The tough rhetoric coming out of Tehran is about conveying the idea that they can keep the attacks going indefinitely, which they can’t. There are risks for them in this…So long as the US appears at a loss about what to do next, and anxiety is growing about economic impacts, they will be tempted to keep going. Lawrence Freedman, The Split Screen War, 15 March 2026.
There is a temptation, as we observe the opening weeks of Operation Epic Fury, to see a single war taking place. This oversimplifies what is occurring. In fact, there are two wars occurring concurrently.
The United States and Iran have each entered a conflict defined by fundamentally different theories of what victory for them means, different methods for pursuing victory, and different audiences they are performing for. China and Russia, as they watch from a careful distance and offering minimal diplomatic and intelligence assistance, are however learning from both simultaneously. So are America’s Pacific allies, though what they are learning may not be particularly reassuring for them.
This assessment examines the two wars in and around Iran: the military campaign that Washington is fighting, and the economic campaign that Tehran is waging. It then asks the following question: what are the respective theories of victory, and how does that theory play out differently for each belligerent?
Finally, my assessment draws out the strategic insights that China, Russia, and America’s Pacific partners are absorbing — and what the authoritarian learning bloc might be able to accomplish with what it has learned.
Two Different Wars
The United States went to war against Iran believing it was fighting a regional military campaign with its Israeli partner. The strategic logic, at least as it can be reconstructed from the public statements and videos from the Trump administration, was that the precise application of intelligence and western weaponry would destroy Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, eliminate its ballistic missile production, degrade its naval capacity, decapitate its senior leadership, and create the conditions for the Iranians people to rise up and force regime change. The means was overwhelming air power enabled by AI-assisted intelligence from Israel and various U.S. agencies. The alliance structure was narrow: Israel and a small number of permissive basing partners. European and Asian allies were informed (if at all) rather than consulted. Regional Arab partners were protected with conventional weapons but not brought into the coalition. The war is, by design, America’s war with minimal mention of Israel’s role.
Iran is fighting an entirely different conflict. Tehran’s war is a regional and global economic war with an internal societal dimension. Its core instrument is not its destroyed air force or its significantly depleted ballistic missile stockpile. Its core instruments are the Strait of Hormuz, drone swarms to saturate regional defences, and the oil price. By threatening and intermittently closing the world’s most critical oil chokepoint, firing quantities of cheap Shahed drones into multiple countries, and striking energy and civil infrastructure from the Gulf to Cyprus, Iran’s objective is not military victory.
As the AP reported, Iran’s strategy boils down to a single question: who can take the pain the longest? Tehran does not need to win – at least not in a way that western military organisations define “victory”. It just needs to cause sufficient economic disruption to force a U.S. backdown so the regime can present it domestically as a victory. With oil prices now sitting in the range of US$95-105 per barrel, Iran demanding all oil payments in Chinese currency, global food prices spiking because fertiliser shipments cannot pass Hormuz, and financial market volatility rattling Washington’s political coalition, Iran believes its theory of victory is viable.
One aspect of Iran’s approach is particularly notable: an Iranian official recently told CNN that Tehran is considering allowing a limited number of oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz — but only if cargo is traded in Chinese yuan, not US dollars. As an analysis in the European Business Magazine notes:
The condition, if formalised, would represent the most significant challenge to the petrodollar system in its fifty-two-year history, striking at the financial architecture that underpins American global power rather than at US military assets.
There is a secondary dimension to Iran’s war that is important: the domestic audience. Regime survival is not merely a desired outcome — it is a primary objective and a critical element of Iran’s theory of victory. The early weeks of January 2026 saw the most serious internal protests the Islamic Republic had faced in decades, driven by economic challenges and infrastructure failure. The war, whatever its military consequences, is likely to serve as a consolidating event for the new regime of Mojtaba Khamenei. External aggression by the Great Satan is always good for clerical legitimacy in Iran. Thus, the Iranian theory of victory is as much about internal political survival as it is about endurance against the American and Israeli military campaign.
The U.S. Theory of Victory: Clarity of Means, Foggy Ends
A theory of victory is not simply a list of military objectives. It is a coherent account of how the application of military force produces a political outcome that endures. In my book, The War for Ukraine, I examined the concept of theories of victories and reviewed some of the recent literature on this topic. As I wrote:
A concept of victory must embrace objectives beyond military activity. Now, notions of victory must include economic, diplomatic, and societal long-term needs as well as short- and medium-term military outcomes. As such, a theory of victory should include winning the war as well as winning the peace.
The Trump administration entered Operation Epic Fury with a theory of means and a range of differing and constantly changing ends. It might be able to use the military to win the war, but it is unclear whether it has a longer-term plan to win the peace.
The means to win the war are impressive: more than 6,000 targets struck in the first three weeks, air dominance established rapidly, Iranian military command and control degraded, Iran’s naval capacity largely destroyed, missile launchers and storage facilities destroyed, and many other bases and nuclear facilities struck. The military dimensions of the campaign have been executed with remarkable precision with over 7000 targets hit (as of 17 March 2026).
The ends remain opaque. Trump has, at various moments, articulated objectives ranging from preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons — a narrow, definable goal — to demanding Iran’s unconditional surrender, to declaring that he wants the Iranian people to “take back their country.” These are not compatible theories of victory. The Washington Institute for Near East Policy has argued that one week into the war, the administration settled on four primary military objectives: destroying Iran’s navy; destroying its missile capabilities; preventing nuclear weapons development; and eliminating proxy support. These are achievable. But they are not a theory of sustained victory or a method of winning the peace.
The distinction matters enormously. A narrow theory of victory — degrade and deter, establish a new baseline, then enforce it — is viable. Regime change as a theory of victory requires a plan for the day after: who governs, how is the nuclear programme verifiably dismantled, and who pays for reconstruction? The American experience in Iraq and Afghanistan should have immunised Washington against maximalism of this kind. As Raphael Cohen of RAND has argued, even if Iran survives this conflict, its victory will be Pyrrhic: it will be poorer, militarily weaker, more isolated.
But the same Pyrrhic logic can apply to the victor if the political end-state is unclear or the state has insufficient patience to see through the achievement of its political goals.
There is a further problem. Securing a narrow military victory is one thing. Sustaining it – winning the peace - requires ongoing pressure, diplomatic endeavours, and the willingness to strike again if Iran rebuilds. That strategy, which might be called Mowing the Grass, demands resources such as precision munitions, forward presence, as well as American political and diplomatic bandwidth, that are already stretched tight across Ukraine, the Pacific, and now the Middle East.
At present, about 40 percent of U.S. Navy ships ready for operations are in the Middle East; THAAD components have been removed from the Korean Peninsula; Japan has seen the deployment of U.S. Marines based there to the Middle East and faces extended delays in Tomahawk missiles it has ordered from America. Winning in Iran while maintaining deterrence in Europe and Asia requires a level of resource coverage and concurrent activity that the United States does not currently possess.
Iran’s Theory of Victory: Regime Survival, Nuclear Ambiguity, But Unclear Long Game
Iran entered this conflict with a clearer, if more nihilistic, theory of victory than Washington. In the short term, it seeks to absorb the bombardment, survive as a regime, demonstrate sufficient military reach to cause pain across the region, and wait for economic and political pressure to force an American exit on terms Tehran can present as honourable. RAND’s Cohen observes however that Iran’s actions in this conflict, by striking Arab states that were previously neutral or mildly sympathetic, represents a fundamental strategic miscalculation. By alienating Oman, Qatar, Turkey and others, Tehran has damaged the regional relationships that were 60 percent of its trade base, and with them the future revenue that would fund any reconstruction.
However, Tehran’s short-term theory of survival has an important component: a cost imposition strategy that has impacts on the U.S. military and the global economy. Iran produces over 100 ballistic missiles a month; the United States produces many fewer interceptors per month. Cheap Shahed drones — costing a few thousand dollars each — are being countered by interceptors costing millions. Secretary of State Rubio acknowledged publicly that this arithmetic is unsustainable for the United States. Even a significantly degraded Iran can impose serious economic disruption on the world economy through closing the Strait of Hormuz, and serious military cost on U.S. allies through mass saturation attacks. The regime knows this. The mass attack is not just a military tool; it is a political and economic one.
In the longer term, however, things are not so rosy for Iran. Cohen’s argument is that an Iranian regime that survives this war will emerge poorer, weaker, and more regionally isolated than at any point since 1979. Its proxies have been systematically dismantled since October 2023. Its nuclear programme, the crown jewel of the IRGC’s deterrence strategy, has been struck twice. The calculation that Iran could use its regional proxy network as a deterrent shield, the strategic logic that animated four decades of foreign policy, has been dismantled. As Cohen concludes, even a surviving Iran that declares victory will have triggered its own long-term strategic decline; their strategic gambling over the past few decades has finally cost more than the winnings.
