How the US can defeat Iran

The United States is facing strategic defeat. The fundamental cause of this defeat is that the US does not have the military means to disarm Iran. And if it cannot disarm Iran, it cannot seize Hormuz. It cannot destroy Iranian launch sites because they are concealed, dispersed, buried, hardened and constantly reconstituted. Simply put, the rate of interdiction that the US can achieve is too low relative to the rate of reconstitution of Iranian strike capabilities.1

All channels through escalation are blocked because Iran enjoys escalation dominance. If you hit their infrastructure, they will hit the gulf infrastructure. If you attack civilians, they will kill your military personnel. If you hit their launch sites, they will hit your bases. A ground incursion will require Iwo Jima levels of casualties that are now beyond US political tolerance. There is therefore no path to a US victory through military escalation. Iran is militarily invulnerable.

The war of the sieges is highly unlikely to produce a decision any time soon. Nor will cat and mouse. In fact, as things stand, the US is rigged to lose as the noose eventually tightens in the oil market.

The US is trying to put the war on the back-burner, talk down Brent, and hope for the best. But time is Iran’s great power ally. The US cannot expect the siege to work before the closure of Hormuz starts to bite the world economy, even if this does not happen before the midterms because of ample reserves. The US has a few months before the crisis builds. Given the strategic picture, it is really hard to see how the US can evade defeat.

In what follows, I will propose a strategy to defeat Iran. Specifically, I will argue that the US can solve the problem of outlasting Iran with a market solution. Let me spell out the logic of this strategy.