Some wars begin with the illusion of strength, but end with the reality of regret, and a war with Iran would almost certainly be one of them. In my view, the United States will not attack Iran, and it should not, not because Iran’s rulers are harmless, but because a direct military strike is unlikely to achieve any strategic gain proportionate to the costs it will inevitably produce.
There is already deep anger among ordinary Iranians against the clerical establishment. That anger has been building for years and, under normal circumstances, it will keep rising with time due to economic hardship, political repression, and generational change. A foreign attack would reverse that psychological direction. The public anger that is currently aimed at the ruling system would quickly be redirected outward toward the attacker. History repeatedly shows that when a nation is bombed, even unpopular regimes temporarily benefit from the rally around the flag effect. War becomes a gift to authoritarian governments. It allows them to label dissent as treason, crush opposition in the name of national security, and rebuild legitimacy through fear.
This is why the most effective path for Iran is internal change. But if America has already decided on war, the first serious question is what the target would be and what the endgame would look like.
Striking military installations, missile sites, or naval assets can degrade capability, but they do not remove a regime. Regime change is not achieved by destroying runways or warehouses. It is achieved by removing the political command structure. In Iran’s case, that ultimately means the Supreme Leader and the core institutions around him, especially the Guardian Council, which controls political life by filtering who may even participate in elections. Yet any attempt to eliminate that leadership through direct targeting would ignite consequences far beyond Iran’s borders. The world has spent decades focused on Sunni extremism, from al Qaeda to ISIS, and that focus is understandable given the scale of attacks in the West. But it would be a strategic mistake to underestimate the capacity for Shiite militancy to mobilise when provoked. In fact, modern suicide bombing tactics were pioneered by Shiite groups in the early 1980s, most notably Hezbollah-linked networks in Lebanon. This is not a theoretical risk. It is a historical record.
It is also worth recalling that ISIS was not defeated by the West alone. The most decisive ground fighting in Iraq and Syria was conducted by local forces, including Iranian-backed Shiite militias, which means Tehran has both ideological networks and operational experience across the region. These networks can be activated quickly if Iran is struck directly. As the strategist Sun Tzu warned, “There is no instance of a nation benefitting from prolonged warfare.” And Henry Kissinger’s cold but accurate line also applies here: “It may be dangerous to be America’s enemy, but to be America’s friend is fatal.” In the Iranian context, the meaning is obvious. Once war begins, the region’s smaller allies may become the battlefield, not the beneficiaries.
Fears of war have increased because the American naval fleet has moved closer to Iran. When similar fears surfaced two weeks ago, several Arab states publicly declared they would not allow their territory to be used for an attack. If a strike happens now, those states will argue that American aircraft and missiles were launched from American vessels, not from their soil, allowing them to claim neutrality while avoiding domestic backlash.
History repeatedly shows that when a nation is bombed, even unpopular regimes temporarily benefit from the rally around the flag effect.
Iran, for its part, is issuing harsh statements. That is the standard behaviour of a state trying to reduce fear through deterrence. Loud threats are often a psychological tool. They are meant to convince the opponent that the cost will be unbearable. But the underlying reality is known to everyone: Iran, its allies, its enemies, and also China and Russia. There is no conventional match for American power.
And power does not only mean bombs and aircraft carriers. In modern warfare, technology can be more decisive than the number of soldiers. Disrupting command systems, communications, targeting networks, and air defence coordination can neutralise an army before the first large-scale exchange even begins. Recent global events illustrate this point. Look at Venezuela. It had armed forces, weapons, and a state apparatus, yet it could not effectively defend its political leadership from external pressure and internal paralysis. The lesson is not that Venezuela was weak. The lesson is that traditional military strength does not matter if the opponent can disable the system that makes the military function.
President Trump recently referred to a tool that allegedly paralysed Venezuela’s forces, using the term ” discombobulator. Clearly, that sounds like a codename, not one weapon but a mix of electronic, cyber, psychological, and command disruption tactics. But the point remains that when modern warfare targets systems rather than soldiers, the battlefield changes completely.
So why does the risk of war still exist? The only convincing explanation is political signalling. Trump may want to demonstrate power, especially to Europe. European and Canadian leaders have been running to China for trade and strategic diversification. Washington wants to remind them that in a real crisis, China does not come running to protect anyone. It is the United States that has served as Europe’s security umbrella for roughly eight decades, through NATO and the broader Western defence architecture.
This is not simply rhetoric. It is measurable. Europe’s combined economies are enormous, yet their defence dependency is structural. The United States contributes the largest share of NATO’s high-end capabilities, including strategic airlift, intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, missile defence, nuclear deterrence, and expeditionary command systems. Without these, Europe’s military power becomes fragmented and slow. This is the strategic context in which an Iranian crisis becomes more than a regional matter. It becomes a stage, a demonstration of dominance intended for allies as much as for adversaries.
Yet even if the motive is showing strength, the price of war will not be symbolic. It will be real, instability in the Gulf, oil price shocks, retaliation through proxies, heightened sectarian mobilisation, and the long-term strengthening of hardliners inside Iran. The West may win the first week militarily, but it could lose the next decade politically.
That is why a US attack on Iran is not only unnecessary. It is self-defeating. The most powerful strategy is patience, keep pressure through sanctions, diplomacy, and containment, while allowing internal Iranian dynamics to do what foreign bombs never can, change a system from within.
The writer is a PhD (Media and Crime), Founder of CASRO (Crime Analytics and Security Research Organisation), and can be reached at dr.nasirkhan.jasak @gmail.com