Secondly, other scattered parts of Iran’s missile arsenal would survive but with its core missile infrastructure gone Iranian offensive power would be effectively neutralised.
Thirdly, to world panic at his use of nukes, Trump could evoke Truman’s precedent against the Japanese – a rationale widely accepted by American historiography on similar arguments: The need to avoid a US ground invasion against a fanatical enemy. Moreover, in the current atmosphere of total contempt for the very concept of “international law”, he could take the pragmatic view and ask what actual blow-back would he actually face? US allies have already been brutalised over Greenland and other issues in far more direct ways, and still don’t dare to break with Washington. As for US enemies, this live demonstration of nuclear resolve might even strengthen deterrence against them.
For Trump, the trouble with any form of radical escalation, though, is his domestic political situation not external reactions. Whether conventional or nuclear, such a brutal course would likely lead to such a political backlash that Trump’s entire political project and certainly his legacy would probably be destroyed. And even then there wouldn’t necessarily be a “peace”: Iran may lie in ruins and unable to threaten anyone seriously, but it may still remain at war with America.
The alternative to all this, then, is its exact opposite: Radical de-escalation. This would be a move just as shocking as what was described above, but in the other direction. As someone clearly fully capable of going against any norms and principles of policy, including his own, Trump could well calculate that this option is really his best personal move at this point.
Essentially this would be a diplomatic track with Iran in which Trump would put on the table America’s very presence in the Middle East. In exchange for a real, fully verifiable process of dismantling Iran’s nuclear programme and some kind of arms control agreement on its missile capabilities, guaranteed by both Russia and China, the US would pull out from all of its key military bases in the Gulf and switch to an off-shore balancing strategy. Aside from the Russian and Chinese guarantees, the deal could also include an understanding that in case Iran breaks either its nuclear or its missile programme commitments, the GCC states would have a quick pathway to nuclear weapons of their own.
The purpose here, from Trump’s personal perspective, would not be to actually render Iran powerless and solve the issue long-term, but to obtain an off-ramp from this war which Iran could also sign up to – again, similar to the Ukraine war where any peace also requires Russian assent. Israel would be rightly opposed to anything like this but last year’s 12-day war showed that Trump can ultimately rein it in if he wants to.
Whether this kind of deal can work depends on what each actor gets from it. Trump would be able to say that he’s been the only president to take on Iran head-on, and that he has removed the immediate threat while setting the conditions for regional stability. To his voters he would say that he’s finally drawn a line under America’s involvement in the Middle East and that he’s bringing the troops home as promised – something that no president in recent memory ever achieved. To the markets he would say that the Gulf energy trade is now fully reopened and de-risked, and that regional deterrence and stability have been reconstituted on new foundations – with great power guarantees, for the first time. Together, he would say, these form the premises of a new golden age of economic development in the Middle East, and so on and so forth.
As for the Gulf monarchies, they are already reportedly disappointed by how the war started and is progressing, and are having misgivings about their respective relationships with the US. This alliance was supposed to protect them – and technically it is now that missiles are flying – but now they find themselves at war and facing the gravest crisis in their history, with no clear exit in sight. They may already be calculating that perhaps China would be a better custodian of the regional equilibrium than the US, and that Iran may be better handled diplomatically if the military option now looks unconvincing in terms of any decisive results.
Handling regional security without the “complications” of US basing on their territories – but still with some involvement and some form of “offshore balancing” by America through carrier strike groups and long range weapons – might become a more attractive idea, especially if they can count on a potential nuclear option down the line. There are no illusions that the Middle East would somehow automatically be more peaceful without US presence – the idea that regional troubles are of America’s or Israel’s making are an old trope – but it is also the case that the region is now at a different level of development, and the world looks differently, than in the age when US tutelage was seen as essential.
Finally, despite all the military blows suffered so far, Iran would obviously get to claim a major strategic victory in US withdrawal from the region. If any single offer can get Tehran to sign off on an ambitious peace deal, this is it: Exactly what the Iranian regime has always said it wanted. Giving up on nuclear missiles and limitations on its missile arsenal would be a heavy price to pay, on paper. But in reality the US-Israeli campaign has already likely degraded both, they are expensive to rebuild, and their purpose – to “win”, i.e. survive, exactly the kind of joint US-Israeli attack that has just happened – has arguably been fulfilled.
The wider goal of the revolutionary Islamic Republic of achieving full regional domination (and indeed beyond) can either wait for a generation, or perhaps be pursued through other means, especially building on the political prestige and economic opportunities that would accrue to Iran under this kind of deal, and especially with more Chinese involvement in the region.
Indeed, the latter – a bigger role for Beijing in the Middle East – is arguably the most problematic aspect here. It’s not clear whether China would accept it – including a nod to potential nuclear proliferation in the region – or whether the US political establishment (beyond Trump) would allow it. The second is the harder challenge: any proposal for a US pull-out from the Gulf, to China’s advantage, would be seen as as a betrayal of the most basic American interest. At that point it would be up to the Trump administration to perhaps argue that the US has nothing much to gain from a military presence in the Middle East – it’s not the 1970s anymore, let alone the 1990s – and that the idea of passing security burdens to local allies, as insisted upon in Europe, is valid with the GCC nations as well, etc etc.
The stark choice described in this article, between nuclear strikes and total exit from the region, may sound preposterous to conventional military-political wisdom, and it certainly is – but hardly more so than the foolishness of launching into this kind of war in the manner in which it has been done. So we are already in the realm of the unconventional, not to say the absurd. Meantime, the logic and configuration of this conflict is such that, bar some totally sudden and unexpected Iranian collapse, there is no way to end it and it is only getting worse. The impasse is more complete than in Ukraine.
For Trump arguably more than for the Iranians (who seem quite prepared to pay any price of resistance), the political pressure to find an exit is rapidly growing. It is not entirely clear what other options he’s got left in real terms – i.e. measures that can actually solve the problem – except some of the most extreme. It may be hard to believe that any of the things outlined in this article can even be contemplated by today’s White House, but by now we have learned quite definitively that with Trump nothing – absolutely nothing – can be ruled out.
The Iran war will be long, bloody, and ruinous