US & Iran: Necessarily a Choice Between Dishonor and Defeat?

Astarta usually writes from an Israeli-Zionist perspective; this document departs from that mandate. This time we set out to analyze the challenge in the Persian Gulf from the American point of view.

Trump announced that he had called off the planned strike on Iran, after Iran and other states asked him to and after the broad outlines of a deal took shape - one that would include reopening the Strait of Hormuz and an arrangement to neutralize the nuclear threat. But we have seen this movie before. Once again, the US appears to be folding.

There is no point in sugarcoating it: the US has gotten itself into a mess with no good way out. Since the war began, Iran has held a chokehold over the Strait of Hormuz and made the global economy its hostage. Iran will come out of the confrontation militarily and economically weaker — but stronger in its standing, as a hegemon that dictates the regional and even the global reality. The new conceptual fixation ("conceptsia") taking hold in Washington is that there is, in all likelihood, no real military option against Iran.

The New Iranian Strategy

To understand America's options, one first has to understand the significant shift in Iranian strategy. Iran is trying to exploit the moment to become a regional hegemon, push the US out of the region, and challenge the US-led global order. This is not random aggression but a calculated approach — one that leverages military pressure in negotiations, and that is also driven by a fierce desire for revenge.

The strategy rests on three pillars:

1. Control of the Strait of Hormuz as a chokepoint, with the potential to create a second chokepoint at the Bab el-Mandeb strait;

2. A "belt of resistance" made up of regional proxies;

3. A proactive, calculated combat doctrine built on cheap, domestically produced drones that exact a price from every country hosting American bases in the region.

   
   

Together, these threaten to push the world into a deep recession and an energy crisis, while at the same time blocking the creation of overland alternatives to the Strait of Hormuz in Saudi Arabia and the UAE. In this way, Trump's "expensive, beautiful weapon" is left worthless in a drawn-out war of attrition. Worse still: nothing, it seems, will stop Iran from making a break for the bomb, and the working assumption has to be that it will try.

Trends Working Against the US

The world is heading toward an economic and energy crisis even as global oil reserves run down. What is happening now in Hormuz could repeat itself at other chokepoints within reach of Iran's long arm — at the Bab el-Mandeb strait and the Suez Canal, as the Iranians showed last week.

The very traits that made liberal democracies such successful systems in ordinary times are what hold them back in long wars: an open society and a free press, regular elections and term limits. These internal constraints leave democracies with an urgent need to show results and deliver quick fixes, even temporary ones, and at times push them into agreements with authoritarian regimes. Those regimes, working on a long time horizon and a logic of power, use the very same agreements to advance their aims while breaking them systematically. This structural asymmetry leaves the West at a chronic disadvantage.

While Trump worries about the midterm elections — which could turn him into a lame duck and even cut off the war ("Defund the war") — the Iranians know his term ends in 2028 in any case (unless he runs for a fourth term, as he declared at last week's annual press gathering...). For any other president, one who did not drag the country into war, pulling it out will be far easier.

The Supposedly Implications 

All of America's options look catastrophic: 

• A new deal would inevitably be a bad one, because Iran holds the stronger hand; the memorandum of understanding the two sides reached was, in effect, an American instrument of surrender, and even that the Iranians allowed themselves to break.

• A continued blockade, by land or sea, would not change the geopolitical reality and would only speed up the looming economic crisis.

• War, or a limited strike — a ground incursion or the bombing of energy infrastructure — carries heavy risk and low odds of success.

On the face of it, then, America's options run across the spectrum between dishonor and defeat.

From Tactics to Strategy: What an American Victory Would Look Like

We need to separate the tactical end of the campaign — where, as noted, America's current options look bleak — from the long-term trends and the chance of a different, strategic outcome. Put another way: the short term political damage most likely can no longer be saved, and a global economic crisis may be unavoidable — but it is still possible to shape a long-term reality that brings American power into line with the reality of the Middle East.

Victory depends far more on the reality that forms over time than on the immediate results on the ground. The US can still leverage its structural advantages by leading moves that run directly against Iran's fundamentalist ideology. The American answer lies not in copying Iran's strategy of attrition, but in building an alternative, prosperous economic and political reality that Iran cannot compete with. To pull this off, the administration first has to recognize the conceptual frameworks it is trapped in — and the values and norms of Western society that leave it at a disadvantage in the current clash of civilizations.

The Tactical Response

America's hand is weak right now, and yet the immediate tactical response calls for acting on several fronts at once: pairing focused kinetic force with economic levers meant to break the grip on Hormuz and ease the economic crisis (even if neither is achieved right away). The American approach should rest on standing up an aggressive international maritime escort coalition, on the careful use of strategic oil reserves, and on a fast-tracked effort to bring Hormuz-bypassing pipelines online without delay. The Houthi threat and Iran's other proxies must be neutralized through an aggressive naval blockade to cut off Iranian supply chains, the elimination of terror leaderships, and the active arming of rival local forces (as in Yemen and Lebanon). Washington must give the countries hosting American bases a maximal air-defense envelope — against missiles and drones — and unprecedented security guarantees that make the American presence an asset rather than a burden.

The Long Term: An Alternative Regional Architecture (Abraham Accords 2.0)

The geography and strategic makeup of the Gulf make a military reopening of the Strait of Hormuz an extremely complex undertaking, with limited odds of success and a high price tag, and therefore all but unrealistic. With political shrewdness, though, the US can turn the Iranian threat itself into leverage, building a security and economic architecture set against the Iranian bloc and uniting the moderate, pro-Western Muslim states for whom Iran is the common enemy. The further the US deepens and widens the Abraham Accords into a genuine regional alliance, the more Iran will face a total ideological defeat.

Bypassing the Chokepoints: Overland Trade Routes

The most crushing answer to Iran's "hostage" strategy — in Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb — is to break its geographic monopoly. Building a continuous overland trade route and logistics corridor, as a reliable alternative to the Suez Canal and the Red Sea straits, would effectively strip Iran and its proxies of the ability to threaten global supply chains. An American victory, then, would come when Iran finds itself completely isolated inside a new Middle East — connected, prosperous, and American-led.

Breaking the Threat of Nationalization in Hormuz: Internationalizing the Problem

The fear of the Iranian chokehold and of a de facto nationalization of the Strait of Hormuz should push the US to stop treating the crisis as a two-way, American-Iranian confrontation and to turn it into a global one. It needs to "pass the hot potato" to the powers that truly depend on Gulf oil — China, India, and Europe above all. Instead of carrying the burden of maritime security alone and absorbing the fire, Washington should lead a broad international maritime coalition, while quietly handing Beijing an ultimatum: rein in your Iranian ally, or watch the supply chains your economy rests on collapse. In parallel, the fast-tracked development of overland export routes would gradually wear down the standing of the Strait of Hormuz as a chokepoint of the global economy, and take away Iran's central bargaining chip.

Confronting the Nuclear Question: Disruption and a Security Umbrella

Halting the nuclear project in the short term, until the regional umbrella is in place, will require ramping up a covert sabotage campaign (cyber and internal disruption), backed by a credible military threat of a surgical strike on the enrichment facilities with bunker-buster munitions, should Iran attempt an immediate breakout.

Thwarting or delaying the Iranian nuclear project by military means is highly complex, but far more doable than the challenge at Hormuz. For all of Iran's efforts to disperse the project, it still comes down to a handful of specific geographic hubs whose disabling would set it back significantly. Only a real American willingness to act with precision, including a limited deployment of ground forces, might get the Iranians to hold off on a breakout. Either way, the US has to extend a security and nuclear umbrella over its partners along the regional axis — Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the UAE, and Israel — much as NATO did during the Cold War.

The Price of Defeat

The Trump administration is under internal pressure — including from within its own ranks — to end the war at almost any cost. But an American retreat would create a sense of total Iranian immunity, clearing the path to a nuclear breakout and setting off a regional nuclear arms race that could spin out of control. At the same time, the global economy would become a permanent hostage in the hands of a capricious regime, setting a dangerous precedent that would invite hostile takeovers of other maritime chokepoints around the world.

With China, going along with the Iranian blockade would not only threaten American primacy in the artificial-intelligence race — which depends critically on the Gulf's energy and economic stability — but would also signal weakness on an unprecedented scale. A message like that could, in practice, hand Taiwan to China, embolden Russia to deepen its war in Ukraine, and lock in a new world order in which the US has lost its primacy. China and Russia are already watching what looks like an inevitable American defeat with keen interest, looking to use it to challenge American dominance and reshape the global order.vAnd this is only a partial list. 

The cost of ending the confrontation without a clear achievement reaches far beyond the borders of the Middle East — and could, in practice, signal the decline of the West. That is what hangs in the balance.