FIRST OF A SERIES

SINCE Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s rise to power in the 1979 Islamic Revolution, removing him and his regime have always existed on the margins of American strategic thinking. However, it became a geopolitical obsession of one man: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The strategy of grudging equilibrium was the core doctrine of every American president since Jimmy Carter’s debacle in the aftermath the Iranian hostage crisis. Subsequent American presidents, from Bill Clinton onward, understood the risks of turning that doctrine into policy. The memory of the Iraq war, the fragility of the Persian Gulf, and the catastrophic consequences of regime-change adventurism imposed a kind of institutional restraint. Not until Donald Trump’s presidency when American and Israeli interests — with Netanyahu in the driver’s seat — were fused strategically.

Netanyahu found a marionette in Trump, whose focus on “total victory” overshadowed geopolitical stability. On Feb. 28, 2026, that restraint evaporated.

Trump advanced a dramatic war plan — Operation Epic Fury — launching 900 missiles, destroying command centers, eliminating the Iranian leadership, and erasing military infrastructure. The spectacle — designed for impact on television — projected strength, warming the cockles of a reality television star.

For three decades, US military leaders have advised against war with Iran, citing its challenging size and geography. Pentagon simulations consistently showed air campaigns alone would not lead to regime change or submission.

Defying military logic, ultimately, America was maneuvered into a war of choice, one whose political timing aligned far more neatly with Israeli electoral pressures than with American strategic necessity. The fireworks were spectacular; the consequences were deadly.

‘Total victory’ – an illusion

Echoing then-president George W. Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” speech in the wake of the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, Trump quickly declared the operation “very complete.” In purely kinetic terms, the claim held some truth. Iran’s aging air force was destroyed within hours; missile depots were reduced to craters. But wars are not resolved by destroying machinery. Here’s the fundamental flaw of the “transactionalist” mindset: it confuses the destruction of hardware with conflict resolution.

By allowing Netanyahu to dictate both the target and timing, Washington stepped directly into a strategic trap that has been decades in the making. Trump appeared convinced he had delivered a decisive blow, perhaps even a “gift” to the Iranian people.

Instead, the attack accomplished something far more dangerous: it decapitated Iran’s old guard and cleared the path for a younger, more radical leadership cohort.

The new supreme leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, emerged from the political vacuum not as a moderating technocrat, but as a hardened ideological figure shaped by the trauma of the Iran-Iraq War.

Members of his family were among those killed in the initial strikes.

In the Shia tradition of martyrdom, such deaths do not deter. They sanctify. Allahu Ahkbar! The idea that this leadership would now pursue a conciliatory “grand bargain” with Washington was always a fantasy.

Geography, not firepower

Pentagon was prepared for the war they wanted to fight.

They saw aging Iranian aircraft, creaking naval platforms, outdated radar networks. Their calculations suggested that Tehran could not survive two weeks of high-technology confrontation with the US.

They were probably correct. But Iran never intended to fight that war.

Iranian strategists understood their weakness in conventional combat. They understood the West’s structural vulnerability, its’ “Achilles’ heel”: the narrow maritime corridor measuring just 21 miles wide: the Strait of Hormuz, the central artery of global energy trade.

Invisible blockade

Within 72 hours of the initial missile barrage, the theoretical nightmare became reality. Hormuz closed, not through dramatic naval battles with the formidable US carrier strike groups. Instead, a handful of Iranian precise drone strikes near tanker routes changed the risk calculus overnight.

Then Lloyd’s of London and insurers who quietly govern maritime commerce made their move. Confronted with risks that could no longer be priced, they withdrew coverage. Without insurance, ships simply do not sail. In an instant, nearly 20 million barrels a day — one-fifth of the world’s seaborne crude — vanished from the market. Tehran grasped a brutal truth Washington ignored: you need not defeat a navy to paralyze the world, only make shipping uninsurable. The crisis arrived not with explosions, but with silence.

Economic earthquake

The numbers tell the story more clearly than any speech. On Feb. 27, the day before the first strikes, Brent crude and US gasoline on average cost $78 a barrel and $3.75 a gallon, respectively; shipping insurance was standard; and more than 20 million barrel a day pass through Hormuz. But as of March 7, Brent crude and US gasoline on average cost $119/barrel and $4.10/gallon, respectively; shipping insurance was suspended; and barrels of oil passing through Hormuz was effectively zero.

This isn’t just a statistic; it’s a silent tax on daily life. From pumps in Detroit and farms in Kansas to airline fuel and grocery chains, these costs ripple through the economy. Ultimately, the geopolitical chessboard lands on the kitchen table, as the American middle class foots the daily bill for Netanyahu’s long-pursued objectives.

Fracturing security order

The crisis did not stop at gas stations. Regional economies began to buckle. Iraq halted production in its southern oil fields as exports became impossible. Saudi and Emirati infrastructure again faced drone strikes.

Most revealing, however, was the reaction of America’s allies. When France announced an independent naval escort mission led by the French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle (R91), the message was unmistakable.

European governments no longer fully trusted the American security umbrella to keep maritime trade secure. For 75 years US naval supremacy guaranteed open sea lanes. That assumption now looks fragile. What tariffs could not fracture, strategic recklessness has begun to unravel.

Erosion of institutional discipline

Perhaps, the most troubling dimension of the crisis lies within the US itself. Its Constitution is explicit: the authority to declare war rests with Congress. Yet, the country now finds itself deep inside a regime-change conflict that was never formally authorized.

When a War Powers resolution in the House failed by 219 to 212, it revealed something deeper: institutional checks and balances have become increasingly decorative. The architecture of restraint, once central to American power, has weakened.

This matters more than any missile strike. America’s strength has never rested solely on military capacity, but on institutional discipline — the habit of calculating the day after before launching the day of. That discipline now appears to be eroding.

Quiet redefinition of power

Trump declares the mission complete, but reality remains unimpressed. With the Strait of Hormuz shuttered and oil hitting $120, it is clear that geopolitics is not a Trump casino where one can simply declare bankruptcy a victory and walk away. Escaping this trap requires acknowledging a strategic miscalculation — an intellectual maneuver rarely seen from Mar-a-Lago’s current occupant.

Instead, escalation looms. We see the familiar pattern: more strikes, naval surges, and the dangerous whisper of “boots on the ground.” This is the desperate remedy of leaders who realize, far too late, that the map is infinitely more complex than the slogan.

Meanwhile, the true damage occurs in the shadows. Insurers are retreating, trade routes are fraying, and allies are quietly designing security frameworks that bypass Washington entirely. History rarely turns on the initial explosion. It turns on the chilling silence that follows when markets shudder and the world realizes the man who pulled the lever never understood the machine.

To be continued on March 25, 2026