The decision to use force may rest with a single state, but the termination of war is shaped by a far more complex interplay of political resolve, military realities, economic costs, and international pressures. The central question confronting policymakers today, therefore, is not which country possesses the most formidable military in the Middle East, but rather who holds the key to ending the war with Iran.
At first glance, the answer appears self-evident. The United States, as the world’s pre-eminent military power and Israel’s principal strategic ally, would seem uniquely positioned to shape the conflict’s outcome. Yet, the experience of modern warfare tells a different story. Military superiority, however overwhelming, has rarely proved sufficient to impose a durable political settlement. Wars do not end when one side exhausts its arsenal; they end when the strategic calculations of the protagonists fundamentally change.
This reality is captured by the concept of the “mutually hurting stalemate,” developed by the American scholar I. William Zartman. It describes the point at which all parties conclude that the costs of continuing a conflict outweigh any plausible political or military gains. Negotiation then ceases to represent an act of concession and instead becomes a matter of strategic necessity.
Recent history offers compelling illustrations. The Korean War ended without a decisive victor. After two decades of unparalleled military dominance, the United States withdrew from Afghanistan without achieving its strategic objectives. In Iraq, Washington swiftly overthrew Saddam Hussein’s regime, only to become mired in years of costly insurgency and political instability. These experiences underscore a fundamental lesson: tactical victories on the battlefield do not necessarily translate into strategic success.
Israel now faces a comparable dilemma. Its undeniable superiority in military technology, intelligence, and precision-strike capabilities may enable it to inflict substantial damage on Iran. Yet, such achievements alone cannot guarantee a sustainable political outcome. On the contrary, prolonged hostilities risk expanding the conflict across the Gulf, the Red Sea, and the Eastern Mediterranean, steadily increasing military and economic costs while diminishing the strategic value of military superiority itself.
Iran, meanwhile, is unlikely to dictate the terms on which the conflict ends. It can, however, deny its adversaries the prospect of a decisive victory. For decades, Tehran has structured its defence doctrine around strategic endurance: prolonging confrontation while steadily raising the political, economic, and military costs borne by its opponents. In contemporary warfare, power is measured not merely by the ability to destroy, but also by the ability to make continued conflict prohibitively expensive.
Nor can the broader international dimension be ignored. Any prolonged confrontation involving Iran inevitably extends beyond the battlefield. The Strait of Hormuz remains one of the world’s most critical energy corridors, while the Red Sea and the Bab Al-Mandeb Strait constitute indispensable arteries of global commerce. Sustained disruption in either theatre would rapidly reverberate through the global economy in the form of higher energy prices, rising transportation and insurance costs, persistent inflationary pressures, and slower economic growth. A regional war could thus become an international economic crisis.
This explains why China and the European Union have compelling strategic incentives to seek de-escalation. Both depend heavily on stable energy markets and secure maritime trade. Russia’s calculations are more nuanced. While Moscow may derive limited economic benefits from heightened geopolitical uncertainty and elevated energy prices, it has little interest in allowing the conflict to develop into a wider confrontation capable of destabilizing the international system.
Yet, the decisive variable ultimately lies not in Tehran or Tel Aviv, but in Washington.
An American president may possess the constitutional authority to initiate military action, but no president can remain insulated from its domestic consequences. Economic performance, fuel prices, congressional scrutiny, public opinion, fiscal pressures, and electoral considerations all constrain the duration of military campaigns. Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan collectively demonstrate that America’s longest wars were brought to a close less by decisive victories abroad than by mounting political pressures at home.
For that reason, the end of the present conflict is unlikely to emerge from outright military triumph. Rather, it will result from a gradual convergence of strategic calculations. Washington must conclude that the costs of continued military engagement outweigh its strategic returns. Israel must recognize that military power has reached the limits of its political utility. Iran must acknowledge that prolonged confrontation threatens its own domestic resilience. Meanwhile, the world’s leading economic powers must determine that the international economy can no longer absorb the consequences of sustained instability.
The nature of power itself has evolved profoundly in the twenty-first century. Success is no longer measured solely by an army’s capacity to inflict destruction, but increasingly by a state’s ability to secure its political objectives at the lowest possible strategic, economic, and diplomatic cost.
For this reason, the key to ending the war may ultimately reside neither in Tehran nor in Tel Aviv, but in Washington. There, the administration will increasingly confront pressure from Congress, public opinion, and the national security establishment to pursue a political exit that preserves American credibility without entangling the United States in another protracted Middle Eastern conflict.
That pressure is likely to intensify as the American debate increasingly centres on a fundamental question: does continued military engagement genuinely advance US national interests, or has Washington become drawn into a prolonged confrontation driven more by Israel’s security priorities than by its own strategic imperatives? The absence of unequivocal support from many Western allies—and even from most Gulf states—will only reinforce that debate.
Ultimately, the overriding objective is unlikely to be the pursuit of an unequivocal military victory. It will be to prevent Iran from becoming another strategic quagmire—one capable of draining American resources, diverting strategic attention, and accelerating the gradual erosion of US global leadership. In the final analysis, the greatest challenge facing any superpower is not how to wage war, but how to end it on terms that serve its long-term national interests.
*The writer is a former assistant foreign minister.
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