Many believe that this war is nothing more than the final chapter in the erosion of the clerical regime: an authoritarian and corrupt system, burdened with contradictions and besieged from both outside and within. But wars are not read through wishes. Regimes may stagger without falling, and they may be struck hard yet withdraw and harden. Here lies the Iranian paradox. Tehran may lose a great deal, yet it may not collapse. Washington may win militarily, only to discover that it has entered a tunnel from which it does not know how to emerge.

Recent experience has taught us that great powers often fail in small wars. Not because they lack the ability to destroy, but because they confuse breaking an opponent with building a viable political outcome. In Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, the United States did not fail to topple regimes, but it failed to produce stability. It destroyed the state and then left, leaving the wreckage to its people. Bombing, no matter how intense, cannot be a political program.

History remembers the Iberian commander Pyrrhus not as a triumphant hero over the Romans, but as an example of a victory that consumes its owner. "War is the continuation of politics by other means", as Clausewitz said. It is also said that Saladin sent a horse to Richard the Lionheart after his horse was killed, because" a war that annihilates your enemy may also kill the chances for a settlement".

According to Trump’s narrative, the plan appears simple: strike the head, destroy the missile infrastructure, undermine the nuclear program, and then impose unconditional surrender. That is the moment when the illusions begin. Wars do not remain where their planners want them to stay. What appears in the operations room as a clean achievement quickly turns on the ground into a chaotic question: who governs after the strike? Who controls the cities? Who signs the settlement? And who even holds legitimate authority?

It is naïve to assume that Iran is a state that can be broken quickly. It is not a fragile, newly formed state with weak institutions, nor a personal dictatorship whose head can easily be cut off. Iran is a complex structure: the Revolutionary Guard, the Basij, the bureaucracy, the intelligence services, the parallel economy, and influential religious networks, all within a centralized system.

For this reason, targeting the leadership did not lead to the dismantling of power, but rather to its re-forging. What was supposed to open the door to collapse instead opened the door to mobilization. When ideological regimes feel that the battle has become existential, they do not move toward moderation. Instead, they become more brutal and repressive, redefining the war as a defense of the homeland. Internal rivalries recede or are postponed, and the logic of survival takes precedence, making hopes of an imminent popular uprising seem like a lazy bet. Despite the exhaustion of Iranian society, and despite the fact that resentment is real and legitimacy is deeply damaged, resentment alone does not bring down a regime. As the bombing intensifies, the Basij spreads through the cities, the security services widen their circles of suspicion, and repression grows more savage. The open talk of overthrowing the regime, and the encouragement of separatist tendencies, has even led to a strong alignment of the Iranian army alongside the Revolutionary Guard.

This is not a small detail. The external strike has united the instruments of violence rather than dividing them.

Externally, the international environment shows little enthusiasm for a decisive American outcome. Europe offers only the minimum level of support that protects its interests without entangling it. China, meanwhile, keeps its distance, while clearly seeking to prevent threats to energy routes and maritime corridors.

There is no one in the world who wants to save Tehran, but neither is there anyone who wants to inherit its chaos. Some major powers even see the American war of attrition as a free opportunity they can quietly seize. The more Washington becomes entangled, the wider the room for maneuver for its rivals.

Regardless of the American show of force, it is easy for any American president to start a war, but it has always been difficult to present a convincing goal for continuing it to the American public.

Iran’s bet is that time is not on Trump’s side, as he rushes to declare that the mission is accomplished. After the first strike, the question of cost begins: who pays, for how long, and why? What is the legitimacy of the war? Electoral calculations, political divisions, and public fatigue steadily move to the forefront. In a country like the United States, wars are not measured only by what they do to the enemy, but also by what they drain at home. Against this background, three scenarios appear the most likely.

First: Regime Hardening and Militarization

The strikes succeed in destroying a large portion of Iran’s deterrent capabilities, but they fail to topple the regime or paralyze the state. Iran retreats inward as a more security-driven, militarized, besieged state living under permanent mobilization. For the United States, the war becomes a chronic, low-intensity, high-cost, long-drawn affair. America may achieve a military success, but Iran emerges with an even harsher system.

Second: Fragmenting the State from the Periphery

This path assumes mobilizing armed opposition with a nationalist or ethnic character, with direct or indirect support from the U.S. or Israel, aimed at draining Iran through its peripheries: the Kurds, the Baloch, and perhaps others. This scenario might succeed in exhausting the center, but it does not produce a stable alternative. Instead, it leads to a prolonged internal war over fragments of a highly sensitive geography contested by international powers. While tactically tempting, this scenario is strategically catastrophic.

Third: Limiting Losses Without Declared Surrender

This appears to be the most rational scenario, though least likely in the near term. Elites rarely move toward moderation under bombardment; they harden instead. Even if a more pragmatic figure emerges within the system, the ability to accept unconditional surrender would be almost impossible. Even Mojtaba Khamenei would be unable to impose a formal defeat on this complex structure.

In wars, if the opponent is not given a reasonable way out, they fight not because they can win, but because they cannot retreat. That is the essence of the Iranian black hole.

The question is not whether the United States and Israel can strike Iran, but what comes next. A war may achieve a tactical victory, yet fail to end the fighting.

And so the Middle East once again swallows the illusions of those who think they can engineer it with bombs. How many American presidents have come promising to stay away from this region, only to end up there?

The problem with the Middle East is not how hard it is to enter, but how impossible it is to leave once you think you hold its keys. In the Iranian case, the danger may not lie in direct military defeat, but in the far more insidious kind of loss: winning the war on the battlefield yet losing it in history.

It will take Trump more blood and time before he truly understands the Middle East!

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed by the writers are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Annahar