There is a more dangerous question than the one that has dominated headlines for months: Who is winning the American war on Iran? The real question is: How does this war end? More than six months after operations began in late February 2026, the picture does not resemble the ending suggested by America’s immense military power. The United States can reach targets inside Iran, destroy military facilities, strike missile and naval capabilities, and impose harsh economic sanctions. Yet it has so far been unable to turn this capacity into a stable political end to the conflict. On 30 and 31 August 2026, escalation returned. The United States struck sites linked to Iranian missiles near the Strait of Hormuz, specifically Larak Island, while Iran responded by targeting American positions in the region. Oil prices rose again amid renewed fears over navigation security, with Brent crude climbing above $90 a barrel. Here the paradox appears: If the United States can strike Iran, why can it not end the war?
The problem is not military power. No one can seriously dispute American military superiority. The United States possesses one of the most advanced military machines in the world: long-range aircraft, aircraft carriers, satellites, advanced intelligence, precision missiles, and enormous electronic and cyber capabilities. The war itself has shown that Washington can inflict heavy damage on Iran. But war is not a contest over how many targets can be destroyed. In the end, war is a tool for achieving a political objective. So what is the final political goal? Preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon? Destroying its missile programme? Weakening its regional influence? Forcing it into a new agreement? Or changing the political system itself? These are not identical objectives. The broader the goal, the harder it becomes to achieve “victory”. Analysts at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) have noted that American objectives ranged from destroying the nuclear programme, missiles, naval capabilities, and regional networks to the more ambitious political aim of regime change. You can know how to start a war without knowing how to reach the ending you want.
Iran offers a different model of resistance. Iran could not compete with the United States in air or naval power in the conventional sense, and it does not appear to have tried. Instead, it relied on something different: raising the cost of war. Missiles, drones, threats to shipping, pressure on energy infrastructure, and use of the sensitive geography of the Strait of Hormuz are all tools that do not require Iran to become militarily stronger than the United States. It is enough to make the war costly, uncomfortable, and resistant to quick resolution. Iran does not need to close the strait completely to achieve a strategic effect. It is enough to make shipping companies, insurers, and markets believe that passage has become dangerous. When oil prices rose again after the latest escalation, it became clear that the battle is not taking place only inside Iran; its effects reach global markets. The equation is therefore different: America has a greater capacity to destroy Iran, but Iran has the capacity to make continued war costly for America and for the world. This is not an Iranian victory. But it is also not a complete American victory. It is a grey zone more dangerous than the simple question of “who won”.
Military power does not equal political power. This may be the most important point in the entire story. Military power can destroy a building, but it cannot create political legitimacy. It can kill a leader, but it cannot automatically choose who will succeed him. It can destroy a nuclear facility, but it cannot guarantee that the state will not rebuild its programme years later. And it can topple a government, but the harder question begins the next day: Who will rule? Recent history is full of examples in which major powers achieved clear military superiority and then found themselves facing a more complex political problem. The problem is not that America has lost its power. On the contrary. The problem is that America’s military power has sometimes become greater than its ability to convert that power into lasting political results. That is an enormous difference.
Iran is not the only exception. Looking at the Russia–Ukraine war, we find a similar paradox, even though the circumstances are entirely different. Russia is a major nuclear and military power, yet military superiority has not translated into a rapid political settlement. In August 2026, there were indications of a possible resumption of talks between Russia and Ukraine in September, while broader negotiations remained stalled. Possessing the ability to continue a war does not mean possessing the ability to produce peace. Rather, war can enter a phase in which the question becomes: Who can endure the pain longer? In these wars, patience itself becomes a weapon. Power is no longer only the number of aircraft and tanks. It is also the economy’s capacity to endure, society’s capacity to bear losses, the ability to maintain alliances, the ability to produce weapons and ammunition, the ability to withstand rising prices, and, most importantly, the ability to wait.
Gaza reveals the problem from another angle. Even when Israel possesses overwhelming military superiority, the question does not end with the ability to achieve military control. The harder question is: What happens the next day? Who will govern Gaza? Who will manage security? Who will rebuild the territory? What is the future of Hamas? What is Gaza’s relationship with the Palestinian Authority? And who guarantees that the end of military operations will not become the start of a new cycle of violence? War may end on paper, but peace does not begin automatically.
The American paradox is clear. Has the United States become weaker? The answer is no. Has it become incapable of military victory? Also no. So where is the problem? The problem is that the definition of “victory” itself has become harder. In the twentieth century, it was relatively easier to imagine victory: one army defeats another, a capital falls, a government surrenders, and then the process of rebuilding the system begins. Today, the state has become a complex network of institutions, society, economy, alliances, armed groups, digital platforms, and global markets. You can strike the army, but society remains. You can destroy infrastructure, but ideas remain. You can topple a government, but the alternative may be worse. You can impose sanctions, but other states may help your adversary circumvent them. That is why military power has sometimes become better at destroying the existing situation than at building the alternative one. And this is a massive strategic problem. Experts at Chatham House have warned that the ambiguity of war aims and the inconsistency in defining what an agreement must achieve make reaching a durable settlement more difficult, and that military superiority has not translated into regime change.
From war to “non-ending”. Perhaps the most dangerous thing happening in modern wars is the emergence of a state between war and peace. There is no real peace. And there is no all-out war all the time. Instead, there are strikes, sanctions, threats, truces, negotiations, and then new strikes. Analysts at CSIS have described this as a condition of “fighting and negotiating at the same time”, in which both sides use military force to improve their positions at the negotiating table. This explains why we can see, on the same day, a missile launched and a diplomat talking about peace. There is not necessarily a contradiction, because the missile itself has become part of the negotiation.
The real problem: What does Washington want after the war? If the war stopped tomorrow, what would the United States want Iran to be the next day? A weak Iran? An Iran without a nuclear programme? An Iran without missiles? An Iran without regional influence? An Iran under different leadership? Or an Iran that remains as it is but committed to a new agreement? Every answer produces an entirely different policy. And here the issue becomes larger than Iran.
Is this the end of the era of American power? Not yet. And it is wrong to say so. The United States remains the world’s strongest single military power and is still capable of defeating a far weaker military force. But what is changing is something more precise: American power no longer by itself guarantees the political outcome Washington wants. This is not only an American weakness. It is a transformation in the nature of power itself. Russia faces the same problem in Ukraine. Israel faces it in Gaza. And Iran uses it to resist the United States. Even China is watching all of this. Beijing does not need to defeat the American army in a direct battle to benefit from these shifts. It is enough to see that the United States can be militarily stronger yet still find itself forced to negotiate with adversaries it cannot politically subdue.
The new power is not only in the ability to strike. In the past, the question was: Can you win the war? Today, the question has become: Can you create the day after the war? And that is far harder. Destroying a facility requires an aircraft. But building a political system requires institutions. Destroying an army requires missiles. But preventing the return of war requires an agreement. Forcing a state to retreat requires pressure. But persuading it that a settlement is better than resistance requires diplomacy. That is why diplomacy is not the soft alternative to military power. It is the stage that begins when the effectiveness of military power alone has ended.
Who can end the war? Perhaps the most realistic question now is not: Who is stronger, America or Iran? But: Who can turn power into a settlement? So far, there is no clear answer. On 31 August, fighting between Washington and Tehran resumed after a period of calm, at a time when the fundamental issues — from the nuclear programme to sanctions and the security of the Strait of Hormuz — remain without a final settlement.
America can start the war. It can strike. It can impose sanctions. It can blockade. But the ending is something else. The ending requires a party that can persuade the adversary that concession is less costly than continuation. And it is precisely here that the limits of power appear. Not because military power has disappeared, but because, however great it becomes, it cannot by itself answer the question that comes after the last missile: What now?
And perhaps this is the great paradox of today’s world: the major powers have become more capable than ever of destroying their adversaries, yet they are not necessarily more capable of building the peace that comes after the destruction. This is the real challenge of the twenty-first century: not how to win the war, but how to make victory convertible into peace.
Dr. Marwa El-Shinawy, Academic and Writer
