The Paradox of the Middle East War
Overwhelming military superiority favours the US and Israel, but the psychology and motivations of the actors involved could prolong the conflict — with the region paying the highest price. A commentary by Nathalie Tocci
The war in the Middle East has become a Gordian knot. The overwhelming superiority of the United States and Israel over Iran pushes events in one direction, yet the motivations of the actors involved point in another. The region, first and foremost, is paying the price.
The balance of power would suggest a rapid end to the conflict with the capitulation of the Islamic Republic. Not a regime change — nearly impossible without a ground invasion that US president Donald Trump appears reluctant to launch — but a regime weakened enough to become, at least for a time, more malleable to the demands of Washington and Tel Aviv.
The West would benefit from such an outcome. Opposition to the US and Israel is a core element of the Islamic Republic’s identity and is bound to persist in the face of a war widely seen as illegal and destructive.
Yet if Washington and Tel Aviv succeeded in bending the regime, Iran’s ambitions — from its nuclear programme to its missile capabilities and support for pro-Iranian militias — would likely be curtailed.
It is hard to imagine that a wounded but surviving regime would become more respectful of its citizens’ rights. Its external projection of power, however, would be weakened.
This reasoning, however, is overshadowed by another, even more important one. As the wars in Ukraine and Gaza have shown, the calculation of material power — demography and economics, geography and military strength, what we usually call “geopolitics” — often provides a crude and inaccurate reading of events. If these objective factors alone determined outcomes, Moscow would already have conquered Ukraine and Hamas would have been annihilated by Israel.
Ideas and psychology — both individual and collective — are equally decisive in shaping international politics.
For the Iranian regime, this is not merely a war of national defence but a struggle for ideological justice: the survival of the Islamic Republic itself is at stake. When the stakes are that high, the level of suffering a country is willing to endure becomes enormous.
The regime understands that its strategy — raising the costs of the conflict by regionalising it through attacks on Gulf neighbours and globalising it through turmoil in energy markets — will have deeply negative consequences for its own future. Yet it has evidently concluded that every alternative would be worse.
For Trump, by contrast, this is an elective war with uncertain and shifting objectives. That largely explains why the conflict is not unfolding as expected.
We do not know precisely what factors pushed Trump to declare war. But the explanation is probably an explosive mix: the manipulative skill of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump’s own political unpopularity and his desire to distract attention from domestic controversies — from the cost-of-living crisis to the Epstein files — combined with the hubris of a president convinced he could replicate the joystick warfare previously attempted in Venezuela.
Trump hoped to find his Iranian Delcy Rodríguez. Instead he has found Mojtaba Khamenei.
If the war is necessary for the Iranian regime and elective for Trump, should we expect yet another “Taco” — the familiar “Trump always chickens out” moment? Might the US president, alarmed by what the International Energy Agency has described as “the largest production shock in the history of the oil market”, declare victory and withdraw at the first available pretext?
If tomorrow we woke up to the news that the war had ended, we should not be surprised. In Trump’s political universe, anything is possible.
Reality, however, often works differently.
On the one hand, Netanyahu could persuade Trump — not entirely without reason, given recent developments — that ending the war now would leave the Iranian regime emboldened. On the other, Tehran has little interest in an immediate end to the conflict.
Iran’s leaders want to avoid a scenario in which this second war — after last year’s — is followed by a third. Unable to overthrow the regime, Israel would prefer to treat Iran as it does other arenas: striking at will, as it does in Lebanon, Syria or the Occupied Palestinian Territories. This is what Israel euphemistically calls “mowing the grass”.
For that reason, Iran may refuse a quick end to the conflict, seeking instead to ensure that the costs become high enough to deter Washington from repeating the same macabre game in the future. We do not know what threshold of pain Tehran considers sufficient to achieve this deterrent effect.
The result could be a paradoxical situation in which the weaker side — Iran — wants the war to continue, while the stronger one — the United States — would prefer to end it.
What we can reasonably assume is that the Gulf countries understand well that objective calculations of power do not coincide with subjective ones.
While this war may once again strain relations between the Gulf and Iran — which had been gradually improving since 2020 — the more lasting impact could concern relations between the Gulf and the United States.
The paradigm of the Abraham Accords, so dear to Trump, had already been shattered by the war in Gaza. The conflict with Iran — and Tehran’s predictable reaction across the Gulf — has further eroded US credibility in the region.
Among Gulf leaders, the accusation “we warned you” is now resonating loudly. They had repeatedly cautioned Washington that indulging Israeli regional revisionism would trigger an unprecedented war in the Middle East.
Those warnings were ignored. The result is that US security guarantees now ring hollow and Western partnerships appear deeply hypocritical — leaving the region, and the world, to pay the price of an elective and avoidable war that will leave behind an even more fragile and dangerous Middle East.
A previous version of this article was published by the Italian daily La Stampa
IEP@BU does not express opinions of its own. The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the authors. Any errors or omissions are the responsibility of the authors.
