ABNA24 - A detailed analysis published by Foreign Affairs argues that Washington’s decades-long strategy of military and economic pressure against Iran has reached a dead end, exposing significant limitations in the ability of the US and “Israel” to force Tehran into submission.
The analysis, “Maximum Pressure on Iran Will Fail: Trump’s War Has Brought American Strategy to a Dead End,” portrays an Iran that has absorbed enormous military and economic pressure while retaining the ability to retaliate and impose costs on its adversaries.
Rather than producing the collapse of the Islamic Republic, the campaign has demonstrated what Tehran can withstand—and, perhaps more importantly, what Washington and “Israel” cannot easily sustain.
Iran absorbs the pressure
According to the Foreign Affairs analysis, the latest war has inflicted extensive damage on Iranian infrastructure and military capabilities and martyred senior officials, soldiers and civilians. Yet Iran has not capitulated.
Its missile and drone capabilities have remained sufficiently intact to allow Tehran to retaliate, while its strategic position around the Strait of Hormuz has provided it with a powerful means of responding to economic pressure.
The result is a fundamental imbalance in the logic of the campaign: the US can inflict enormous damage on Iran, but Iran can impose consequences of its own.
For Tehran, survival under sustained attack becomes a strategic achievement in itself.
Iran's strategic depth becomes a weapon
Iran's strength does not lie in matching the US aircraft-for-aircraft or weapon-for-weapon. Its advantage lies in the ability to exploit geography, asymmetric capabilities and the vulnerabilities of its adversaries.
The Strait of Hormuz is central to this equation. Any disruption there can affect global energy markets and impose costs far beyond Iran's borders.
The Foreign Affairs analysis argues that Tehran has learned that it can use this leverage to influence Washington's calculations. When energy prices rise and global markets are disrupted, pressure begins to work in both directions.
What was once largely a one-sided US sanctions strategy has therefore become a contest in which Iran can also impose economic pain.
The limits of US military power
The US retains overwhelming conventional military superiority. But the article highlights the gap between military dominance and political success.
Washington can conduct airstrikes and destroy infrastructure. It has far greater difficulty forcing regime change without committing ground forces.
The article notes that US and “Israeli” forces considered ground operations during the conflict but ultimately did not undertake them, underscoring the risks involved.
This leaves Washington with a difficult choice. Continued airstrikes can inflict further damage, but they cannot guarantee the political outcome the US seeks. A ground invasion, meanwhile, would carry vastly greater military, political and economic risks.
Iran has consequently demonstrated that there is a limit to what US military power can achieve from the air.
Tehran bets on endurance
One of Iran's most significant advantages is its willingness to endure prolonged pressure.
The Foreign Affairs analysis argues that Tehran believes it can outlast American political will. Iran's leadership may be prepared to tolerate levels of economic hardship and destruction that would become increasingly difficult for the US public to accept in a prolonged conflict.
That creates a war of endurance rather than a simple contest of firepower.
The US must consider casualties, ammunition expenditure, energy prices, economic disruption and domestic political pressure. Iran, meanwhile, can calculate that every additional day of confrontation increases the costs for its adversaries.
Iran therefore does not necessarily need a conventional military victory. It needs to remain capable of fighting until the political and economic costs become unacceptable to Washington.
“Israel” faces the same strategic problem
The campaign also exposes the limitations of “Israeli” air power.
Repeated strikes can eliminate commanders, damage facilities and destroy infrastructure, but they cannot automatically eliminate Iran's capacity to retaliate.
Iran's geographic size, strategic depth and dispersed capabilities make a decisive military knockout extremely difficult.
The continued survival of Iran's missile and drone capabilities demonstrates the central problem: destroying individual targets is not the same as eliminating a state's ability to fight.
For “Israel,” the challenge is therefore not simply reaching Iranian targets. It is achieving a lasting strategic outcome against a country capable of absorbing punishment and continuing the confrontation.
Sanctions have damaged Iran—but failed to force surrender
Economic warfare has similarly produced mixed results.
US sanctions have inflicted serious damage on Iran's economy, but decades of sanctions have failed to produce the political transformation Washington sought.
The Foreign Affairs analysis points to thousands of US sanctions targeting Iran's government and economy. Yet the Islamic Republic remains in place.
This illustrates a critical distinction: economic pain is not the same as political capitulation.
Iran has adapted to sanctions and continued to pursue its strategic interests despite severe economic constraints.
Pressure is beginning to hurt the pressure campaign itself
Perhaps the most damaging development for Washington is that the war has exposed the costs of applying pressure.
When Iran can threaten energy flows through the Strait of Hormuz, pressure against Tehran can generate consequences for the US and its allies.
Higher energy prices and disruption to global trade create domestic pressure inside the United States.
This weakens the credibility of an open-ended campaign. Washington may possess greater resources, but it is not immune to the economic consequences of escalation.
Iran's ability to make the conflict costly beyond its own borders therefore gives Tehran leverage disproportionate to its conventional military strength.
Iran's strategic resilience
The picture emerging from the Foreign Affairs analysis is one of an Iran that remains under enormous pressure but has demonstrated several important strengths:
- Military resilience: Iran has retained missile and drone capabilities despite extensive strikes.
- Strategic depth: Its geography makes a decisive military campaign extraordinarily difficult.
- Economic endurance: Decades of sanctions have damaged the economy without bringing political surrender.
- Asymmetric leverage: Iran can threaten interests that the US and its allies value deeply.
- Control of strategic geography: The Strait of Hormuz provides Tehran with enormous potential leverage over global energy markets.
- Political endurance: Severe military losses have not produced the regime collapse Washington expected.
- Willingness to absorb costs: Tehran appears prepared to tolerate prolonged hardship in pursuit of strategic survival.
A powerful military, but a weaker strategy
The central contradiction facing Washington is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore.
The US is unquestionably the stronger military power. Yet military superiority has not translated into strategic control over Iran.
“Israel” can strike Iran, but cannot easily dictate Tehran's political future.
The US can impose sanctions, but cannot guarantee Iranian compliance.
Washington can threaten escalation, but must also consider the consequences for energy prices, the global economy and American public opinion.
Iran, meanwhile, can absorb punishment, retaliate, exploit its geographic advantages and wait for pressure on its adversaries to grow.
The strategic equation has changed
The Foreign Affairs analysis ultimately suggests that the war has undermined the very pressure strategy Washington has relied upon for nearly five decades.
Instead of forcing Iran to abandon its strategic autonomy, the campaign has demonstrated the limits of coercion.
Iran has paid a heavy price, but it has also emerged from the confrontation with a clearer understanding of its adversaries' limitations: the US can inflict extraordinary destruction, but appears unwilling to undertake the costs required for full-scale occupation and regime change.
That is a powerful strategic lesson for Tehran.
The conflict has therefore become less a demonstration of American and “Israeli” dominance than a test of endurance—and Iran has shown that it can remain standing under extraordinary pressure.
The US may have superior military power. Iran, however, has demonstrated something equally important in a prolonged confrontation: the ability to survive it.
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