{"id":564469,"date":"2026-07-29T01:22:12","date_gmt":"2026-07-29T01:22:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/564469\/"},"modified":"2026-07-29T01:22:12","modified_gmt":"2026-07-29T01:22:12","slug":"trump-pausing-iran-attacks-shows-us-military-power-is-not-enough-on-its-own-iran","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/564469\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump pausing Iran attacks shows US military power is not enough on its own | Iran"},"content":{"rendered":"

Has Iran won a war it didn\u2019t start against the United States? It is not a victory in any conventional military sense: about 3,500 Iranians have been reported killed and the US-led bombing has caused anywhere between $150bn<\/a> and $270bn of damage<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Yet Donald Trump\u2019s decision to pause, rather than intensify,<\/a> the 13-night summer bombing campaign in effect represents a degree of recognition that the US cannot achieve its stated goals by military power alone.<\/p>\n

\u201cIran\u2019s initial standard for victory was simply to survive,\u201d said HA Hellyer, a Middle East expert with the Royal United Services Institute. \u201cIf anything, that\u2019s been raised. The regime has demonstrated it is not going anywhere, and Tehran has changed the calculus on the strait of Hormuz\u201d.<\/p>\n

The past five months are a clear demonstration of how an asymmetric conflict can flip the tables. All Iran, helped by its extensive and mountainous geography, has needed to do is maintain enough of a missile and drone capability to scare merchant shipping from using the strait of Hormuz<\/a>. It is a low bar Iran\u2019s military is still clearing.<\/p>\n

Two tankers were attacked sailing north of Oman last week. One of them caught fire in the engine room and had to be evacuated, before being towed to Oman, one of a handful of serious attacks on merchant shipping that took place during the nearly two-week July escalation of fighting.<\/p>\n

The US, meanwhile, has spent at least $38bn and used more than 1,000 Tomahawk and 1,100 Jassm $2.6m cruise missiles, according to estimates by the CSIS thinktank<\/a>, to bomb targets in Iran, a third and a quarter of total stockpiles. The Tomahawks, which cost up to $3.6m each, might not be replaced until 2031.<\/p>\n

It is surprising that the US has allowed key munitions to be run down at such speed. On Monday, Trump tried in part to blame Ukraine, arguing that \u201cso much was given\u201d to Kyiv in military aid \u2013 though the reality is that Ukraine was never given long-range cruise missiles, only Patriot air defence systems.<\/p>\n

Patriot missile interceptors were more heavily depleted, by 1,000 or so, or 50% of the total US stockpile, raising questions as to how well the US can continue to defend its bases in the Gulf<\/a>. More were used during the 38 days of heavy fighting in the spring than the 600 or so that Ukraine has said it had received during four years of war.<\/p>\n

A fresh escalation in the Red Sea by the Houthis, Iran\u2019s allies in Yemen, complicates the picture further. The rebel group kept out of the first phase of the US-Iran war in the spring but, as Saudi Arabia seeks to redirect oil traffic through the Red Sea, they have stepped up attacks, targeting a refinery in the Saudi city of Jizan<\/a> on Saturday.<\/p>\n

The US\u2019s stated central war aim, meanwhile, may have repeatedly<\/a> shifted but it has always been maximalist \u2013 whether it was regime change (as demonstrated by the killing of Ali Khamenei), destroying Iran\u2019s entire missile programme or, as most frequently stated, preventing the country from having a nuclear weapon.<\/p>\n

Yet the US has no means of enforcing this level of demand without committing ground forces in numbers to occupy Tehran \u2013 an unlikely move that the US has not shown signs of preparing for. Donald Trump\u2019s previous threats to bomb Iranian power plants to try to force the regime\u2019s capitulation have raised concerns they would amount to war crimes, and he dropped them in April and again last week.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think the Iranians can be bombed into accepting US terms,\u201d said Peter Ricketts, a former UK national security adviser. \u201cUntil the US accepts it can\u2019t get its way by bombing, Iran has effective leverage. Tehran can absorb the pain, and they know they can close the strait with the economic impact it has on the US.\u201d<\/p>\n

The resulting situation is what Ricketts calls an \u201cescalation dominance\u201d that he says favours Iran. Tehran, faced with US pressure to abandon its nuclear programme, can string out peace negotiations, wait for the White House to get impatient and restart bombing, then close Hormuz until the US has to stop attacking because the oil price is tto high for too long.<\/p>\n

The question then becomes who gains as unstable equilibrium endures. Tehran may well believe it has leverage as the US heads towards midterm elections<\/a> in November, given how unpopular the war is. Just a third of all Americans support the war, according to a Reuters\/Ipsos survey out on Tuesday, though that rises to 71% of Republicans.<\/p>\n

Laurel Rapp, from the Chatham House thinktank, said that \u201ca resumed ceasefire and promise of future talks is the least bad option for Washington\u201d \u2013 though whether that is attractive to US ally Israel, whose prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu has his own election to fight in October, is another source of uncertainty.<\/p>\n

But if Tehran may have short or medium-term leverage, any idea that it has won the war is exaggerated. Hellyer argues that Iran, long struggling under western sanctions, cannot afford to rebuild without an agreement with the US: \u201cUltimately this isn\u2019t sustainable for Iran, because its economy isn\u2019t going to be able to survive\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Has Iran won a war it didn\u2019t start against the United States? It is not a victory in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":564470,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-564469","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/564469","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=564469"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/564469\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/564470"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=564469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=564469"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=564469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}