Colin H. Kahl
The fog of war is thick in Iran, but two things are already crystal clear. No one can question the unrivaled military prowess displayed by the United States and Israel. Since February 28, U.S. and Israeli forces have killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and senior commanders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, struck thousands of military targets across Iran, and significantly degraded the country’s missile launchers, drone stockpiles, and naval assets. Nor should anyone doubt the cruelty of the Iranian regime they are targeting, which has spent decades killing Americans, brutalizing its own people, threatening its neighbors with missiles and terrorist proxies, and racing to build up its nuclear program.
But so much else about this war of choice remains unclear, and the biggest questions have gone unanswered by the Trump administration. In particular, how will this war end? And what will be the ultimate strategic implications of the Iran gamble? The history of American military intervention offers a consistent lesson: wars begun without clear political objectives rarely end well. When political goals are undefined or contested, the war lacks a logical stopping point. Tactical successes raise questions of what comes next, while tactical setbacks become justification for doing more. The mission expands, the timeline stretches, and the original rationale fades into the background as the war gains its own momentum. The nineteenth-century Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz famously argued that war is politics by other means. But the corollary is equally important: without a clear political purpose, war becomes an end in itself.
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