This war was not meant to last.
That is how its parties entered it, each confident that its tools could deliver a swift outcome. What began as a limited confrontation with a defined timeframe has instead become an open-ended war, exceeding all expectations and draining the capacities of those involved to varying degrees.
The most convincing explanation for this paradox lies less in the balance of power than in converging miscalculations that pushed each side to adopt strategies that prolonged, rather than ended, the conflict.
Still, pointing to multiple errors does not erase the differences in each side’s position at the outset. The US operation was the primary trigger for escalation, while Iran’s move came later as a response. Yet that response, in turn, was shaped by misjudgments and choices that complicated the war's course and prolonged its duration.
In this context, the US miscalculation stemmed from a wager that accompanied the decision to engage militarily, the assumption that combined military and economic pressure would quickly produce fractures, followed by internal collapse, in Iran. This view relied on a conventional assumption that societies under severe pressure tend to turn against their governments.
But it overlooked three key realities: the ideological nature of the Iranian system, which places regime survival above any cost borne by the state and society; the tendency of external threats to reinforce internal cohesion rather than weaken it; and the regime’s strong coercive capacity, which makes the cost of dissent in wartime prohibitively high.
The result was not internal upheaval, but relative cohesion that allowed the system to absorb pressure and endure, undermining expectations of a quick resolution.
On the Iranian side, although its actions came in response, they involved a series of miscalculations that limited their effectiveness and further complicated the conflict.
Tehran bet that raising the cost of war would force its adversaries into a rapid retreat. It pursued this by targeting the global economy, particularly critical energy infrastructure and maritime routes.
Yet, this calculation overlooked a structural reality of the global economy: costs are not distributed equally. The United States, given its geographic distance, its ability to absorb shocks, and its status as a major energy producer, was relatively less affected.
The heavier burden instead fell on economies such as China, India, Japan, and Europe, which are not the primary decision-makers in ending the war. As a result, the political impact of this economic pressure remained limited despite its high cost.
One clear example of this miscalculation was the expansion of pressure to include Arab Gulf states, through attacks or threats against their oil facilities, even though they were not direct parties to the conflict. This approach proved problematic on two levels. First, it widened the scope of targeting to include actors that had maintained neutrality. Second, it was strategically unwise, as it alienated these states rather than encouraging them to push for an end to the war.
More importantly, the underlying assumption that disrupting energy markets would create decisive economic pressure did not materialize, given how costs are distributed across the global economy.
Iranian miscalculations did not end there. Tehran also assumed that intensifying direct military pressure, particularly through missile attacks, would exhaust Israeli society and lead it to pressure its leadership to end the war. This assessment, however, failed to account for the sophistication of air defense systems, the high level of civilian preparedness, and the accumulated experience in managing emergencies.
While the costs were real and significant, the ability to absorb and manage them was greater than Iranian calculations assumed. As a result, pressure shifted from a tool of decisive impact into a factor of prolonged attrition without resolution.
Here lies the central paradox: each side entered the war believing that time was on its side. The United States expected that sustained pressure would expose the fragility of Iran’s domestic front. Iran, meanwhile, believed that time would accumulate costs its adversaries could not bear.
In practice, the opposite occurred. Time did not validate either assumption; instead, it exposed the limits of both. With each additional round, rather than revising strategies, both sides deepened them, hoping that the “next push” would finally produce the delayed effect.
In this sense, the war’s prolongation is not the result of one side’s superiority or the other’s failure, but of a shared logic of misperception, with an important difference in how each side engaged in it. Each misidentified the other’s point of vulnerability. Washington looked for it inside Iran and did not find it. Tehran tried to create it through external cost imposition, but failed to hit the center of decision-making, while also expanding the conflict in ways that weakened its own political position.
Between these two paths, a self-sustaining dynamic took shape, in which the war continues not because either side is approaching victory, but because both mistakenly believe that victory remains achievable with the same tools. The harsh conclusion of this war is that miscalculations do not cancel each other out. Instead, they can converge in ways that amplify their cost.
When decisions are based on flawed understandings of the adversary, the distribution of costs, and the resilience of societies, what is assumed to be a shortcut to a decisive outcome becomes an open-ended path toward a longer and more complex war than anyone intended.
