Russia in Global Affairs

After U.S. Navy forces attacked two Iranian oil platforms in the Persian Gulf on 19 October 1987, Wall Street suffered one of the heaviest losses in its history—$560 billion. Black Monday went down in history next to the 1929 stock market crash.[1] But a rising New York property man from Brooklyn was already underscoring the vital importance of not permitting Iran to possess nuclear weapons. That man was Donald Trump.[2]

The Iran war which began with U.S. and Israeli attacks on 28 February this year (following the Twelve-Day War in summer 2025) is in a strategic stalemate. The ceasefire exists only on paper and concerns about escalation are growing.

Since WWII, major democracies have been the ones who started most wars of aggression or got involved in asymmetric wars against smaller states—Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Vietnam, and Algeria. Remarkably, they lost most of them.[3] Today, the U.S., vastly superior militarily and economically, is stuck in an asymmetric war with an extremely uneven distribution of power. Why is the global power, with a military budget exceeding the combined volume of the next ten largest states’ budgets, unable to defeat a middle power?

My assumption is that since an asymmetric war is not a matter of existence for democracies (unlike for their weaker opponents), public opposition to the continuation of such a war—especially where there is no coherent overall strategy— soon begins to grow, raising pressure on the executive to end it as quickly as possible, i.e. without achieving the objectives and thus losing the war.

In an asymmetric war[4] the politically, militarily, and economically weaker party, which cannot defeat the stronger party in an ‘open battle’ (i.e., impose its will on the opponent by kinetic means, to borrow from Clausewitz), employs non-kinetic means along kinetic (military) ones: attacking public opinion through disinformation and a war of narratives, destabilizing the opponent’s public institutions, influencing government policy, and shaping public opinion in its favor—exactly as great Chinese strategist Sun Tzu recommended in the 5th century BC.[5]

This does not mean that Iran is exploiting and fanning the flames of antiwar opinion among the American public or covertly spreading Iranian propaganda in the U.S., for example, by paying American actors.[6] But in an asymmetric war decisions leading to victory or failure lie in the realms of morale, legitimacy, politics, and/or the economy, or a combination of the above, with the dominant factors shifting over the course of the war.[7]

What is important in any war, including asymmetric, is a clearly defined unambiguous political objective. By contrast, the means to achieve this objective can and must be deployable in any combination without restriction.[8] In the book fittingly titled Unrestricted Warfare in the English translation, Chinese military leaders and party officials Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui identify different types of warfare according to the dominant means deployed: environmental war (change of the weather and composition of the atmosphere, artificial earthquakes, and engagement through NGOs; psychological warfare; smuggling warfare; media warfare; drug warfare (e.g., fentanyl in the U.S.); resources warfare, economic aid warfare (with development assistance as a disguise for control of a foreign market); cultural warfare (assimilation by cultural hegemony); international law warfare.[9]

The problem for the U.S.—and generally for the collective West and to a certain extent for Russia in the Ukraine war—is the misguided belief that political, military, and/or economic objectives can be achieved through technological superiority alone. This delusion can metapolitically be traced to the Enlightenment ideology of progress, advocating the creation of a kind of technological nirvana—a secular, materialist, atheistic paradise on Earth built with the help of technology. The Chinese military thinkers decry this fallacy on several points, emphasizing that “…in future warfare, certain advanced weapons may play a leading role. However, as for determining the outcome of war, it is now very difficult for anyone to occupy an unmatched position.”[10] Referring to U.S. strategists, they write: “They would rather treat war as the opponent in the marathon race of military technology and are not willing to look at it more as a test of morale and courage, wisdom and strategy.”[11]

William Lind, a wise American military theorist, agrees—not least with regard to the current war with Iran—that faith in technological superiority and air power is a major error of U.S. strategy, which keeps failing in asymmetric wars and conflicts.

Lind cites Gen. Merrill McPeak, Air Force Chief of Staff at the time, who frankly admitted on camera: “Historically, air power has over-promised and under-delivered.”[12] In that respect the hype around drones is also futile. Recent research by the Swiss renowned Center for Security Studies (CSS) clearly shows that: “…while new technologies and the novel adoption and adaptation of existing platforms such as drones function as force multipliers in specific contexts, they have not yet produced a fundamental revolution.”[13] A revolution in military affairs (RMA) is defined not as the use of some new supposed wonder weapon (Wunderwaffe) but as “a profound transformation in the character and conduct of warfare produced by the innovative application of technology in conjunction with fundamental changes in doctrine, organization, and operational concepts.”[14]

To apply the foregoing to the Iran war: first and foremost, the U.S. had no clearly defined objective to the war and therefore no coherent overall strategy. Over the course of the war, the U.S. administration has cited a wide range of aims, which are certainly not clearly defined or unambiguous:

• to prevent Iran’s possession of nuclear weapons;
• to neutralize its military capabilities, such as the missile program, or destroy the Iranian navy;
• to stop Iranian support for proxies (militias) in Palestine/Israel, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon;
• to effect regime change;
• to contain Israel, which would have attacked with or without the U.S., through joint coordination and loss reduction;
• to protect freedom of navigation (after the Iranians closed the Strait of Hormuz).

In fact, this variety of aims reflects the varying views on the Iran war of leading representatives of the U.S. administration. Vice President JD Vance, for instance, whom Trump ordered to Pakistan to negotiate with the Iranians, was against the war right from the beginning.[15]

Another striking fact about the U.S.’s lacking a coherent overall strategy is that the Iranian threat to block the Strait of Hormuz had been known for years. As early as December 2011, Mohammad Reza Rahimi, then Vice-President of Iran, warned that “if sanctions are adopted against Iranian oil, not a drop of oil will pass through the Strait of Hormuz.”[16] So this came as no surprise to Washington and should have been incorporated in the U.S. strategy—particularly when it came to planning countermeasures.

Without clear aims, it is also impossible to communicate clearly. No wonder that most Americans have been against the war from the very beginning. Since its outbreak, almost two out of three Americans have expressed opposition to Trump’s continued attacks against Iran and see the progress of the war as negative for the United States. Even among Republicans, a large proportion (especially in younger age groups) take a highly critical view of the war.[17]

This is where Iran’s strategic closure of the Strait of Hormuz comes into play—at least for Western states and U.S. allies in the region. The blockade has a huge impact on energy supplies, given that a fifth of the world’s oil and gas is transported via that seaway. Fuel prices, in turn, have a direct impact on inflation. A blockade of such transport routes hampers energy supplies essential for many industries. It also affects food production and shipping of fertilizers—which makes food prices rise across the world, and even exacerbates or significantly contributes to famine in some regions. It is therefore not surprising why most Americans want a quick end to the war and welcomed the memorandum of understanding which was to guarantee free passage for at least 60 days and find a follow-on solution for the Strait of Hormuz.[18] U.S. citizens’ concerns in relation to the Iran war do not center around democracy or regime change, they are primarily about gas prices, the deployment of ground troops (which the majority oppose), and their own casualties.[19] Even the notoriously passive House of Representatives, including the Republicans, has voted two times(!) against the continuation of the Iran war.[20]

Iran has been preparing for this war since 1979 and is playing its hand cleverly, not only on the economic plane. Political analyst Mehran Zolfagharieh notes that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corpse’s aim is to gain a psychological victory, sap or even eliminate the opponent’s will to fight. Ali Jafari, commander of the IRGC from 2007 to 2019, said: “Asymmetric warfare… is [our] strategy for dealing with the considerable capabilities of the enemy.” In that view, the key capabilities of the Iranian armed forces are manpower, strategic thinking, and willingness to absorb losses while exploiting the weakness of their enemies who tend to be risk-averse, sensitive to losses, and tightly bound to their technology or dependent on it as well as on regional bases.[21]

So, what to do, Mr Trump? The problem is that the U.S. has maneuvered itself into a strategy dilemma. In order to win the war, it would have to massively escalate hostilities and, for example, occupy the oil hub Kharg Island (whoever controls Kharg Island controls Iran’s oil) and the Strait of Hormuz simultaneously.

However, this would mean[22] deploying U.S. ground troops and risking the lives of American soldiers, which, given the American public’s aversion to casualties[23] and opposition to the use of ground troops, would make the Republicans’ stock fall even further—and that in the run-up to the midterms in November. An occupation beyond Kharg would be an adventure with incalculable risks: Iranian big cities and important military bases with nuclear infrastructure are protected by the Elburs Mountains in the north and the Zagros Mountains in the West. In the East, there are the Salt and Lut Deserts. According to some estimates, to occupy the whole of Iran, the U.S. military would need 3,3 million soldiers.[24]

Yet things cannot remain as they are: Iran is still in a position to threaten the U.S. allies and American bases in the region and is likely now to want nuclear weapons more than ever.[25] An important point, not only from the U.S. perspective but also Europe’s, is that control of the Strait of Hormuz remains with Iran, which will probably also demand tolls for passage—possibly even in Chinese renminbi, which would be another step towards de-dollarization.[26]

Iran is exploiting U.S. strategic cul-de-sac: Trump can move neither forward nor backward, and is now exactly where Tehran wants him to be. The lesson of history, applicable to all asymmetric wars, is: “If strategists have little or no confidence that a prospective war can be kept short, then arguably the only prudent policy is not to fight it at all.”[27] This vital point was clear to John Quincy Adams, sixth President of the United States (1825-1829): “Whenever the standard of freedom and Independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her [America’s] heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy.”[28]

The 1979 hostage crisis (U.S. Embassy in Tehran), was resolved not through direct military action, but the freezing of Iranian currency reserves, the arms embargo, and support for Iraq in its war against Iran, which, along with subsequent diplomatic negotiations, helped to achieve the U.S.’s aims.[29]

Today, like in the past, it is time to take a diplomatic route, combined, of course, with (military) pressure—not least because no other route is realistic.