The US administration assumed that its military buildup would force Iran into concessions under the threat of strikes, buoyed by what it perceived as a swift and successful operation in Venezuela with the abduction of President Nicolás Maduro.
Washington has even hinted at its ability to replicate such an operation against Iran’s Supreme Leader. A narrow deadline was set – Iran was to abandon uranium enrichment and dispose of its existing stockpiles or face war. Under Israeli pressure, the demands were expanded further to include curbing Iran’s missile arsenal and abandoning its regional allies.
The surprise was that Iran has not complied. It has rejected the American ultimatum outright. Assessments by senior generals at the US Department of Defence have concluded that war offers no guaranteed outcome, that American force deployments are insufficient, and that Israel lacks adequate interceptor missiles to shield itself from Iranian strikes.
Israel therefore asked Russia to convey a proposal to Iran calling on both sides to refrain from preemptive attacks. Iran’s response was unequivocal: Israel would be the first target of Iranian missiles were there to be an attack on Iran, its strikes would extend to all US bases in the region, and any country allowing US forces to operate from its territory against Iran would be targeted as well.
Faced with this reality, the US administration has hesitated to take the decision for war, particularly as China and Russia began delivering weapons and equipment to Iran through an unprecedented air bridge. For the first time, China appeared openly on the Iranian front, signalling that Beijing and Moscow would not leave Iran to confront the crisis alone. Iran’s collapse would deprive China of one of its most important energy sources and sever a critical corridor of its Belt and Road Initiative.
Russia, in turn, would face instability along its vulnerable southern flank were Iran to collapse, in addition to the disruption of the North-South Transport Corridor linking St Petersburg to ports in southern Iran and granting Moscow access to the Indian Ocean. The entry of both China and Russia into the confrontation would transform any US-Iran war into a prolonged and exhausting conflict, depriving Washington of its preferred doctrine of “shock and awe” – rapid, overwhelming strikes designed to disorient the adversary, paralyse its capabilities, and force capitulation.
Chinese and Russian support, however, is not the principal reason a swift and decisive American victory over Iran would be difficult. The decisive factor lies in Iran’s own capabilities. Tehran possesses thousands of long-range ballistic and hypersonic missiles, tens of thousands of medium-and short-range missiles capable of striking US bases, ships, and aircraft carriers, and vast numbers of drones, some of which Russia itself has relied upon in the war in Ukraine.
Saturation attacks combining missiles and drones against naval assets could inflict losses the United States would find intolerable. This reality compelled a US aircraft carrier to withdraw to a distance of roughly 1,400 km from Iranian territory, and even then Iranian drones flew nearby, sending the clear message that we are close, and we are watching.
Perhaps Iran’s most formidable asset is its geography. The Zagros Mountains stretch some 1,600 km in twin arcs encircling the central plateau; the Alborz range runs roughly 900 km along the Caspian Sea; and eastern Iranian ranges extend for about 1,050 km. Together they form a natural defensive wall, reinforced by dozens of underground military facilities connected through complex tunnel networks.
These facilities are divided into 54 military units equipped with missiles, drones, and air defences, each with autonomous command authority should communications be severed.
This dense and resilient defensive architecture, spread across an area of approximately 1.64 million square km, renders the prospect of a lightning war nearly impossible. Iran’s ability to close the Strait of Hormuz compounds the challenge, threatening severe disruptions to global production and industrial supply chains.
More than 22 per cent of the world’s oil and gas flows through the strait, which Iran dominates with dozens of unmanned submarines, hundreds of fast attack boats, and underwater caves that are extremely difficult to detect.
America’s principal strengths lie in its air and naval superiority and in its advanced electronic warfare and communications technologies. Yet, the concentration of Iranian forces in subterranean mountain facilities, combined with advanced Russian and Chinese radars and missile platforms, would constrain these advantages.
Its naval superiority has also been eroded by the emergence of hypersonic anti-ship missiles and drone warfare. What remains is technological superiority, an area in which Iran has developed credible capabilities, further reinforced by Chinese and Russian equipment.
Thus, the United States finds itself in a strategic dilemma. It cannot impose Iranian capitulation through negotiations backed by the threat of its fleets and regional bases. Even more perilous would be a military gamble in a harsh and complex environment against formidable and partly unknown capabilities.
For these reasons, while negotiations are unlikely to succeed given the wide divergence in positions, war is an even graver option and an undertaking whose scope and consequences cannot be reliably predicted.
The writer is an expert in international relations.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 12 February, 2026 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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