Iran War Options: Unclear at Best
ISRAELI BOMBING of BEIRUT, March 4th 2026
Photo: Ibrahim Amro/Agence France-Presse
FOUR WEEKS? FIVE WEEKS? THE TIMEFRAME MAY LIE more in that blithe, imprecise presidential phrase: “we have capability to go far longer than that.” These are words that can’t avoid evoking the familiar and scornful campaign cry of “FOREVER WARS” with which Donald Trump claimed he would rescue America from ever again getting bogged-down in a quagmire of war.
We can simply note the inconsistency. For it seems sadly exaggerated, all the media commentariat’s huffing and puffing with incredulity that such an imprudent, hasty, erratic man might now be acting in such self-contradictory ways. There should be no real surprise, should there?
And events were of course bound to careen way ahead of his bellicose rhetoric. Would the war widen, many pundits wondered? Of course it would - and did. It spread fast, indeed, and inevitably across the tinderbox of the greater Middle East – the brushfire being accelerated by Israel’s headlong rushes into not just Iran far to the east, but Lebanon, too, close by to the north, in order to batter Iranian-supported Hezbollah forces.
As any nation knows that is a powerful godfather (as Iran has been) in various regional proxy wars – the abundance of ‘soft’ targets is obvious, as is its own lack of any scruples about choosing those targets. Hence the American Embassy in Saudia Arabia came under attack by drones, an attack that caused material damage but mercifully no human casualties. It forced the State Department to shut that embassy down, plus diplomatic missions representing the US in other allied countries, starting with Jordan and the United Arab Emirates. In an all-too-familiar scene, charter flights have been hurriedly organized to evacuate US citizens from the region – and travelers are reporting complaints about considerable disorganization bedeviling that rescue effort.
There has also occurred — this being war — the inevitable phenomenon of so-called “friendly fire,” as when three American fighter jets were shot down over Kuwait, by our ally Kuwait’s own air defenses. Once again there were no human casualties, since the aircrews were able to successfully eject from their cockpits.
The actual, fatal casualty rate for Americans stands now at just six deaths, mostly service members in Kuwait (and of course that toll could be overtaken by the time you hear or read this). These are still early days. Numbers for the Iranian side are of course immeasurable with any accuracy, but up to a thousand have been estimated.
Trump’s comfortable media venue: NY Post
REACTING TO CRITICISM FOR NOT FORMALLY making a case to the American people for his and Israel’s war, Trump chose to do something typical of when he’s in that uncomfortable position of being on the defensive. He gave an interview in by contrast a decidedly comfortable, Murdoch-owned media venue – in this case the New York Post. It was comfortable enough for him to even publicly contemplate initiating a ground war, as he slipped into some clubby, golf-course parlance to say that :
“I don’t have the yips with respect to boots-on-the-ground. Like every president says, ‘There will be no boots on the ground.’ I don’t say that, I say ‘probably don’t need them,’ or ‘maybe … if they were necessary.'”
And in other interviews scattered around the mediaverse, he said "the lives of American heroes may be lost,” and I can also quote his cloddish warning about deaths: “Sadly, there will likely be more before it ends. That’s the way it is in war”
The media’s usual parade of armchair generals are making their varied predictions for just how the war will actually go. It hardly needs saying that very few, if any, expect it to be wrapped up quickly and neatly.
MEANWHILE, AT THE VERY CENTER OF THINGS, but not so well covered by the international news-media, for all-too-obvious reasons, are the Iranians themselves.
Reformist networks inside Iran - what of them? - since both Trump and Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu have both said it’s up to Iranians themselves to take full advantage of the two nations’ joint bombing and missile attacks (and the assassination of top Iranian officials, including the Supreme Leader, Ayatolla Khamenei). It is these reformists who (despite their unarmed vulnerability, about which neither DC nor Tel Aviv are saying anything much), who should “take over your government,” to quote the President speaking directly to Iranians in a video posted on his social media site. On just quite how Iranians should achieve such a take-over, both Bibi and Trump have of course been unclear.
Some prominent Iranian representatives who favor reform in their country have been on the record about their hopes for a long time. I can pinpoint it at seven years actually, and I’ll remark that seven is perhaps an aptly totemic number of years for those of us who’ve been culturally conditioned by Abrahamic traditions, from Shiite Islam … to Orthodox or Reform Judaism … to evangelical Christianity -- and everything in between and beyond. We all know about the seven years of feast and seven of famine – and there many other redolent prophetic references to a seven-year span or cycle.
IRANIANS PURSUING PEACE in 2019: Clockwise, M Aminzade, M-R Khatami, A Ramezanadeh, M Tajzadeh
Seven years back in 2019, four pragmatic Iranians, all former (and non-clerical, ‘civilian,’ if you like) members of previous Teheran administrations chose the perhaps surprising venue of the New York Review of Books to do something remarkable. They laid out their hopes for ending the enmity between their country and the West, meaning especially of course (both then and now) the United States of America. The New York Review, with good reason, saw fit to re-publish that article this week.
The reformists wrote (and remember this was during the first Trump era):
“It is imperative that we return to the mode of peaceful diplomatic dialogue and eschew the path of conflict …”
And then comes perhaps (given our current developments) a poignant passage from that 2019 missive, a passage in which the Iranians called on us to “replace saber-rattling and gunboat diplomacy … with respectful diplomatic interaction.
I need perhaps, though, to somewhat reframe that thought about ‘poignancy.’ Because the reformists also said back then, even more poignantly: “we are concerned about the mortal blow that even a limited military conflict with the USA will deal to the democratic movement of Iran.”
And, even while fearing that war might well be inevitable, the reformists concluded: “War will have only losers. The vicious counsel of warmongers must give way to the calm voices of peace and reconciliation.”
Those pious hopes of 2019 all seem ludicrously idealistic, now that the dogs of war have been fully let loose.
But we need to remember that there could still be some influential Iranians who hold fast to that optimism of 2019. More likely, however, the juggernaut of Trumpism has plowed onward and now the implacable logic of a war on many fronts is crashing against the logic of even the most gigantic, toxic narcissist.
Alternatively, continuous outright hostilities might in the longer term subside, though only into the kind of ongoing asymmetrical, low-level warfare that we’ve been all-too-familiar with in recent years. Either way, a solution now lies a long way off.