War on Iran and the Big Question About U.S. Strategic Interests

The most important question raised by the war on Iran is not when this war will end, but who benefits from conditions in which these confrontations never end.

Mohammad Sabrin, an expert on international issues and the Middle East living in Cairo, wrote a note in the China Daily newspaper: When the United States and Israel attacked Iran in February, US President Donald Trump predicted that the war would last four to five weeks. But more than seven months later, there is still no concrete solution to end the conflict.

Recent reports from The Wall Street Journal indicate that Trump's top advisers have warned in private circles that the conflict could last until the end of his presidency and even beyond January 2029.

The publication of these reports has given more alarming dimensions to the situation. Leon Panetta, Secretary of Defense and former head of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), has also warned that the conflict may continue for another six months; An issue that has raised concerns about America getting caught up in an endless war again.

This situation raises a broader question than the Iran issue: What happens if the strategic value of a war no longer depends on a quick victory? There is no publicly available US intelligence document that suggests the country has deliberately devised a strategy to wear down its allies and enemies. Such a claim would be baseless without sufficient evidence.

However, there is a growing trend in American strategic thinking that focuses on attrition, cost imposition, burden shifting, and economic pressure; A trend that makes it difficult to ignore this question. The American and Israeli attacks on Iran are a clear example of this situation. The longer the conflict drags on without a definitive outcome, the more it will turn into a competition for resources, resilience, and the political tolerance of the parties.

A prolonged stalemate can weaken an enemy's military and industrial strength, drain its financial resources, disrupt trade, and force the country to spend more of its resources on survival. This is the logic of strategic erosion.

Strategic erosion does not only mean the decline of military power, but also refers to the gradual weakening of a country's economic resilience, military readiness, technological capacity, political cohesion, and diplomatic freedom of action.

The United States has very powerful tools at its disposal to exert such pressure, many of which are not military in nature. Sanctions, financial restrictions, export controls and depriving countries of technology can become tools for strategic attrition without the need to send American troops to occupy the territory.

The Ukraine war provides another example of this approach. In US strategic circles, there has been open discussion about using attrition to weaken Russia while avoiding direct conflict between Moscow and Washington. The US provides weapons, intelligence, technology and financial support to Ukraine, while the main burden of the battle rests on Kiev. Russia also pays for the war by spending its manpower, weapons and economic resources. Europe also bears the cost through increased defense spending and bearing the economic consequences of prolonged confrontation.

Ukraine pays the most. The US is also incurring costs, but in terms of human casualties, its share is far less than that of Ukraine. This imbalance is strategically important, because it shows that one of the most complex forms of American power in the current situation is the country's ability to distribute the costs of conflict among different parties.

America's power is not unlimited. Missiles need to be produced, planes need maintenance, ships need to be adequately manned, and maintaining alliances requires spending political capital.

The same logic applies to America's allies. An analysis published by the American think tank Stimson Center during 2025 emphasized the change in Washington's approach and efforts to persuade European allies to accept more responsibility for their conventional security through increased participation in defense spending.

Although defense burden-sharing is a defensible argument, encouraging wealthy allies to contribute more to their own security has important strategic implications.

If European countries spend huge sums of money to rebuild their military capabilities, but remain dependent on American information, advanced weapons, logistical support, and strategic technologies, Washington can reduce part of its conventional defense burden without losing its central position in the Western security structure.

The goal is not necessarily to destroy all enemies or to continue wars forever. Instead, the goal may be to manage conflicts at a level that weakens rivals, forces allies to accept greater responsibility and cost, maintains American leverage, and prevents the catastrophic costs of direct great power confrontation.

The result of such an approach is neither peace nor full-scale war, but the continuation of strategic pressure. However, this strategy faces a contradiction: a strategy that is designed to exhaust others can eventually exhaust its designers. The prolongation of the conflict with Iran has raised questions about America's military power and resources.

The longer Washington remains engaged on multiple fronts, the greater the pressure on weapons stockpiles, military readiness, budgets, and political support.

America's power is not unlimited. Missiles need to be produced, planes need maintenance, ships need to be adequately manned, and maintaining alliances requires spending political capital.

Each new conflict competes with other strategic fronts for the resources it needs.

In other words, using economic interdependence as a weapon can lead to the formation of alternative networks. Trying to maintain America's supremacy through continuous pressure may inadvertently accelerate the process of forming a world order whose purpose is to get rid of these pressures.

Therefore, the most important question that the Iran war raises is not when it will end, but who benefits from a situation in which conflicts never end.

If protracted wars systematically weaken America's enemies, force its allies to increase defense spending, help strengthen America's industrial and defense base, and maintain Washington's central position at relatively lower direct costs, then we may be witnessing a more important development: a gradual shift in American power from a strategy of decisive victory to a strategy of controlled attrition.

The realization of such a situation does not necessarily require the existence of a conspiracy; It is enough that there are incentives to pursue it. Sometimes motivations can be even more powerful than official doctrines. For decades, the central question was whether America could win wars.

But today, perhaps the more important question is whether Washington can force others to pay a greater share of the costs of strategic competition.

This form of power is of a completely different nature. The way to deal with chronic erosion is not simply to bear more pressure, but strategic dependencies should be reduced, economic and technological partnerships should be diversified, national resilience should be strengthened, and credible diplomatic channels should be formed to prevent long-term conflicts from becoming permanent traps.

However, this strategy has an inherent risk: attrition can only be sustained if there is a way out of the conflict. A world where wars are won is dangerous; But a world where winning wars is no longer necessary to have a strategic advantage could be even more dangerous.