The Victory of Asymmetry in the Iran War

In the day-to-day of the Iran war, it’s natural to feel a touch of whiplash. Are we on the verge of agreement or at the dawn of escalation? Is Iran on the edge of collapse, or is it expanding the conflict? Will the Strait of Hormuz return to the status quo ante, or will tolling and periodic attacks on shipping be the new normal? These are important issues but there are larger, more fundamental strategic shifts underway as well. Not since 9/11 and the U.S. invasion of Iraq has the Middle East been in this degree of strategic flux.

It’s been nearly eight months since the war started, two hundred and thirty days to be precise, and, checking the tactical as well as the strategic report card, the record is decidedly mixed.

At the start of the conflict, the Trump administration sought to lay out its objectives. As Undersecretary of War for Policy Elbridge Colby put it at an event at the Council within a week of the war’s start: “The president has directed the United States Armed Forces to conduct a military campaign with a focus on degrading and destroying the Islamic Republic of Iran’s ability to project military power in the region, and potentially beyond.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio specified the objectives in even greater detail: “Number one, the destruction of their air force. Number two, the destruction of their navy. Number three, the severe diminishing of their missile launching capability. And number four, the destruction of their factories so they can’t make more missiles and more drones to threaten us in the future.”

On the basis of these goals, the war has achieved much of what it set out to do. By any measure, Iran has fewer military capabilities and a more strained economy than it had before. Iran’s navy sits at the bottom of the ocean, as the Trump administration likes to say, and its missile capabilities have been significantly degraded.

These results, of course, have not come without cost. Tragically, the lives of twenty-one U.S. service members have been lost, as well as over a thousand Iranian civilians. Additionally, the United States has spent down important munitions needed for its other key strategic commitments and priorities. By depleting Patriot interceptors and THAAD batteries, the United States faces increased challenges to maintain its force posture elsewhere around the world including, crucially, in the Indo-Pacific.  

More broadly, though, if the goal of Operation Epic Fury was to prevent Iran from projecting power beyond its borders, it might well have had the opposite effect.

The most significant outcome of the war may well prove to be the power of asymmetry. Tehran knew when the war began that it lacked the direct firepower to defeat the United States, but it discovered that, with relatively few missiles, drones, and mines, it could turn its greatest asset—control over the Strait of Hormuz—into a powerful economic weapon that allows it to project power, at least for now, across the global economy.  

The resulting repercussions on energy prices, inflation, and affordability in the United States led U.S. President Donald Trump to strike an agreement last week with Russian President Vladimir Putin to allow the sale of millions of barrels of Russian diesel. That sale, protested by Europeans and Ukrainians alike, is pouring more money into the coffers of the Russian war machine and has opened a U.S. rift with Europe and Ukraine, further complicating any path to ending that destructive and intractable war.

The long arm of Iran is also being felt in the country fields of England. Amid fears of a possible state-sponsored terrorist attack on the RAF Fairford base, the United States removed its long-range B–1 bombers, which played a key role in the war in Iran. Iran had previously attempted to reach out beyond its borders to assassinate dissidents as well as foreign officials involved in the 2020 attack on Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps General Qasem Soleimani, but a potential attack on a military base of a NATO ally may be one of the most striking examples of Iran’s sense of confidence despite the hits it has taken since February.

Back in Iran’s backyard, this week has also seen a significant escalation in the war between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis in Yemen. Just on Saturday, Houthi attacks on the international airport in Riyadh killed more than a dozen people and injured over three hundred more. This exchange of rockets is coming at a particularly precarious time for Saudi Arabia as a model of safety and stability in the region. On Monday, senior global energy executives from Chevron, ExxonMobil, Shell, BP, and TotalEnergies canceled their travel to Riyadh where they were scheduled to attend the WPC Energy Congress, a major energy conference.

The kingdom is set to host another big global event in ten days: its annual Future Investment Initiative conference, dubbed “Davos in the Desert.” This gathering of major capital allocators and heads of state is a crucial component of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s high-profile, long-term modernization plan to shift the economy away from over-dependence on energy exports and toward technology, tourism, and entertainment. On the current trajectory, it would not surprise me if flights into Riyadh, assuming the airport is open, are half-empty at best.

To think that the poorly funded but scrappy Houthis are able to upset a multi-trillion-dollar, multi-decade strategy of one of the richest countries in the world is another example of the might of asymmetry. But it is the potential impact of this conflict on the United States’s regional strategy that could loom much larger.

For a long time, Iran has wanted to push the United States out of the region. Over the years, though, the United States increased its presence across thirteen bases in partner countries, including Bahrain, Kuwait, and Qatar, in order to deter aggression, promote stability, and preposition assets for conflicts as they arise. 

As CFR’s Steven Cook has noted, Iran has turned the logic of those bases on its head. Partner countries initially sought U.S. bases as a source of security; now they are targets because of them. They assumed that the United States would actively defend them should Iran or its proxies attack; now that is open to question. After Iranian strikes damaged these bases, the United States withdrew certain forces, even as it deployed more mobile capabilities as part of a third carrier strike group and an additional Marine Expeditionary Unit. If and when the dust of this conflict settles, will partner countries want to rebuild those bases and have U.S. forces return to them? The long and drawn-out process of winding down the costly wars the United States has fought in the region for more than three decades will almost certainly be accelerated by this one. 

And who or what would take the United States’ place? A drawdown of U.S. forces in the region would likely set off a frantic realignment of Middle Eastern politics and alliance networks. Without the U.S. security umbrella that so many of our regional partners thought they could depend on, they may turn to others, and each other, for that security. In the best case, that looks like a Middle Eastern NATO: an alliance or perhaps a lattice of alliances of like-minded neighbors committed to their collective security.

The recent Mecca Joint Defense Agreement between Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey transforming into a more operational grouping is one possibility; another is the Abraham Accords, which tied Bahrain, Israel, Morocco, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) closer together. And how will those countries seek to guarantee their security? Potentially through the pursuit of nuclear weapons. Given that the purpose of the initial strikes against Iran was to prevent nuclear proliferation in this region, it’s ironic that we may end up seeing additional countries in the region, including Saudi Arabia and the UAE, ultimately pursuing nuclear weapons capabilities. 

And what is to come for Iran in this brave new world? Tehran today is weaker than it’s ever been and stronger than it almost certainly expected to be—both at the same time. How do you negotiate with a regime that is keenly aware of that? There is reporting that the United States might be planning for an escalation of attacks and that the Iranian regime is increasingly fragile. That said, the regime has proven more resilient than many expected, as has the Iranian economy, or at least the capacity of the Iranian people to absorb economic pain. This regime could well be a long-term participant in the future of Middle Eastern geopolitics, one that we might all have to learn to live with.

 Let me know what you think about the balance of power in the Middle East and what this column should cover next by replying to [email protected].