The Shape of Things to Come — Iran

I do not think Iran is a problem waiting to be solved so much as a condition we are going to have to manage. That is the first uncomfortable truth. The second is that military superiority, even overwhelming military superiority, does not automatically produce political resolution. We have learned that lesson before, and usually at considerable cost.

The attached forecast gets the central point right: Iran’s ruling class is not organized around prosperity, popular consent, or normal statecraft. It is organized around survival. The regime’s center of gravity is not the Iranian people. It is the coercive apparatus — the Revolutionary Guard, the intelligence services, the missile program, the proxy network, and the nuclear ambiguity that gives all of it a strategic umbrella.

That means we should stop expecting Tehran to “come to its senses” in the way Western analysts often use that phrase. The mullahs have their own sense. It is ruthless, patient, ideological, and deeply invested in endurance. They can lose facilities, money, commanders, prestige, and still claim victory if the regime survives and the nuclear knowledge remains intact.

This is why the nuclear issue is not merely a question of buildings and bunkers. Bombing a facility is one thing. Proving where the uranium went, whether the centrifuge expertise survived, and how much of the procurement network remains in place is something else entirely. The IAEA’s 2026 Iran safeguards reporting underscores the problem of verification, not just destruction. 

So the shape of things to come is probably not a clean surrender ceremony. It is more likely a grinding contest of coercion: sanctions, selective strikes, cyber operations, maritime pressure, proxy flare-ups, and periodic diplomatic theater. We will hear words like “framework,” “freeze,” “inspection access,” and “de-escalation.” Some of that may matter. Much of it will be designed to buy time.

Iran’s weakness is obvious. It cannot win a conventional war against the United States and Israel. Its air defenses, naval assets, command nodes, and missile production sites are vulnerable to a modern campaign. But Iran does not need to win in the Western sense. It needs to survive, impose costs, and make the price of containment feel politically and economically unbearable.

That brings us to Hormuz. This is not some obscure waterway on a think-tank map. The Strait of Hormuz is one of the world’s great pressure points. The U.S. Energy Information Administration has reported that oil flows through Hormuz have amounted to roughly one-fifth of global petroleum liquids consumption, and a significant portion of global LNG trade has also depended on that route. 

That is the lever Iran understands. It may not be able to defeat an American carrier group, but it can threaten insurance rates, tanker traffic, Gulf infrastructure, and the political patience of energy-consuming nations. Once that happens, the war stops being only about nuclear denial and becomes about global economic crisis management.

The Gulf states know this better than anyone. They want Iran weakened. They do not necessarily want Iran shattered. A fragmented Iran could spill chaos across oil infrastructure, sectarian fault lines, and shipping routes. That is the part many armchair hawks miss. Destroying the enemy’s capacity is one thing. Owning the consequences of his collapse is another.

My base expectation is a coercive stalemate. Iran comes out weaker, poorer, more exposed, and more dangerous in irregular ways. The United States and Israel retain military dominance but still face the old problem: how do you permanently deny a determined regime nuclear optionality without occupying the country or trusting the regime?

The key indicators are practical ones. Can inspectors regain verified access? Does enriched uranium reappear on paper and under seal? Do tanker flows normalize through Hormuz? Do Gulf states quietly press Washington for a settlement? Do we see IRGC fractures, elite defections, or protests the security services can no longer smother?

The future with Iran will not be tidy. It will be managed in increments, tested by shocks, and judged less by press conferences than by whether the regime can regenerate what has been destroyed. In the end, the question is not whether Iran can be punished. It can. The question is whether punishment can produce a durable strategic outcome.

That remains very much unsettled.