America is Winning the War It Isn’t Fighting in Iran

America has already won the war it isn’t fighting, which is why it must continue bombing Iran until the Islamic Republic accepts “unconditional surrender,” defined by the White House as a set of conditions that it will decide without Tehran’s input.

President Donald Trump sees victory in making Iran “cry uncle,” and seems to believe the regime is already doing so. His senior military leaders have identified success in meeting narrow military objectives that they have largely achieved, while also saying they must continue to ramp up strikes — to achieve these objectives even more.

All of this is intended to serve a broader goal of reshaping the Middle East into a kinder, gentler region by beating a hostile regime into submission, until it becomes friendly to the United States and Israel.

But also it isn’t, because undertaking such an ambitious and complex enterprise is expensive and destabilizing, and favorable outcomes cannot be assured. America doesn’t do “endless nation-building” or “quagmires” any more. Those kinds of wars are unpopular.

If America were fighting an unpopular war with Iran, the conflict might deserve the moniker the “Third Gulf War,” as it now involves at least a dozen countries in and around the Persian Gulf.

Luckily, the violence that has brought shipping to a standstill through a vital maritime chokepoint and is wreaking havoc with the global economy isn’t actually a war. Because wars are unpredictable, and it is possible — in a real war — for there to be no victors.

The White House did not ask Congress to declare war, because the administration believes Congress is not needed to declare war, despite that being something the Constitution says. In any case, it’s not a war if the American military is simply conducting “strategic strikes” or “limited operations,” which involve attacking targets across the entirety of a sovereign state, and even its forces in international waters.

Everything is going according to plan with those operations, which will require the arming of a medley of Iranian Kurdish militant groups to spur civil unrest which will then overthrow the government — unless those groups don’t want to do that, in which case … that is not the plan, and never was.

There is, in fact, a whole different plan. It involves destroying Iran’s navy, missile forces, and arms industry. Which is what America is doing now, since the war is “very complete, pretty much,” as President Donald Trump said earlier this week.

For this reason, America is not ruling out putting boots on the ground in the war it isn’t fighting, but it isn’t planning to do that, either. Perhaps America will only send in special forces, who tend to prefer lightweight hiking boots or even trail runners over heavy military-issue combat boots. So it is a debatable point, whether deploying soldiers equipped with such footwear would actually qualify as boots on the ground.

There are many debatable points about the war America isn’t fighting, but one thing is clear: Iran must not be allowed to ever possess a nuclear weapon. But the purpose of this war-not-war is not to destroy Iran’s stockpiles of nuclear material. After all, America “obliterated” Tehran’s nuclear program last June.

No, the reason for this kerfuffle that has killed hundreds in more than 5,000 airstrikes is that Iran was on the brink of using conventional missiles for nuclear blackmail, which is why the United States and Israel carried out a decapitation strike to kill Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The U.S. and Israel did not kill the top leaders of Iran in order to carry out regime change, although they would like to see the regime change. No, the president of the United States simply wants to have a say in choosing Iran’s new supreme leader — although he did not, since a new leader was selected by the Iranian regime a few days ago. That successor is Mojtaba Khamenei, who by all accounts is even more of a hard-liner than his father. Trump wants someone who will cooperate with the United States, which the new Khamenei has vowed never to do.

The secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth — who identifies as the secretary of war — is unconcerned with what the Iranians want or who is leading them. He has made it clear that the United States will not be constrained, and will do whatever it must do to ensure that its warfighters prevail in fighting a war — which they are doing, although it isn’t. America will fight pitilessly and without mercy, because they’re “the good guys.”

The U.S. military is destroying “the terrorist cowards” who “fire missiles from schools and hospitals” with “brutal efficiency.” But the U.S. did not, however, blow up a school in the southern city of Minab in a strike that killed more than 185 civilians, mostly children — or maybe it did, as a preponderance of evidence suggests.

The matter is under investigation, including evidence which shows a Tomahawk cruise missile impacting nearby around the time of the school strike — an important detail, as the only party in the conflict-that-isn’t-a-war that uses Tomahawks is the United States.

Which is why the American president tells us that many countries possess Tomahawk land-attack cruise missiles, even Iran — which does not.

Iran, for its part, has apologized to the neighbors it has attacked, saying it will not continue bombarding them — unless it needs to hit bases on their territory with American personnel, or oil facilities. Or perhaps an airport or two. And definitely commercial shipping. Otherwise, the Islamic Republic will do whatever it takes to achieve victory, and fight until the bitter end to defeat all warmongers. The Iranian foreign minister, who initially said Tehran was willing to talk despite the attacks and killing of its supreme leader, now says negotiations are off the table.

Iran no longer has a navy or an air force — and appears to be running out of missile and drone launchers — but the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) says that it is winning, and has promised to destroy American forces across the region.

American forces and their allies were well-prepared for the war they aren’t fighting, except when it comes to defending against one of Iran’s signature weapons — the one-way attack, or “suicide” drone. At least eight U.S. service members have been killed by such drones, and more than 140 wounded.

These drones have exhibited capabilities which were unexpected, despite drones being a central feature of the war in Ukraine for the past four years. That embattled nation has sacrificed blood and tears learning to defend against Iranian-designed drones, and was prepared to assist the United States in defending against them, should the United States need such capabilities — such as in the eventuality of fighting a war with the country that made them.

Unlike the United States, Israel is fighting a war, but not an endless one, and only because it is “a gateway to peace” — a formulation that would sound Orwellian, if not for that key architectural feature.

So in its war for peace, Israel is systematically targeting Iran’s civil infrastructure as well as the IRGC’s command and control, with the goal of destroying the regime as an “existential threat.” It is also pounding Tehran’s proxy Hezbollah, after the group fired rockets into Israel from southern Lebanon. Lebanon wants nothing to do with fighting that has killed more than 50 Lebanese already, and as a result it has banned Hezbollah from engaging in military activities and plans to disarm the militant group — although the Lebanese Army would prefer not to have to do this.

Iran’s other proxies are also joining the fray, but mostly in a desultory fashion. Iraqi Shia militias like Kata’ib Hezbollah have organized demonstrations and launched attacks on U.S. diplomatic facilities in Baghdad and military facilities in Erbil. The U.S. has attacked these proxies in turn.

The Iraqi government, which on the whole feels it has probably had enough of American-Israeli-Iranian war-making (even if this is not technically a war from the U.S. perspective), does not want proxy militias dragging it into the conflict. Unfortunately, a major component of Iraq’s security forces are Iranian proxy militias. The best hope in Baghdad is that militia leaders — like Kata’ib Hezbollah’s, who not long ago promised “total war” if Iran were attacked — can be persuaded it is better to be an Iraqi Shia militia leader who is alive, than to be an Iranian proxy who is dead.

All of the action is very far away from the United States, so Americans may mostly notice the war-they-aren’t-fighting because gas prices are skyrocketing. Iran controls the Strait of Hormuz, and has promised to sink any ships crossing it. One-fifth of the world’s oil supply transits this waterway, but ship captains prefer not to sail if they believe they are going to be sunk — or at least, their insurers prefer this.

All of this is but a portion of the rich global tapestry of America’s “limited operations.” Which will be over soon, or may continue for a while. Investment bankers, who tend to like math and objective reality, have created charts to track what the administration is saying about how long the whole thing will last, but appear to have come to no conclusion.

If the war-that-is-not doesn’t end soon, the resulting oil shock will worsen and have catastrophic results for the global economy. That will further exacerbate the cost-of-living crisis that many Americans care about — a key issue the current president campaigned on addressing, and part of why he promised not to start any costly, open-ended foreign military adventures.

Now that America is conducting a costly, open-ended foreign military adventure against an opponent known for asymmetric warfare and terror attacks against American interests around the globe, Americans might be worried about terror attacks.

Law-enforcement officials and counterterrorism experts are worried about terror attacks by Iranian affiliates. The president says “I guess” Americans should worry, as “we expect some things. Like I said, some people will die. When you go to war, some people will die.” 

This might seem at odds with the fundamental reason the United States is bombing Iran: to make Americans safe. But it isn’t. After all, we all die in the end, don’t we? Sometimes it’s worth it.

I guess.

So be at ease. Everything is under control. Luckily, it’s not a war.