Donald Trump has always understood power in elemental terms: apply maximum pressure, extract maximum concessions, and move on. It worked, in his telling, with trade partners, with NATO allies, and with adversaries who flinched when confronted. The theory behind his Iran strategy was seductively simple — squeeze Iran’s economy to the point of collapse, threaten its leadership with military destruction, and watch the theocracy either capitulate or crumble from within. Maximum pressure would produce maximum results.
It hasn’t worked. And the reasons it hasn’t worked tell us something profound about the limits of coercive escalation when applied to a regime whose very survival is built on resisting exactly this kind of pressure.
The 2026 Iran war, which began on February 28 when the United States and Israel launched coordinated surprise airstrikes on multiple Iranian cities and military sites, has become a case study in strategic miscalculation. What the White House once envisioned as a focused, weeks-long military campaign has turned into an open-ended war that escalated beyond U.S. control, with widening economic and political repercussions — and no clear exit strategy. The regime did not rapidly collapse.
The Iranian population did not rise up in gratitude. Instead, Iran consolidated control and responded more aggressively than U.S. officials expected, firing on targets across the Middle East, including oil tankers, and effectively halting the flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz — sparking a global energy crisis that the administration is now struggling to contain.
This is not a story of bad luck. It is a story of structural miscalculation repeated across decades of American policy toward Iran, compressed now into a single, very dangerous moment.
Trump’s approach to Iran did not begin in February 2026. Its roots go back to his first term, when in 2018 he withdrew the United States from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action — the JCPOA — which had imposed intrusive international monitoring and strict limits on Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief. Tragically, Trump’s negotiators are now trying to address problems that had been addressed by the nuclear deal that Trump unilaterally abandoned in 2018. That agreement imposed clear limits, prohibitions and intrusive IAEA inspection requirements on Iran that were to last for 10 or 15 years, with some being permanent.
By abandoning the JCPOA, the U.S. not only removed those constraints — it removed the monitoring infrastructure that made verification possible. In 2018, Trump withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal, which had allowed monitoring of the country’s nuclear program. This means experts lack confirmed, independent information about the status of Iran’s efforts.
The “maximum pressure” campaign that followed did squeeze Iran’s economy severely, but it did not change the fundamental strategic calculus in Tehran. The second Trump administration reimposed the maximum pressure approach on Iran. Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent labelled the collapse of the Iranian currency in December 2025 as the “grand culmination” of this strategy.
Collapsing a currency is not the same as changing a government’s strategic behavior. This distinction, which seems obvious in retrospect, was apparently not clear enough to those driving U.S. policy.
The maximum pressure framework rests on a core assumption: that economic pain will eventually translate into political concession. But this assumption breaks down under several conditions that are all present in the Iranian case. First, when a regime has structured its legitimacy around resistance to American power, yielding to American pressure becomes existentially threatening — not just politically inconvenient.
Second, when sanctions are porous (Iran continued exporting oil to China throughout the pressure campaign), the economic damage is real but not terminal. Third, when a population is already suffering under sanctions, the government can shift blame outward, toward Washington, rather than absorbing it inward.
Khamenei believed he could outlast Trump. He saw American polarization, war fatigue, and coalition fragility. He noted major regional powers — Saudi Arabia and Turkey — urging restraint in Washington. He observed the strain on U.S. interceptor stockpiles. He understood that China benefits from Iran’s ability to tie down American forces and therefore works quietly to strengthen Iran’s ballistic missile capabilities. These were not miscalculations on Khamenei’s part. They were accurate readings of the strategic landscape.
The sequence of events leading to the February 28 strikes reveals a decision-making process that prioritized action over planning. On February 20, President Trump gave Iran a 10-day deadline to reach a deal or else the United States would attack Iran. The talks that followed — three rounds of Omani-mediated indirect negotiations — were showing, by some accounts, real progress. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi stated that a “historic” agreement with the United States to avert military conflict was “within reach.” And yet the strikes happened anyway.
A source close to the administration said some key officials around Trump were reluctant or wanted more time. “He ended up saying, ‘I just want to do it,'” the source said. “He grossly overestimated his ability to topple the regime short of sending in ground troops.” This is perhaps the single most damning sentence in the entire record of this conflict. The president of the United States launched a war against a nation of 90 million people with the instinct of a man who has never been told the consequences of being wrong.
The initial strikes killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and numerous other senior Iranian officials, a broader outcome than was anticipated. But the elimination of Iran’s leadership did not produce the hoped-for political vacuum or collapse. It produced exactly what strategic analysts have long warned: Trump acknowledged, “Most of the people we had in mind are dead. And now we have another group. They may be dead also, based on reports. So I guess you’ll have a third wave coming in.” Decapitation strategies against ideologically coherent movements with deep institutional roots do not produce capitulation. They produce succession, often by harder-liners.
The June 2025 U.S. attacks severely damaged Iran’s major uranium enrichment facilities, but not its resolve to retain a nuclear program or its nuclear know-how. If eight months of prior strikes didn’t break that resolve, why would the February 2026 attacks? The answer is that they didn’t, and they haven’t.
The single most consequential result of the escalation strategy has been the closure of the Strait of Hormuz — an outcome that American planners acknowledged as possible but apparently underestimated as likely.
The Strait of Hormuz is, in geopolitical terms, one of the most important 21 miles of water on Earth. Roughly 27% of the world’s maritime trade in crude oil and petroleum products transits through the Strait. When Iran closed it, the consequences were immediate and severe.
The conflict disrupted approximately 20% of global oil supplies transiting the Strait of Hormuz, causing prices on the Brent Crude oil market to rise from around $70 to over $110 per barrel within days. The move sent oil prices soaring above $100 per barrel from a pre-war price of about $65. Iran’s IRGC has threatened that if the U.S. continues its campaign, “not a litre of oil” will pass through the strait, and oil could reach $200 per barrel.
The global cascading effects of this closure are staggering. About 85% of polyethylene exports from the Middle East go through this route. Shortages and backlogs will raise the price of packaging, automotive components, and consumer goods. Roughly one-third of global fertilizer trade transits the Strait of Hormuz. New Orleans fertilizer hub urea prices have already risen from $475 per metric ton to $680 per metric ton — with devastating implications for the American spring planting season for soy and corn.
About 20% of the global supply of LNG passes through the waterway. Some 30% of Europe’s supply of jet fuel originates from or transits via the strait. European natural gas prices have nearly doubled after Iranian drones struck Qatari gas facilities, and QatarEnergy halted all gas production in the country.
The International Energy Agency attempted to cushion the blow by releasing emergency reserves. But the scale of the problem dwarfs any reserve release. The IEA took the unprecedented step of releasing 400 million barrels of oil from reserves. The U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates world consumption of petroleum will average 105 million barrels per day in 2026. At that rate, 400 million barrels would theoretically cover just four days of global consumption.
Goldman economists raised their odds of a U.S. recession this year by 5 percentage points, to 25%. Oxford Economics modeled a scenario in which global oil prices average $140 a barrel for two months — what they characterize as a “breaking point” for the world economy — which would push the eurozone, the U.K., and Japan into economic contraction.
This is the central strategic paradox of Trump’s escalation against Iran: in attempting to destroy Iran’s military capability, the U.S. has handed Iran its most powerful asymmetric weapon. Iran doesn’t need to win a military contest to impose catastrophic costs on the United States and its allies. It simply needs to keep the Strait closed.
Trump could wind up trapped between his caprice and the realities of war. He expects a quick, clear victory. But unlike tariffs that can be swiftly imposed and rescinded, the war’s outcome is beyond unilateral control and quick fixes. And Iran gets a say.
This is the fundamental problem with escalation strategies against adversaries who have something to lose but nothing left to concede: every new level of pressure creates new incentives for resistance rather than submission. A senior Trump administration official practically admitted as much, telling Axios: “The Iranians messing around with the Strait makes him more dug in.” But “more dug in” is not a strategy. It is a posture. And postures without exit ramps become quagmires.
Iran’s military strategy has been specifically designed to exploit this dynamic. Iran’s strategy is built around exhausting missile defence systems rather than defeating them quickly. It is irrelevant whether 80% or even 90% of missiles are intercepted if the small percentage that gets through can inflict economic damage, close airspace or lower morale, thereby creating political pressure. Over time, the penetration rate increases because defensive resources become depleted.
The depletion of THAAD and SM-3 inventories in 2025 will not be remedied until about 2027, overlapping with the so-called Davidson window regarding China and Taiwan. Iran knows this. Israel knows this. Trump knows this. The United States is burning through irreplaceable missile defense assets in a conflict with Iran at precisely the moment when those assets may be needed most critically in the Pacific.
The regional picture has expanded dangerously. Israel has taken advantage of the moment to implement plans for a renewed assault against Hezbollah, the Iranian-allied militant group in Lebanon. Nearly 800 people have been killed and hundreds of thousands displaced in Lebanon. The Houthis in Yemen, though their response has been calibrated, have signaled their readiness to intervene. Houthi leader Abdul-Malik al-Houthi said his group stood with Iran and warned that “our hands are on the trigger whenever developments require it.”
Iran’s escalate-to-de-escalate strategy — striking Oman, Qatar, Turkey, and other nominally neutral parties — is designed to create international pressure on Washington to end the conflict. Iran has struck not only Israeli and U.S. targets but also other countries across the region, including those that have hitherto been relatively friendly with the regime — such as Oman, Qatar, and Turkey. Moreover, Iran has set its sights beyond military targets to strike airports, the lifeblood of the region’s economy.
The question is whether this strategy can work against a president who has made a political identity out of not backing down. Trump regards backing down as a sign of weakness. As we recently saw with global tariffs, Trump doubles down even when a policy is failing to achieve its stated goals. The very personality trait that makes Trump effective as a disruptor makes him uniquely susceptible to the escalation trap — because the trap only works when the stronger party refuses to exit.
The stated justification for the military campaign was Iran’s nuclear program. The results have been deeply ambiguous at best.
Trump said the U.S. military “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear facilities at Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan. His language contradicts a November 2025 White House document that said the strikes “significantly degraded Iran’s nuclear program.” Independent verification has been impossible because the IAEA has been denied access to the sites.
The June 2025 U.S. attacks severely damaged Iran’s major uranium enrichment facilities, but not its resolve to retain a nuclear program or its nuclear know-how. Nevertheless, it would take Iran years to fully rebuild its enrichment plants and months to enrich small amounts of uranium to bomb-grade material. In other words: Iran was not close to a weapon before the strikes, and is still not close to one — but is now considerably more motivated to pursue nuclear capability as a deterrent against future military action.
This is the core nuclear paradox of military escalation against non-nuclear states. Another wave of U.S. or Israeli attacks on Iran likely would drive Iranian leaders away from negotiations and strengthen the argument inside Iran that only possessing nuclear weapons can protect the state from external attack. Other nations in the Middle East and beyond likely will draw a similar conclusion, increasing the odds of expanded nuclear proliferation in the years ahead.
The threat that was supposed to be neutralized by military action has, through military action, been given its most powerful argument for realization.
Every successful coercive military campaign in modern history has relied on coalition legitimacy. The Gulf War of 1991 succeeded in part because it was endorsed by the United Nations Security Council and supported by a broad international coalition including Arab states. The 2003 Iraq invasion, which lacked that legitimacy, became an endless occupation.
Trump’s Iran campaign has proceeded with almost no international backing. A war of choice against Iran, without congressional approval, would violate the Constitution and the 1973 War Powers Act. It also would violate Article 2(4) of the UN Charter, which prohibits the threat or use of force in international relations.
The legal vacuum has a strategic consequence: isolation. A Middle East security analyst told Al Jazeera it is “unlikely” U.S. allies will get involved in securing the Strait of Hormuz as the Trump administration suggested, because most U.S. allies “opposed this war to begin with,” making them “feel relatively less inclined to provide support.”
Iran has skillfully exploited this isolation by differentiating between countries in its Hormuz blockade. Rather than closing the strait to all shipping — which would unite the world against it — Iran has kept the Strait of Hormuz closed only to ships from the U.S., Israel and their Western allies, while allowing passage for Indian, Turkish, Pakistani, Saudi, and Chinese vessels. This has allowed Iran to maintain relationships with non-Western powers while imposing targeted economic costs on America and its partners — and simultaneously creating incentives for those non-Western powers to stay neutral or even quietly supportive of Iranian resilience.
China is the clearest example. China receives 45% of its oil via the Strait of Hormuz. Around 30% of its LNG imports come from Qatar and the UAE. China is both economically pressured by the closure and diplomatically positioned to benefit from playing broker — a role it has been actively seeking for years as a challenger to American regional dominance.
Perhaps the most damning indictment of Trump’s escalation strategy is the absence of any coherent theory of victory.
Two weeks in, the administration is no closer to articulating a defined strategy for finishing a conflict that has grown more complicated by the day. Thirteen American service members have died thus far, and roughly 140 others have been wounded. Across the U.S., there is little indication in early polling that the public is on board with the idea of war.
The U.S. doesn’t have clear enough lines of communication with the Iranian regime to make a deal that’s sure to stick. Trump said on Truth Social that Iran “is totally defeated and wants a deal — But not a deal that I would accept!” The bottom line: to claim victory, the Iranian regime just needs to stay alive.
That asymmetry of the victory condition is devastating. The United States needs Iran to agree to transformative concessions — abandonment of its nuclear program, cessation of proxy warfare, effective disarmament — to declare victory. Iran needs only to survive as a functioning state and government. History suggests the latter is far easier to achieve.
Some in Trump’s inner circle have what one official called “buyer’s remorse” — growing fears that attacking Iran was a mistake. Trump has grown accustomed to doing what he wants and then quickly improvising if things go south. But this time, the war’s outcome is beyond unilateral control and quick fixes.
The options available to Trump now are all deeply problematic. Escalating further — including potential ground operations or strikes on Iranian oil infrastructure at Kharg Island — risks catastrophic economic blowback. Iranian officials have warned they would target energy facilities linked to the U.S. across the region if Iranian oil infrastructure comes under direct attack. Withdrawing risks handing Iran a propaganda victory and leaving the Strait question unresolved. Negotiating from the current position means accepting terms likely weaker than those available before the war began.
The United States has a long and largely unsuccessful record of using military escalation to achieve political transformation in the Middle East. The 2003 invasion of Iraq — which Trump himself criticized — removed Saddam Hussein and produced years of instability, a power vacuum exploited by Iranian-backed militias, and ultimately a strategic gift to Tehran. The lesson seemed learned. It has apparently been forgotten.
For years, Donald Trump defined himself against the architects of the Iraq War. He cast Middle Eastern interventions as moral vanity projects paid for in American blood and treasure. He promised no more regime change. No more endless wars. Yet as nuclear talks with Iran faltered, American warships massed off Iran’s shores.
The contradiction is not incidental. It reflects the deeper problem with Trump’s approach to foreign policy: the belief that strength and pressure, applied with sufficient intensity, always produce submission. Sometimes they do. But against adversaries with deep ideological commitments, geographic advantages, asymmetric leverage over global chokepoints, and the backing of major powers like China and Russia, the rules change.
Iran’s compulsive strategic gambling has now been met with America’s own. Roll the dice enough times, and the odds eventually work against you. That observation cuts in both directions.
The Trump administration bet that Iran would blink. It has not blinked. It has instead done what strategists have warned for decades it would do if existentially threatened: activated the Hormuz lever, absorbed the military punishment, and settled in for a long war of attrition — politically, economically, and militarily.
The escalation strategy against Iran doesn’t work for reasons that are structural, not accidental. It doesn’t work because maximum economic pressure, when paired with the existential threat of regime destruction, removes the Iranian government’s incentive to negotiate rather than creating it. It doesn’t work because eliminating leadership does not eliminate the ideology or the institutions behind it. It doesn’t work because Iran holds an asymmetric card — Hormuz — whose use harms the United States and the world more than a prolonged military campaign harms Iran. And it doesn’t work because the American political system, and the global coalition required to sustain such a campaign, has limits that Iran’s leadership has correctly calculated.
Unlike tariffs that can be swiftly imposed and rescinded, the war’s outcome is beyond unilateral control and quick fixes. And Iran gets a say.
That last sentence may be the most important strategic observation of the entire conflict. Iran gets a say. It always did. The failure to internalize that reality — the assumption that American power is so overwhelming that the adversary’s agency can simply be discounted — is not just a tactical error. It is the foundational error of the strategy itself, and the reason, more than any other, that it isn’t working.