Por Brian Hudson
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The sharp renewal of U.S.-Iran strikes at the beginning of September exposed the central contradiction of Donald Trump’s war. The United States can strike Iranian launchers, radar systems, and maritime assets with overwhelming force. Yet seven months into the conflict, Washington still lacks a clear path from military pressure to political victory. Vice President JD Vance underscored that uncertainty when he declined to offer a timeline for ending the confrontation.
That gap between battlefield power and political results is now the real measure of the war. The United States retains an extraordinary conventional military advantage over Iran. But Iran does not have to defeat the U.S. military to deny Washington a strategic victory. It has to survive, preserve the state, retain some capacity to retaliate, and prevent the United States from achieving the maximal goals for which Trump launched the campaign.
Modern wars have repeatedly shown that military superiority does not automatically produce political control, especially when a great power faces a determined adversary in an asymmetric conflict. A stronger state may win nearly every direct engagement and still fail to impose the settlement it wants. In such a contest, survival is not merely endurance. It can become a strategic achievement.
American power has always rested on more than aircraft carriers, stealth aircraft, missiles, and overseas bases. It also depends on the belief that Washington can impose unbearable costs on any government that openly defies it. That belief is central to deterrence. Yet deterrence requires not only capability but credibility: confidence that military force will ultimately deliver a political result. The longer this war continues without a decisive settlement, the harder that confidence becomes to sustain.
This is what makes Iran such a difficult test for Trump. His administration entered the conflict with enormous military advantages, but it also created expectations that have become a burden. The more the president presents the war as proof of overwhelming American strength and promises decisive results, the harder it becomes to accept an outcome that falls short of those promises. A limited agreement might once have been sold as a pragmatic compromise. A war advertised as a demonstration of dominance cannot easily end without a correspondingly dramatic victory.
Trump’s political style has deepened the trap. His threats, aggressive rhetoric, and repeated insistence on maximum pressure created expectations increasingly at odds with a prolonged and inconclusive conflict. The president built his political identity around restoring American strength. He may now be presiding over a war that reveals the limits of what military strength can accomplish when it is disconnected from a realistic political strategy.
The domestic consequences are already visible. A late-August Reuters/Ipsos poll found that only 36 percent supported the war, while Trump’s approval rating stood at 33 percent, the lowest level of his political career. The same poll found Democratic voters considerably more enthusiastic about the November 3 midterms than Republicans, who must defend narrow congressional majorities.
These figures matter for more than the usual fluctuations in presidential approval. Wars remain politically sustainable when an administration can point to either a clear threat or a clear victory. A lengthy conflict with shifting aims is much harder to defend. If voters conclude that the war has imposed serious economic and security costs without producing a recognizable political settlement, Iran will no longer be merely a foreign-policy problem for Trump. It will become a domestic political liability.
The external consequences may be more enduring. At the recent Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Bishkek, leaders including China’s Xi Jinping, Russia’s Vladimir Putin, and Iran’s Masoud Pezeshkian gathered as the organization’s final declaration condemned strikes on Iran, rejected unilateral coercive measures, and affirmed Iran’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.
This should not be mistaken for evidence that China or Russia is prepared to fight the United States on Iran’s behalf. Neither is the SCO a conventional military alliance. Iran also faces severe economic pressure and cannot treat diplomatic expressions of solidarity as a substitute for material support. But the political signal still matters: Washington’s ability to isolate Tehran is constrained in a world where major non-Western powers have independent interests and are increasingly willing to resist American unilateralism.
Iran therefore operates in an environment different from that of many earlier Middle Eastern wars. It is not completely isolated. Its economic, diplomatic, and strategic relations with China, Russia, and other states allow Tehran to present its confrontation with Washington as one part of a broader struggle over the future distribution of international power. The Bishkek summit did not erase Iran’s vulnerabilities, but it showed that the conflict is also drawing Tehran closer to the powers Washington regards as its principal competitors.
Here lies one of the war’s central ironies. A campaign intended to weaken Iran may deepen its reliance on China and Russia. A war intended to reinforce American deterrence may lead other governments to question whether U.S. military superiority can still be translated reliably into political control. And an administration that promised to restore American power may accelerate the hedging of allies and partners that are increasingly uncertain about Washington’s strategy and staying power.
Tehran also retains an important strategic option: it can combine resistance with diplomacy. Pezeshkian has continued to signal readiness for negotiations while rejecting the claim that military confrontation is the only available path. That position allows Iran to resist pressure without formally closing the door to a political settlement. Washington faces the more awkward choice: continue an expensive conflict without a clear endpoint, or negotiate with a government it initially sought to overwhelm through force.
The relevant question, then, is not whether Iran can defeat the United States in a conventional war. It cannot. The question is whether Washington can achieve a political victory proportionate to the scale of the war it began. So far, that outcome remains uncertain.
Iran has suffered immense military and economic damage, and survival alone cannot erase those losses. But if the country emerges from this war battered yet politically intact—its state functioning, some retaliatory capacity preserved, and its relations with China and Russia strengthened—it will have demonstrated that even the world’s leading military power cannot necessarily impose its preferred political outcome through force.
That may prove to be the real legacy of Trump’s gamble. The United States can win battles while losing strategic credibility; Iran can sustain devastating losses while treating political survival as a form of victory. The greatest danger for Washington is not that Iran will become militarily stronger than the United States. It is that other governments will conclude that American power, though still formidable, is no longer sufficient by itself to determine political outcomes.
Brian Hudson is a political science graduate from Bates College with a keen interest in international relations and global affairs. As a freelance commentator, he provides analysis on geopolitics, international security, and counter-terrorism. His work has been featured on news analysis platforms such as Modern Diplomacy, Eurasia Review, and others.
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