“Wars reveal inconvenient truths, and the war with Iran and its proxies is no exception.
The U.S. has learned that it can't conduct a relatively short war against a regional power without running down its stockpiles of critical munitions.
In combination with a shrunken military industrial base, the complex technology of our best weapons dangerously slows the process of replacing them.
If we ever face a larger war with a peer competitor, we need to remedy this situation. We should rebuild our defense production capacity and rethink the balance between small numbers of expensive high-tech weapons and larger numbers of simpler, cheaper ones. Our qualitative edge means little if we run out of our most advanced weaponry.
We have also learned that our forces aren't commensurate with our global commitments. To conduct operations against Iran, we had to withdraw a substantial portion of our crucial naval assets from East Asia. If China had chosen this moment to escalate its threat against Taiwan, it would have been difficult to respond effectively.
The pace of China's naval production dwarfs ours, and their momentum will make it hard to catch up anytime soon. China now accounts for 53% of global shipbuilding capacity, and its doctrine of civil-military fusion allows its navy to draw on civilian production infrastructure. The U.S., whose naval production capacity has withered, can't do the job on its own.
We need an all-hands-on-deck effort that includes drawing on the production capacity of South Korea, which has 29% of global capacity, and Japan, with 13%. That means steady long-term policy that doesn't shift with every passing breeze, and it means treating allies as force multipliers, not bloodsuckers.
We have relearned what we should never have forgotten -- the limits of air power. Yes, our bombing destroyed a substantial portion of Iran's military capacity and some of its civilian infrastructure. But we were never prepared to put boots on the ground, and the Iranians knew it. With a strategy of burying production capacity and spare parts deep underground, Tehran was able to preserve its ability to build the missiles it needs to menace its Arab neighbors and shipping in the Persian Gulf.
While our bases in the Middle East are essential for our force projection in the region, we have learned that they are vulnerable to attack. Starting on Feb. 28, Iranian missiles and drones inflicted major damage on the U.S. base in Bahrain, as did subsequent attacks on bases in Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. We suffered hundreds of casualties, including 18 deaths, and losses to buildings and equipment amounting to nearly $4 billion. Before the personnel we withdrew can return (if they do), the military must improve its capacity to defend them.
We have learned that the Iranians can counter our assault with a strategy of horizontal escalation through its proxies throughout the region. The Houthis' offensive has brought the Bab al-Mandeb Strait under their control, and a drone attack launched from Iraq by an Iran-affiliated militia has temporarily disabled the East-West Pipeline, through which Saudi Arabia had diverted a large part of its oil exports from the Gulf. As global oil stockpiles are drawn down, a further spike in energy prices could imperil the global economy. That would make the current stalemate in Iran unsustainable.
As the quantity of Saudi oil flowing through the Strait of Hormuz has been increasing, the U.S. naval blockade is putting intense pressure on Iran's economy. The U.S. is gradually gaining the upper hand in the economic war of attrition.
Yet it isn't clear that this will force the Iranian regime to yield. Iran's rulers have repeatedly demonstrated their ability to absorb setbacks by imposing the costs on their people while ruthlessly repressing dissent. That hasn't changed, nor is it likely to while the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps holds the cards and the guns.
If so, as Richard Haass and Carolyn Kissane have argued, the U.S. will have to return to the bargaining table and accept terms for ending the threat to our regional allies and global energy supplies that will leave us worse off than before President Trump began this conflict.
This is America's third Middle Eastern misadventure in the past quarter-century, and likely the last. It signals the end of our effort to dominate the region, and it could set in motion a gradual drawdown of U.S. forces. If so, the Gulf states and others that have relied on our protection will be forced to make other arrangements -- a reality underscored by Mr. Trump's rejection of Saudi Arabia's request that the U.S. military join the fight against the Houthis. Our allies will have to choose between yielding to Iran's regional dominance and creating a formal anti-Iranian alliance that could eventually include Israel. Whatever happens, the war with Iran will change the Middle East forever.” [1]
1. Politics & Ideas: Iran May Be America's Last Mideast War. Galston, William A. Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 30 Sep 2026: A15.
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