The domestic debate around the meaning of what would constitute victory in the current military conflict with Iran is nearly as fierce as the fighting itself. Part of this stems from the personage of the commander in chief. For some, no war fought by Donald Trump could ever be won on satisfactory terms. This is the portion of the American electorate that has been reduced to rooting, if often only implicitly, for the clerical regime in Iran to prevail over the United States—alternately by tut-tutting at the increasingly complex nature of the geostrategic battle or by gloating at what they see as Trump's lack of strategy. They simply want the president to lose.
But for those who can separate the man from the mission, an important question must be answered: What would victory look like over Iran look like?
The president has been elusive on this question. He has been unwilling to articulate a clear theory of victory from the outset. This has enabled him to maintain his signature posture of maximum flexibility in every situation. For now, the president appears content to keep all his options open, while keeping his domestic adversaries guessing what he will do next. The good news is that this has kept the Iranian regime guessing, too.
Two weeks into the conflict, by mid-March, the president appeared satisfied with eliminating top regime figures, setting back the nuclear program by at least a half decade, wrecking the Islamic Republic's defense industrial base, and thinning out its missile stockpiles as Israel continued to hammer away at its regional proxies. Trump's aims appeared more modest than those of his fighting partners in Israel, who sought nothing less than the downfall of the regime. Trump declined to state this as a metric for victory, given the anxiety among a sizeable portion of his political base and other Americans who do not want a return to the long wars fought in the wake of the September 11, 2001, attacks.
But even with his more modest aims, the president soon found that declaring victory—which he did on a daily basis almost from the first moment the war began—would be no easy thing, especially if he wanted others to believe it. The Iranian regime upended the notion of an American victory when it attacked vessels in the Strait of Hormuz, spooking energy and stock markets by effectively cutting off access to 20 percent of the world's oil. The regime simultaneously went after energy and other critical infrastructure elements belonging to the surrounding Gulf Arab states, which happen to be among the most important global energy exporters.
Israel and the United States certainly won the conventional war from Day One, flying sortie after sortie into Iran with the confidence that only air superiority can offer. But the regime countered by launching an asymmetric economic war that soon had even some initial supporters of the war questioning its wisdom. With the short-lived cease-fire in early April having come to its conclusion after six days, Trump's task is to end that economic war on favorable terms so that he can credibly declare victory not only on the battlefield but also in rendering harmless the enemy's economic weaponry.
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Trump doesn't just want to win on both the conventional and asymmetric fronts. He wants a full Iranian surrender. This is a problem because "surrender" is an antiquated concept. No country has unconditionally and formally surrendered to the United States since Emperor Hirohito authorized the signing of the Japanese Surrender Instrument on September 2, 1945. That was after a "total war," with America dropping two atomic bombs in a bid to convince the Imperial Japanese that further fighting was futile. And it worked. But in the aftermath of that horrific and historic event, the notion of total war was eschewed by the international community. At least, this has been the case for more than eight decades.
The notion of a lengthy occupation of another nation's territory to ensure the terms of a military victory, such as the U.S. presence in Germany or Japan after World War II, is also antiquated. This was demonstrated by the turn in American public opinion on the value of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. For this reason, Trump is clearly loath to put boots on the ground.
But without forces physically holding territory and forcing the regime in Iran to its knees, Trump has few viable options other than to punish the regime with an unrelenting torrent of withering blows from above. As the president has learned, however, this is probably not the path to triumph, especially in the Middle East. As a simple matter of logic, victory requires, at least in part, an acknowledgment by the losing side that it has lost. Even if the metrics of victory are achieved with most or all military objectives met, the vanquished in this region rarely, if ever, cede defeat. The Israeli experience shows as much.
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The IDF has now fought five major battles against Hamas in the Gaza Strip in the past two decades. The current IDF campaign against Hamas, begun in October 2023, has handed the group a resounding defeat. Hamas has lost 53 percent of the Gaza Strip. What remains of the Mediterranean enclave is largely rubble and twisted rebar. The group has lost more than 20,000 fighters. Its tunnel system, which cost as much as $1 billion to build, is being steadily destroyed by the Israeli military. Hamas has very few rockets left. And it lacks the ability to conduct a ground incursion, let alone approach the Israeli border. And yet the group has vowed to never disarm.
Previous Israeli operations against Hamas in 2008, 2012, 2014, and 2021 all ended in conclusive victories in a conventional sense, but Hamas would not bow to convention. Standing upon the rubble and having buried thousands of their fellow fighters, the group's leaders insisted that their survival, in some shape or form, was proof that they had not been defeated. The famous 2021 photo of Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar, who would later mastermind the 10/7 attacks, holding up a child in Hamas paramilitary garb, vowing to fight on after the group suffered a resounding humiliation, perfectly epitomizes Hamas's concept that it can even win by losing.
Up north in Lebanon, Hezbollah, a more powerful proxy for Iran than Hamas ever was, has also absorbed several unequivocal beatdowns at the hands of Israel. The war of 2006 left the terror group, and much of the country of Lebanon, in utter disarray. As the group's then-leader Hassan Nasrallah stated at the war's end, "If I had known...that the operation would lead to such a war, would I do it? I say no, absolutely not."
The hostilities initiated by the 10/7 attacks culminated in the elimination of Nasrallah by Israeli munitions, not to mention the death and maiming of hundreds of Hezbollah fighters after the Israelis detonated explosives in their beepers and walkie-talkies. The group quickly agreed to a cease-fire, but when Operation Epic Fury erupted in March, the group resumed its war against Israel. Hezbollah quickly began losing fighters and territory in a fight against a far more capable adversary. And yet Hezbollah again has refused to concede.
The United States has struggled with similarly tenacious foes. The 2003 lightning American victory in Iraq gave way to an insurgency that was led, in part, by holdovers from Saddam Hussein's regime. The Baathists teamed up with both Sunni and Shiite extremists to organize an insurgency aimed at driving out the United States, even after the conventional fighting subsided. The asymmetric war left the United States battered and bewildered. Unwilling to lose any further blood or treasure, the Barack Obama administration beat a shameful retreat in 2011.
America's war in Afghanistan after the September 2001 attacks ended in a similarly ignominious manner, albeit after two decades. The war against the Taliban remained open-ended even after the major fighting concluded, yielding an insurgency that ultimately forced America to terminate its presence there in 2021 with a chaotic scene at the Kabul International Airport. The Taliban hailed the American withdrawal as proof that it had achieved "the fruits of its efforts and sacrifices for 20 years."
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Trump's problems in fighting Iran are tangible: a naval blockade, drone swarms, and missile attacks on allies. But the struggle can be distilled to one word: ideology. The wars at the beginning of this century were waged to defeat that ideology. We called it the "War on Terror." And it was a war worthy of waging, even though the word "terror" was a politically correct euphemism for the true enemy, Islamic radicalism. But we gave up for lack of progress. From 2001 to 2021, the United States spent more than $8 trillion. We had the edge against our enemies in terms of firepower. However, we could not credibly declare victory no matter how many battles we won. And we could not win because the other side refused to lose.
Adherents to jihadism (who make up fewer than 20 percent of the world's Muslim population) believe that their faith commands them to fight and that victory is inevitable, even if it takes decades. Indeed, they believe they are destined to win, or die trying. As the late, great Middle East scholar Bernard Lewis wrote back in 2006, "For people with this mindset, [Mutually Assured Destruction] is not a constraint; it is an inducement."
This is the worldview of al-Qaeda and the Islamic State. It is the worldview of Iran's proxies, Hamas and Hezbollah, not to mention the Houthis in Yemen. Adherents to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's 1979 Islamic Revolution view the world this way, too.
When your enemy is the infidel, and your victory is ordained by Allah, your obligation is to keep fighting, even in defeat. Surrender is not an option. The Islamic Republic not only embraces this mindset; it portrays every challenge as a test of will that it must endure. Military losses or economic pain are spun as proof of martyrdom and sacrifice, to be answered with even greater confidence in the revolution.
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But just because someone refuses to admit defeat doesn't mean he is immune to it. The relentless Israeli–American assault on the assets of the regime is undeniably taking its toll. There is still a chance that the regime will collapse amid the demise of its top leaders, the destruction of its key military assets, and the voiding of its cash-generating businesses. If the regime survives all of that, it will still be contending with a population that is not soon to forget the slaughter of more than 30,000 patriots who were murdered for the crime of protesting against their oppressive regime. The Iranian rank and file will likely be aided by the Mossad, the CIA, and other intelligence agencies from countries that sustained attacks by the Islamic Republic over the course of this war. These countries have deep pockets and a grudge. The combined ability of these parties to provide weapons, cash, secure communications, and intelligence to the Iranian people could ultimately tip the scales and topple the regime.
The problem for Donald Trump is that such things take time. And, as we've seen, he fears that time will sink him deeper into this war, just as it has sunk America into almost every war it has fought since World War II.
One possible missed opportunity for Trump was to take a page out of the George H.W. Bush handbook. When the United States expelled Iraq from Kuwait in 1991, Saddam Hussein's regime was defeated militarily in just six weeks. However, the Iraqi government remained in place, and it was not forced to surrender unconditionally. The liberation of Kuwait was the aim, so Operation Desert Storm was deemed a success. What followed was a long-standing effort to isolate the Iraqi regime through a combination of diplomatic and economic pressure, along with UN measures to ensure disarmament and the enforcement of no-fly zones to protect the Iraqi population.
Such a scenario might have been thinkable at the outset of Operation Epic Fury. But the window for that closed when the regime began to wage its asymmetric war in the Persian Gulf. There was no way to leave and save face.
An unequivocal victory is still feasible, but that may be possible only by waging total war. Which is what Trump implied when he warned the regime that a failure to reach an equitable deal through diplomacy would result in Iran getting bombed "back to the stone age." His words immediately elicited howls of disapproval from the international community, not to mention Trump's political opponents, who declared such rhetoric out of bounds. But threats such as "a whole civilization will die" violate not a single law of war. Angry rhetoric does not constitute a crime. And in any event, due to the unlikely diplomatic intervention of Pakistan, a window for dialogue was opened.
The cease-fire that followed only 12 hours later was dramatic, but mostly because it was bound to fail. The Iranian regime sent emissaries to Islamabad to deliver one message: It will not capitulate. After 21 hours of fruitless talks, Trump and his chief negotiator, Vice President JD Vance, sensibly took no for an answer.
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The next phase of Operation Epic Fury will be a hybrid campaign. The conventional strikes will continue as necessary when targets present themselves—although we have already been told that we may have reached a point of diminishing returns in this regard.
Concurrently, the U.S. will likely continue to wage the economic campaign during which the United States Navy is blocking Iranian tankers and those paying Iran bribes for its tankers to transit the Strait of Hormuz. The Air Force may knock out additional economic assets to deprive the regime of the ability to pay its loyalists. The handbook for sanctions and other financial tools honed since the George W. Bush administration is likely to be deployed, too. This will be a reprise of Trump's "Maximum Pressure" campaign on steroids.
For Trump, this is now all about legacy and history. If waged wisely, Operation Epic Fury could bring down America's most determined Middle Eastern foe. It can also help redefine military victory in the modern era. There will be no white flags, no papers signed on a battleship, no suicides in a bunker. We will have to content ourselves with knowing we set the world on a new course—even as, in the wake of a victory, there will almost certainly be an entire class of experts and political opponents who will continue to insist that the whole thing was a dead loss.