Matthew Continetti
President Donald Trump faces a choice that can no longer be postponed: keep the war with Iran confined to limited, proportional retaliation, or use American power decisively against the regime driving the escalation.
So far, U.S. policy has remained caught between those approaches. Trump warns Iran of unprecedented consequences, yet links every Iranian attack on shipping in the Strait of Hormuz to a corresponding U.S. strike on a bridge or power plant. That formula may project resolve, but it effectively allows Tehran to determine the war’s tempo and limits.
Operation Epic Fury began as an expansive military campaign before an April truce suspended major combat on the condition that Iran reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Tehran did not fulfill that commitment, while Washington continued extending pauses and signaling its willingness to negotiate.
The United States offered to ease its blockade and permit renewed Iranian oil exports in exchange for reopening the strait and beginning nuclear talks. Yet, as the author argues, Tehran responded by continuing to threaten shipping and Gulf states, advancing work at fortified nuclear sites and ultimately striking a U.S. base in Jordan, killing American troops.
The problem is not a lack of diplomatic opportunities. It is that Iran’s leadership interprets restraint as weakness. The regime does not need to defeat the United States militarily. It needs only to survive, preserve its ability to disrupt shipping, drive up energy prices and impose casualties on American forces and their allies.
For that reason, the author contends that isolated strikes cannot achieve Trump’s stated objectives. If Washington intends to eliminate the Iranian threat, it must target the machinery that enables the regime to sustain the war: the Revolutionary Guard’s leadership, command-and-control centers, missile and drone factories, logistics networks and state propaganda apparatus.
Such a strategy would not be cost-free. American troops have been killed, critical Gulf infrastructure has been damaged, oil prices have risen and the danger of a broader regional conflict has intensified. But continuing the war in its current form compounds those costs without moving Washington closer to a decisive political outcome.
The past several months have exposed the limits of diplomacy unsupported by credible military pressure. If Trump wants to end the war rather than merely manage it, he must recognize that the central problem is not a single bridge, power plant or missile launcher. It is the Iranian regime itself.
Source: The Wall Street Journal