The U.S.-Iran War Needs a New Theory of Victory

Wars are usually evaluated through the vocabulary of victory. Territory is seized or recovered. Military capabilities are destroyed. Governments are coerced. Leaders surrender or fall. Eventually, one side is declared the winner. But not every war ends that way. Some wars end in a less satisfying but more consequential equilibrium: both sides retain the ability to impose costs, neither can achieve its maximal objectives, and the costs of continuing the conflict begin to exceed the plausible benefits. At that point, the strategic question changes. It is no longer simply who can inflict more damage. It becomes whether either side can obtain through continued war what it ultimately wants, and, if not, whether there is a political settlement that both sides would prefer to the alternative.

The U.S.-Iran war may be approaching precisely such a moment. This does not mean Washington and Tehran have become equals. They have not. The United States retains vastly greater conventional military power, economic leverage and global reach. Iran cannot defeat the United States in a conventional war. But Iran does not need to. It possesses forms of asymmetric leverage that can make decisive coercion much more difficult than a comparison of military capabilities would suggest. The Strait of Hormuz is the clearest example. Iran can impose substantial economic and political costs without being capable of defeating American forces militarily. That creates an uncomfortable reality for Washington: military dominance does not automatically translate into political dominance. The United States may be able to destroy Iranian military capabilities far faster than Iran can replace them and still find it difficult to compel Tehran to accept Washington's preferred political outcome.

The United States therefore does not need a theory of how to defeat Iran militarily. It needs a theory of how military superiority can produce a political outcome worth having. That is where the language of victory becomes less useful than the language of bargaining. 

June ceasefire framework provides an important illustration. It attempted to connect military de-escalation with issues that had previously been treated separately, including the Strait of Hormuz, sanctions and Iran's nuclear program. The framework ultimately frayed, exposing unresolved problems of implementation, sequencing and reciprocal commitments. But its failure should not be interpreted as proof that bargaining is impossible. It may instead demonstrate why the next bargain has to be designed differently. 

The central question is not whether Washington and Tehran can trust one another. They plainly do not. The question is whether they can construct an agreement that works despite that lack of trust. One useful way to think about such an agreement comes from economics. A Pareto improvement model is an outcome in which both parties can be better off than they would be under the existing alternative. International politics rarely produces such pure outcomes. States bargain over scarce resources, security, influence and prestige, and meaningful concessions inevitably create winners and losers. But the underlying insight remains valuable. At the end of a costly war, the relevant question is not necessarily whether either side can force the other to surrender. It is whether both sides can identify an alternative to continued conflict that each prefers to the status quo of war. That is a very different conception of victory.

The United States wants a verifiable guarantee that Iran will not acquire a nuclear weapon. It wants freedom of navigation through the Strait of Hormuz, protection for American forces and allies, and a reduction in the threats posed by Iran and its regional partners. Iran's leaders want the survival of the regime, economic relief, restoration of oil exports, protection of Iranian sovereignty and an end to the prospect of repeated American military attacks. Some of these objectives are fundamentally incompatible. Others are not. The distinction is where diplomacy begins.

Consider Hormuz. If the issue is framed as a contest over control, the positions appear irreconcilable. Washington wants uninterrupted freedom of navigation. Tehran regards its geographic position around the waterway as an important element of sovereignty and strategic leverage. Yet neither side necessarily needs the maximal version of its stated position.

The United States does not need to govern the Strait. Iran does not necessarily need to close it indefinitely. That creates bargaining space. A future arrangement could preserve Iran's sovereign position while establishing internationally monitored rules and guarantees for commercial navigation. Maritime deconfliction procedures could reduce the risk of accidental escalation. Mine-clearance mechanisms could be agreed in advance. The parties could establish rules governing military movements and procedures for responding to alleged violations. Such an arrangement would not give either side everything it wants. That is precisely why it could work.

The same principle applies to sanctions. Washington regards sanctions as leverage. Tehran regards them as economic warfare. But sanctions relief can be transformed from an open-ended political promise into a conditional exchange. If Iran takes a specified, independently verifiable nuclear step, specified sanctions relief would occur. If the United States provides that relief, corresponding Iranian restrictions would take effect. If either party violates the agreement, a predetermined process would be triggered.

The crucial innovation would be to make the bargain as mechanical as possible. If Iran does X, the United States does Y. If the United States does Y, Iran does Z. If either side violates the agreement, a previously negotiated response follows. Such a system would not eliminate uncertainty. No agreement can. It would reduce the amount of trust required to sustain it. And trust is precisely what is in shortest supply.

The nuclear issue is where the bargain becomes most difficult. Washington is unlikely to accept an Iranian nuclear capability that leaves the United States and its regional allies uncertain about whether Tehran could rapidly produce a weapon. Iran, meanwhile, is unlikely to accept an arrangement that permanently strips it of all meaningful nuclear technology while leaving its security dependent on the goodwill of a far more powerful adversary. Neither side is likely to solve this problem simply by demanding that the other abandon its fundamental interests. The problem is one of verification, sequencing and credible commitment. Iran could accept stringent and independently verified restrictions on enrichment, stockpiles and other sensitive nuclear activities in return for sanctions relief tied to specific benchmarks. The United States could obtain greater confidence about Iran's nuclear capabilities without maintaining indefinite economic warfare.

The architecture matters as much as the headline agreement. A settlement that says Iran will comply and America will respond appropriately leaves both sides free to interpret "comply" and "appropriately" according to their interests once political circumstances change. A settlement that specifies what constitutes compliance, who verifies it, what benefit follows and what happens after an alleged violation is much harder to manipulate. This is the commitment problem at the heart of U.S.-Iran diplomacy.

Iran has good reason to fear that it could make concessions today, surrender economic or strategic leverage, and discover tomorrow that Washington has retained the ability to impose new sanctions or renew military pressure. The United States has an equally obvious concern: Tehran could accept restrictions, obtain sanctions relief and then gradually reconstruct the capabilities Washington sought to constrain.

Both fears are rational. That is why simply telling the parties to trust the process is inadequate. The objective should instead be to create a process that does not require much trust. Independent verification, reciprocal sequencing, clearly defined benchmarks, predictable economic benefits and mechanisms for resolving disputes are not bureaucratic details. They are the foundation of the bargain. A workable bargain also does not require equal concessions. It requires mutually preferable trade-offs.

Washington might surrender some of its ability to impose unilateral economic pressure in exchange for nuclear constraints it cannot reliably obtain through force alone. Tehran might surrender some of its nuclear and regional leverage in exchange for economic relief and greater protection against renewed attack. The concessions would not be symmetrical. The gains would not be identical. What matters is whether each side values the package more than the alternative of continued war.

That brings the parties to another essential question: what happens if there is no agreement? Every bargaining process has a fallback—the outcome each side expects if negotiations fail. For Washington, that alternative is not simply "war." It is the expected result of continuing the campaign: additional military expenditures, risks to American personnel, regional instability, disruption to energy markets, pressure on allies and uncertainty over whether further military action will actually produce the political objectives that justified it. For Tehran, the calculation is different but equally consequential. Continued war means additional military strikes, economic isolation, damage to infrastructure, declining oil revenues, pressure on the regime and the possibility that prolonged confrontation further weakens Iran's strategic position.

Neither side knows exactly what the future holds. But both sides can estimate it. That is where bargaining begins. A settlement becomes possible when each government concludes that the negotiated outcome is better than its expected outcome from continuing the war. This is a more demanding standard than asking whether either side can inflict another round of damage. It asks whether that damage improves its ultimate bargaining position. This distinction is frequently misunderstood because military superiority is often treated as synonymous with bargaining power. It is not.

The United States can destroy substantially more Iranian military infrastructure than Iran can destroy American military infrastructure. That is a fact of the conventional balance. But bargaining power depends on more than destructive capability. It depends on political objectives, tolerance for costs, vulnerability, time horizons, escalation risks, alliance commitments and the credibility of threats. Iran does not have to defeat the United States. It only has to make a clean American victory sufficiently expensive, uncertain or strategically counterproductive. Conversely, Iran's ability to impose costs on the United States does not mean Tehran can achieve its maximal objectives.

Those two facts can be true at the same time. At one extreme lies an American maximal victory: extensive Iranian military and nuclear concessions, perhaps accompanied by sustained economic and political pressure. At the other lies an Iranian maximal outcome: restoration of economic freedom and strategic capabilities with minimal restrictions. Neither extreme is necessarily attainable. Between them lies a range of possible settlements. Some would be worse for both sides than continued conflict. Others might benefit one side while imposing unacceptable costs on the other. But there may also be outcomes in which both governments are better off than they would be if the war continued.

That is the space diplomacy should explore. The objective is not to make Washington and Tehran equally happy. It is not even to make them equally powerful. It is to find an outcome that both governments would prefer to the alternatives available to them. And that brings the argument back to the politics of victory. Leaders have domestic audiences. An American president cannot easily sell an agreement that appears to reward Iran after a costly war. Iranian leaders cannot easily sell an agreement that appears to have been dictated by Washington after devastating military and economic pressure.

This creates a political demand for narrative symmetry. Washington needs to be able to say that the agreement achieved its essential security objectives. Tehran needs to be able to say that it preserved sovereignty, secured meaningful economic relief and prevented the imposition of foreign political control. Neither side necessarily needs to declare victory over the other.

They need to define victory differently. For Washington, victory could mean that Iran's nuclear program is subject to stringent verification, navigation through Hormuz is secure, and the immediate threat to American forces and allies has been reduced.

For Tehran, victory could mean that the Islamic Republic survives, sanctions are substantially lifted, its sovereignty is recognized and its economy is reconnected to international markets.

These outcomes are not mutually exclusive. That is the point. The most dangerous phase of a war can be the moment when both sides believe they are too strong to compromise and too weak to prevail. That is when escalation can become self-perpetuating. Every strike becomes justification for another. Every concession becomes politically dangerous. Every pause is interpreted as weakness. But that can also be the moment when bargaining becomes rational.

Peace does not require enemies to become friends. It does not require either side to abandon its fundamental interests. It requires only that both sides conclude that the strategic value of continued confrontation has fallen below the value of an enforceable bargain. That is a less romantic conception of diplomacy. It may also be a more realistic one.

The United States therefore needs a new theory of victory. Victory cannot mean simply demonstrating that America can destroy more of Iran's military infrastructure than Iran can destroy of America's. That fact is already established. The harder question is what political outcome follows from that military advantage. If the bombing stops and Iran remains capable of rebuilding, if sanctions remain a permanent source of confrontation, if Hormuz remains vulnerable to disruption, and if Washington and Tehran continue to view every temporary agreement as an opportunity for the other side to gain an advantage, then tactical military success will have produced only another round of the same strategic problem.

A better theory of victory would measure success differently. It would ask whether American power has produced a political settlement that leaves the United States safer than continued war would. That means using military power not simply to destroy capabilities but to create the conditions under which a durable bargain becomes possible. It also means recognizing the limits of coercion. At some point, additional pressure can stop improving a country's bargaining position and begin destroying the very assets that could make a settlement possible.

The same is true for Iran. If Tehran interprets its ability to impose costs as proof that it can indefinitely resist American pressure, it may underestimate the cumulative economic and military costs of prolonged confrontation. Both sides therefore face the same strategic calculation from opposite directions: when does another increment of war produce less value than another increment of diplomacy?

That is the question that should define the next phase of the conflict. The June framework failed to answer it adequately. The next agreement should. It should build verification into the bargain rather than treating it as an afterthought. It should make sanctions relief conditional but predictable. It should sequence concessions so that neither side becomes strategically exposed before receiving reciprocal benefits. It should establish rules for navigation and military deconfliction around Hormuz. It should define violations in advance and create mechanisms for resolving disputes before they become military crises. Most importantly, it should give both governments a greater stake in preserving the agreement than in destroying it.

That is not appeasement. It is bargaining. And it is not an argument that the United States and Iran possess equal power. They plainly do not. It is an argument that power alone does not determine the value of an outcome. The ultimate measure of strategy is not how much damage a country can inflict. It is whether the political outcome produced by that power is better than the alternatives. 

If Washington and Tehran have reached the point where neither can obtain its maximal objectives without unacceptable costs, then the rational next step is not necessarily another escalation. It is to search for the bargain that makes continued war less attractive to both. The objective is not to make either side surrender. It is to make peace more valuable than the next round of war. In a conflict neither side can decisively win, that may be the only victory that matters.