Will Iran Be a Forever War?

America’s “forever wars” has become shorthand for Iraq and Afghanistan — both long, costly military campaigns that ended having achieved, well, not very much.

Donald Trump was elected partly on a promise to stay away from those kinds of wars. But he may already be entangled in another. Today, my colleague Steven Erlanger, who covers diplomacy, writes about whether the Iran war is the next Iraq or Afghanistan.

Another American forever war?

By Steven Erlanger

No one starts a war expecting it to last forever.

Yet, American presidents have repeatedly gotten into conflicts that seem as if they could — at least until the next president, or the one after that, decides that the expense and political pain are not worth it, finds a way to declare some sort of victory and goes home.

On Iran, President Trump may have fallen into the same trap.

He campaigned for office vowing to end wars, not start them, and to never get involved in a forever war, let alone one in the Middle East.

And yet, the war that Israel and the U.S. began shows no signs of ending any time soon. The U.S.-Iran memorandum of understanding, which Trump said “achieves everything we set out to accomplish” less than a month ago, is in tatters. The Strait of Hormuz is — once again — blocked, and both sides are — again — exchanging fire.

Iran has become a low-level conflict, alternating between moments of negotiation and military strikes. Is this the next American forever war?

Powerful military + no strategy

The idea of the forever wars began with Sept. 11 and the “global war on terror,” which pulled the U.S. into long military engagements in Afghanistan and Iraq. Both of those wars, which began by toppling hostile regimes before turning into lengthy and bloody counterinsurgency campaigns, ended either inconclusively or in defeat.

Powerful leaders with powerful militaries are prone to fall into “the short-war fallacy,” said Lawrence Freedman, an emeritus professor of war studies at King’s College London, who wrote an article last year titled “The Age of Forever Wars.”

“They think they can win quickly and not suffer adverse consequences,” he said.

But even the most sophisticated military forces are not enough if there is no strategy to turn battlefield superiority into lasting political and diplomatic success.

Leaders like Trump in Iran and Vladimir Putin in Ukraine “fail to appreciate the limits of military power and so set objectives that can be achieved, if at all, only through prolonged struggle,” Freedman said.

America’s first gulf war succeeded because President George H.W. Bush had a limited political objective — to drive Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait. That was a lesson lost on his son President George W. Bush in the second gulf war in Iraq, which ended up enhancing Iran’s power in the region. In Afghanistan, the younger Bush drove out the Taliban but then tried in vain to remake the society. When America finally tired of the effort, the Taliban returned.

There is an argument, sometimes made by Trump, that he went to war in Iran to finally end what he considered a 47-year war between the U.S. and Iran, which began with the fall of the Shah of Iran in 1979 and the taking of more than 60 American hostages.

Aaron David Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said Trump, urged by Israel, had also inserted himself in a parallel forever war — the fundamental one between Israel and Iran, which is also being played out with Iran’s proxies in Lebanon, the Palestinian territories and Yemen.

Trump could have tried to sell the unpopular U.S.-Iran war to his base as a victory of some kind and gone home. Instead, he seems to be doubling down, despite the lack of a clear path to victory. And his promises to keep the Strait of Hormuz open, while Iran insists on maintaining control, could mean a very long American military engagement.

Iran is still different

Still, the war in Iran is different from those in Afghanistan and Iraq, where the U.S. had thousands of troops on the ground for long periods of time.

And unlike in Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan, the conflict in Iran can inflict economic pain on the U.S. and the broader global economy, which is a prime reason Tehran has refused to give up control of the strait. That leverage helps explain why the U.S. agreed to the cease-fire that fell apart this week.

But a real negotiated end to the war in Iran still feels far away. Both sides have proved they can’t even stick to a minimal framework agreement that defers all the substantive issues, like ending Iran’s nuclear program, to the future, said Ali Vaez, the Iran project director for the International Crisis Group. If they can’t do that, he added, “that could remove the last barrier between episodic confrontation and a forever war.”

The latest:

The U.S. and Iran exchanged strikes for a fifth consecutive day, with both sides showing no sign of backing down.
Iranian cyberattackers tracked the phones of U.S. personnel in the Middle East.
A billboard in central Tehran depicts Trump in a coffin.

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Ceviche is a perfect light appetizer: refreshing and cooking-free. Citrus — sometimes lemon or bitter orange, but in this case lime — does the “cooking” for you. You’ll find many variations of the dish in coastal Latin America made with different ingredients. This colorful rendition uses scallops and plums.