America Is Winning Against Iran. Now It Needs a Strategy for What Comes Next.
Washington has demonstrated that the Islamic Republic can be weakened militarily, constrained economically, and denied its traditional tools of coercion. The harder question is how to convert that advantage into a durable political outcome.
The most important development in the confrontation with Iran is not another destroyed radar, damaged naval facility or intercepted missile. It is the erosion of an assumption that shaped American policy for decades: that the Islamic Republic possessed an extraordinary capacity to escalate while the United States had an extraordinary obligation to exercise restraint. President Donald Trump has disrupted that imbalance. Tehran is discovering that military escalation can accelerate the destruction of the capabilities on which its regional power depends. Yet this success creates a more difficult question for Washington. Military power can change the balance of a conflict; it cannot by itself determine the political order that follows.
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Source: https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2026/09/14/america_is_winning_against_iran_now_it_needs_a_strategy_for_what_comes_next_1205879.html?fbclid=IwY2xjawUXvlVwZG9mAWV4dG4DYWVtAjEwAGJyaWQRMTBUejVrejVpR3R4NXpMbzNzcnRjBmFwcF9pZBAyMjIwMzkxNzg4MjAwODkyAAEeaaDJRcsBhpmnU8EsTGuIg6wSqkw9aSR8A9rCi0Pzy_gaSsWIzNN9JoPAQ5Y_aem_DuvtfFEsVwK4vL2cdeuU2A