Why winning the Iran war may be impossible

"Just when I thought I was out… they pull me back in."

When Michael Corleone delivers this famous line in The Godfather Part III, it captures a tragic reality — the illusion of escape from a conflict that refuses to end. In recent days, the unfolding Iran war has begun to resemble that same grim dynamic for the US.

For a brief moment, it seemed as if the conflict might be winding down as Iran's retaliation died down. 

In fact, US President Donald Trump signalled that the campaign against Iran had achieved its objectives. Israeli leaders spoke of decisive blows against Tehran's military infrastructure. But wars, particularly in the Middle East, rarely follow the scripts written in political speeches.

Just as the rhetoric of victory began to take shape, Iran struck back. Missiles and drones returned to the skies, retaliation expanded across the region, and the conflict — which Washington appeared eager to close — was suddenly dragged back into escalation. What looked like the beginning of the end began to resemble something far more familiar: the opening phase of a protracted confrontation.

The deeper problem now confronting the Trump administration is that the war it hoped to end quickly may not offer a clear exit. Iran, unlike many of the regimes Washington has confronted over the past two decades, appears prepared for a long war of attrition — one in which survival itself becomes a form of victory. That reality raises a far more uncomfortable question: what happens when the US and Israel can escalate the war indefinitely but cannot actually win it?

What 'victory' truly means

The question of winning and losing in war is inseparable from the political objectives of the campaign i.e. the perceived regime change in Iran. US President Donald Trump, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and many influential voices in Washington and Tel Aviv have repeatedly framed the conflict in terms that go far beyond degrading Iran's military capabilities. 

The ultimate aim, implicitly and sometimes explicitly, has been regime change in Tehran — the collapse of the Islamic Republic itself. For some in Israel's strategic community, an even more ambitious outcome would be the fragmentation or weakening of the Iranian state.

Yet the likelihood of achieving such an outcome is extremely remote. In fact, short of a nuclear attack — an option that remains politically and strategically unimaginable — regime change in Iran appears almost impossible. 

Military history offers little precedent for governments collapsing solely under the pressure of air strikes or missile attacks. When the United States pursued regime change in Iraq in 2003, it assembled a force of more than 300,000 troops. 

Even earlier, during the 1991 Gulf War, the US-led coalition mobilised roughly 700,000 personnel to expel Iraqi forces from Kuwait. Those were enormous military undertakings backed by extensive international coalitions and sustained political consensus. Nothing remotely comparable exists today.

Iran's war doctrine is built on a simple strategic assumption: it cannot defeat the United States or Israel in a conventional military confrontation. Instead, it seeks to make any conflict so costly, prolonged and geographically complicated that its adversaries eventually lose the political will to continue fighting.

Iran is a country of enormous geographic scale and strategic depth. With a territory of roughly 1.7 million square kilometres, it is more than three times the size of Iraq. In fact, if one were to combine the territories of the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Belgium and Italy, the total would still be smaller than Iran.

The notion that such a vast and geographically complex country could be invaded and its regime toppled through external military intervention is, in practical terms, a pipe dream. It is not a strategy that Washington or Tel Aviv is seriously contemplating, let alone publicly promising.

Martyrdom, resilience and the political culture of the Islamic Republic

Another factor often underestimated in Western strategic calculations is the role of martyrdom and sacrifice within the political culture of the Islamic Republic.

Shia Islam — the religious tradition followed by the majority of Iranians — places profound symbolic importance on the concept of martyrdom. At the heart of Shia historical memory lies the story of Imam Hussein, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, who was killed at the Battle of Karbala in 680 CE after refusing to submit to what he considered illegitimate rule. 

His death, commemorated annually during Ashura, has become a powerful moral narrative centred on resistance against oppression, sacrifice for justice and endurance in the face of overwhelming odds.

For centuries, this story has shaped Shia political imagination. The idea that suffering and sacrifice can carry moral and spiritual victory — even in the absence of military success — occupies a central place in the tradition.

The Islamic Republic has consciously woven this symbolism into its political identity. 

During the Iran–Iraq War in the 1980s, the leadership in Tehran repeatedly invoked the imagery of Karbala to mobilise public support and sustain national resistance. Iranian soldiers who died on the battlefield were celebrated as martyrs, and the narrative of sacrifice became intertwined with the survival of the state itself.

Over the decades, that symbolism has remained embedded in the political culture of the Islamic Republic.

This has important implications for the current conflict. Killing Ayatollah Khamenei and other top leaders make them martyrs in the eyes of common Shia Iranians. So, rather than igniting a popular uprising in Iran, as the US and Israel hoped, it can reinforce the narrative of martyrdom that the regime has cultivated for decades, thus bolstering support for it. 

The misreading of Tehran

In the early days of the war, US President Donald Trump struck a confident tone. Iran, he argued, had been hit so hard that it would soon "cry uncle". The assumption was that overwhelming military pressure would compel Tehran to capitulate.

But the Iranian response suggests a very different calculation.

For the leadership in Tehran, victory does not require defeating the United States or Israel on the battlefield. It requires only one thing: survival. If the regime remains intact after absorbing the blows delivered by Western and Israeli air power, it can claim to have withstood the military might of two of the region's most powerful forces.

That alone would represent a strategic success.

The Iranian strategy, therefore, appears increasingly clear. Rather than seeking rapid escalation or decisive confrontation, Tehran is preparing for a prolonged war of attrition.

Rather than attempting to match the conventional military power of the United States or Israel, Iran has invested heavily in asymmetric capabilities — ballistic missiles, drones and regional networks capable of sustaining prolonged confrontation.

These weapons allow Tehran to expand the battlefield beyond its own territory.

Missile and drone attacks can target energy infrastructure, shipping lanes and military bases across the Middle East. Even when intercepted, such attacks impose costs on regional economies and heighten global uncertainty. The Gulf states, with their concentrated oil and gas facilities and vulnerable desalination plants, present particularly attractive targets. This is what strategists describe as a "target-rich environment". And as the conflict escalates, the risk of economic disruption grows.

The cost of a long war for Washington

Iran's war doctrine is built on a simple strategic assumption: it cannot defeat the United States or Israel in a conventional military confrontation. Instead, it seeks to make any conflict so costly, prolonged and geographically complicated that its adversaries eventually lose the political will to continue fighting.

This doctrine of asymmetric warfare did not emerge overnight. It is the direct outcome of Iran's experience during the 1980–1988 Iran–Iraq War, when Saddam Hussein's Iraq — heavily supported by Western powers — fought the Islamic Republic to a bloody stalemate. At the time, Iran enjoyed nearly a three-to-one population advantage, yet that demographic advantage failed to translate into decisive battlefield success. The war exposed the limitations of Iran's conventional military capabilities.

The lesson Tehran drew from that experience was clear: Iran must never again fight a conventional, symmetrical war against technologically superior adversaries.

Since the end of that conflict in 1988, the Islamic Republic has systematically reorganised its security doctrine around asymmetric capabilities designed to offset American and Israeli military superiority.

This strategy poses significant challenges for the United States.

Even if US and Israeli forces achieve tactical successes through airstrikes, destroying infrastructure, military bases or leadership targets, Iran's asymmetric capabilities allow it to retaliate across a wide geographic area.

Drone and missile strikes can target energy infrastructure in Gulf states, military bases across the region, or shipping lanes critical to global trade. The Strait of Hormuz alone carries roughly 20% of the world's energy supplies, meaning even limited disruption could have immediate global economic consequences.

A prolonged conflict would also impose significant financial costs on Washington. Estimates suggest that the ongoing campaign could cost close to $1 billion per day, while the heavy use of advanced missile interceptors risks depleting American stockpiles of critical munitions. These systems, particularly high-end missile defence interceptors, can take years to replace.

The strain would not be limited to military resources. Even though the market expects the war to end, prolonged conflict in the Gulf would likely push global oil prices above $100 per barrel, with inflationary consequences for the global economy and domestic political repercussions inside the United States.

The longer the war continues, the more it begins to resemble the kind of conflict Iran has spent decades preparing for. This is the central dilemma facing Washington. And that means the ultimate question facing the Trump administration may not be how to win the war, but how to end it, as by this time, the victory that they hoped to achieve has become nigh impossible. 

Shadique Mahbub Islam is a journalist.