5 min readFeb 26, 2026 08:27 AM IST
First published on: Feb 26, 2026 at 08:27 AM IST
Predicting the trajectory of US-Iran relations is always a challenge. For months now, Washington has oscillated between threats and negotiations with Tehran — naval deployments in the Gulf followed by indirect talks in Oman and Vienna. What remains uncertain is not capability, but intent: What precisely is the US seeking to achieve in Iran, and at what cost?
President Donald Trump’s posture indicates a renewed Middle East focus, even as strategic orthodoxy over the past decade has urged prioritisation of the Indo-Pacific. The rationale appears straightforward. Iran’s regional reach had, until recently, stretched from the Levant to the Red Sea. Hezbollah kept pressure on Israel’s northern frontier; Hamas reached a level of military sophistication that proved deeply disruptive, and the Houthis demonstrated the ability to threaten maritime routes far beyond Yemen. After October 7, 2023, a sustained Israeli campaign, with US political and military support, has diluted parts of that network. But it has not erased it.
This is the dilemma confronting Washington. A return to the “old ways” of coordinated proxy pressure would force America into repeated crisis management in a theatre it once sought to de-emphasise. From that perspective, firm signalling toward Iran is intended less as regime change theatre and more as pre-emption: Prevent reconstitution before it becomes entrenched again.
If the objective is limited — containment, deterrence, de-escalation — then calibrated pressure and diplomacy can coexist. If the objective is regime change, history suggests that air power alone is insufficient. The contrast between the two Gulf Wars remains instructive. The first aligned military means with a narrow political end: Expel Iraqi forces from Kuwait, avoid occupation, and restore balance. The second expanded the objective to regime change and territorial control — producing rapid battlefield success but prolonged regional instability. Ends and means diverged.
Iran is a civilisational state with institutional depth and an entrenched security apparatus. Its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has embedded asymmetric doctrine into statecraft: Proxies, missiles, mines, fast attack craft, and, crucially, drones. Tehran does not need conventional parity with the US Navy to create strategic shock. It needs only to impose political cost.
Consider the maritime domain. A well-executed drone or anti-ship missile strike could roil markets and test deterrence. Even limited damage to a high-value asset would be a psychological event. The Strait of Hormuz remains a chokepoint where disruption reverberates globally. Under a leader inclined toward muscular signalling, the pressure to respond decisively would be intense. Yet each rung on the escalation ladder narrows the space for diplomacy.
The nuclear shadow deepens this uncertainty. Iran’s enrichment advances and missile inventory provide it with bargaining leverage; America’s overwhelming conventional superiority provides it with coercive options. The moral and strategic questions then become stark. Can large-scale civilian suffering be justified as a shortcut to long-term security? Societies subjected to severe external coercion do not reliably yield political transformation; they often harden.
None of this implies that Iran is blameless or that its proxy architecture is benign. It has chosen confrontation with Israel in part to claim primacy in the Islamic world vis-à-vis Saudi Arabia and the Sunni Gulf. It has supported actors that threaten maritime security and civilian life. These realities explain why Israel sees the Iranian file as existential and why Washington is unwilling to let deterrence erode. But recognising the threat is different from presuming that force can easily reshape it.
The Indo-Pacific dimension complicates the calculus. Every additional carrier group, every sustained deployment cycle in the Gulf, is a resource not available elsewhere. A strategic pivot cannot be sustained if West Asia repeatedly pulls the centre of gravity back.
Where does this leave the present crisis? For now, it resembles a prolonged contest of nerves. Neither side appears ready for the irreversibility of war. Tehran believes endurance preserves regime survival. Washington lacks a publicly defined end-state that would justify the costs of regime change.
The question, then, is not whether the US can strike Iran. It is whether it has identified an outcome that can be achieved at acceptable human and strategic cost. Until that answer is articulated, the crisis is unlikely to tip.
In the end, strategy is not about the loudest threat, but the clearest objective. On that count, clarity remains elusive.
The writer is a former corps commander of the Srinagar-based 15 Corps and member of NDMA. Views are personal
In the end, strategy is not about the loudest threat, but the clearest objective. On that count, clarity remains elusive. 
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