For more than four decades, the United States has relied on overwhelming military superiority to deter Iran. Yet superiority is not the same as strategic success. While Washington retains the world’s most capable armed forces, the latest confrontation suggests that force alone may no longer be enough to compel Tehran to change its strategic behaviour.
What appears to be emerging is not the collapse of American deterrence but the rise of mutual deterrence. Both Washington and Tehran now possess the capacity to impose unacceptable costs on one another, albeit through very different means. The defining question is therefore not whether the United States can strike Iran—it clearly can—but whether military superiority alone remains sufficient to achieve political objectives.
The answer matters far beyond Washington and Tehran. Every missile launched, military base targeted, and threat to Gulf shipping reverberates through oil markets, inflation, supply chains and financial systems. What is unfolding is no longer simply a regional military confrontation. It has become a contest over economic resilience, strategic geography and the ability to impose costs far beyond the battlefield.
That shift represents a fundamental transformation in deterrence itself.
Traditionally, deterrence rested on the threat of overwhelming military retaliation. Today, it increasingly depends on the ability to shape an adversary’s political and economic calculations. A state no longer needs to defeat a stronger military opponent outright. It merely needs to convince the opponent that continued escalation will produce unacceptable costs.
Robert A. Pape, Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago and one of the world’s leading scholars of coercive strategy, has long argued that military superiority alone rarely compels states to change their behaviour. Coercion succeeds only when it fundamentally alters an opponent’s cost-benefit calculations. The current US-Iran confrontation suggests that neither Washington nor Tehran has yet achieved that objective.
Iran has spent decades preparing for precisely this type of conflict. Rather than attempting to match the United States aircraft for aircraft or warship for warship, it has invested in precision-guided missiles, drones and an extensive network of regional partners capable of threatening American military facilities and critical infrastructure throughout the Gulf. Its objective is not the conventional defeat of the United States. Rather, it is to raise the military, political and economic costs of any prolonged campaign.
This strategy functions increasingly as an economic deterrent. Rather than seeking battlefield victory, Tehran aims to convince Washington that every additional step up the escalation ladder carries disproportionate economic consequences—not only for the United States but also for its allies and the global economy. Its objective is strategic restraint rather than military conquest.
The latest exchanges demonstrate how the character of conflict has evolved. Military installations are no longer the only strategic targets. Ports, power stations, desalination plants, energy infrastructure and commercial shipping routes have become integral to the deterrence equation. In the Gulf, desalination plants are not merely industrial facilities; they provide drinking water for millions of people. Damage to such infrastructure would have immediate humanitarian consequences and disrupt regional economies.
The economic dimension may prove even more consequential than the military one.
Before the latest confrontation intensified, approximately one-fifth of the world’s traded oil passed through the Gulf. Recent strategic assessments suggest that disruptions linked to the conflict have already affected a substantial share of those exports, underscoring the fragility of global energy markets. Although alternative export routes have helped cushion the immediate shock, they also reveal how little room for error remains.
Iran does not necessarily need to close the Strait of Hormuz completely to achieve a strategic effect. The credible threat of disruption alone can raise insurance premiums, increase shipping costs, unsettle financial markets and drive oil prices higher. In modern conflict, uncertainty itself has become a strategic instrument.
Should fighting expand further into the Gulf or the Red Sea, the consequences would extend well beyond the region. Energy prices would rise sharply, supply chains would tighten, and inflation—which many economies have only recently begun to contain—could once again accelerate. Temporary factors, including releases from strategic petroleum reserves and softer global demand, have moderated the immediate impact. Yet these buffers are finite. If disruptions persist while demand recovers, the economic consequences could become significantly more severe.
Ironically, America’s closest partners in the Gulf may have the strongest interest in preventing further escalation. Their prosperity depends upon uninterrupted energy exports, while their populations rely heavily on vulnerable infrastructure, including ports, airports, desalination facilities and power stations. A wider regional conflict would impose immediate economic and humanitarian costs on America’s allies long before it directly affected the US homeland.
The military options are equally problematic.
Advocates of greater military pressure argue that sustained strikes will eventually compel Iran to compromise. Yet the central question remains: what exactly is the strategy?
Air campaigns have already been used extensively without producing decisive political outcomes. History repeatedly shows that air power can destroy military assets, but it rarely breaks political resolve. Economic sanctions have imposed considerable pressure without fundamentally altering Tehran’s strategic objectives. Maritime pressure has likewise failed to compel a change in behaviour.
The remaining option—a large-scale ground invasion—is considerably easier to advocate than to execute.
Iran is a country of nearly 90 million people with mountainous terrain and an armed force that has spent decades preparing for precisely such a contingency. Any invasion would require enormous troop deployments, sustained logistics and years of political commitment. Few analysts consider such an undertaking either militarily practical or politically sustainable.
History offers a sobering warning. Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan all showed that military escalation cannot substitute for a coherent strategy. In each case, greater military force failed to produce the political outcomes policymakers sought.
Yet the implications of the current confrontation extend beyond military strategy. They also reach into the broader balance of power.
Pape argues that the conflict may be reshaping the international balance of power itself. In his assessment, global politics has long revolved around three principal centres of power: the United States, Russia and China. The current confrontation, however, may be accelerating Iran’s emergence as a more consequential geopolitical actor. The source of that influence is not conventional military superiority but strategic geography. A country capable of affecting global energy markets and one of the world’s most important maritime chokepoints inevitably acquires influence that extends well beyond its immediate region.
Whether one agrees fully with Pape’s assessment or not, the broader trend is difficult to dismiss. The conflict has highlighted Iran’s capacity to influence international energy markets, maritime security and the strategic calculations of both regional and global powers. Even the credible threat of disrupting shipping through the Strait of Hormuz can affect oil prices, insurance costs, freight rates and inflation across the global economy. In today’s interconnected world, strategic influence is increasingly measured by the ability to shape the economic foundations of international security as well as military capability.
The confrontation also carries important implications for great-power competition. While Washington devotes considerable military and diplomatic resources to the Gulf, China continues to expand its economic ties across the Middle East without assuming comparable security responsibilities. A prolonged crisis risks diverting American attention and resources from the Indo-Pacific while creating opportunities for Beijing to deepen its regional influence.
None of this diminishes American military superiority. The United States remains the world’s pre-eminent military power. But military superiority no longer guarantees strategic success. Today, both Washington and Tehran appear capable of imposing high costs on one another without securing a decisive advantage. The United States can strike Iranian military targets with overwhelming force, while Iran can threaten American bases, Gulf infrastructure, global shipping and energy markets. That represents a fundamentally different strategic balance from the one that existed a generation ago.
The defining question, therefore, is whether overwhelming military superiority remains sufficient to alter the political calculations of an adversary whose greatest strategic assets are geography, energy markets, critical infrastructure and the willingness to absorb prolonged costs.
The lesson of this conflict extends well beyond the US-Iran rivalry. Military power remains indispensable, but twenty-first-century deterrence increasingly rests on economic resilience, strategic geography, energy security and the capacity to impose costs that reverberate throughout the global economy.
Whether this marks the emergence of a more enduring form of mutual deterrence remains to be seen. What is already clear, however, is that the balance of power in the Middle East is evolving. The question is no longer simply whether the United States can deter Iran. It is the question of whether military superiority alone is still sufficient to shape an adversary’s political decisions that has led to the development of energy, geography, and economic disruption as instruments of deterrence. The answer will shape not only the future of US-Iran relations, but also the future of deterrence itself.
