The Strategy We Are Not Prosecuting: Options for Senior Leaders in the Iran War

Introduction: The Prediction Confirmed

Two weeks ago, in “We Bombed the Wrong Target,” I argued that Operation Epic Fury had addressed the headline, Iran’s nuclear program, while leaving the story largely untouched: Tehran’s regional proxy network and its underlying strategy of asymmetric resistance. I warned that “the United States has addressed the headline. It now faces the story, and it does not appear to have a strategy ready for it.” That assessment has aged poorly only in one sense: the situation has deteriorated faster than anticipated.

Fourteen days into Operation Epic Fury, seven American service members are dead and approximately 140 more have been wounded. Iran has effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz, driving oil above $100 per barrel. A U.S. Tomahawk cruise missile, operating on decade-old targeting data, likely killed more than 170 schoolgirls in Minab, the deadliest civilian casualty event for the U.S. military in recent decades. A new Iranian supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, backed by the IRGC and hostile to diplomatic compromise, has been installed. And the Trump administration cannot coherently articulate what victory looks like or when the war ends.

This article is not another post-mortem. It is written as strategic counsel to senior leaders at the Pentagon and in the White House who must navigate what comes next. The core argument is straightforward: the United States is prosecuting this war with only one instrument of national power, military force, while Iran fights across all five. That asymmetry, unless corrected immediately, transforms military success into strategic failure. The following sections provide concrete, actionable options across all elements of national power: diplomatic, informational, military, economic, and legal (DIMEL). The Commander-in-Chief and the National Security Council need options. Here are mine.

I. The Strategic Situation as of Day 14

What Has Happened

The United States and Israel launched Operation Epic Fury on February 28, 2026, assassinating Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, destroying Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, degrading its navy, and striking its missile production and storage facilities. Iran responded immediately with drone and missile attacks against U.S. bases across the Middle East, strikes on Gulf states and Israel, and the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz. Hezbollah has re-activated in Lebanon. Kataib Hezbollah and affiliated Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) in Iraq have struck U.S. assets. The Houthis are launching again from Yemen.

A new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, the elder Khamenei’s son and an IRGC product, was elected on March 8 after the Assembly of Experts was itself struck on March 3 while convening. He is not expected to pursue the reformist-diplomatic track his father balanced against Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) militarism. He entered office marking the occasion with a missile barrage against Israel and Gulf states.

The Trump administration’s stated objectives have shifted repeatedly: from nuclear disarmament, to degrading missile capabilities, to regime change, to “unconditional surrender,” back to something more limited. Allied nations report they have no idea what the administration ultimately intends. Middle East Envoy Steve Witkoff, when asked how he sees the war ending, said, “I don’t know.” The IRGC, meanwhile, has declared that Iran, not the U.S., will determine when the war ends.

What My Prior Analysis Predicted, and What It Means Now

My earlier analysis argued three things: first, that Iran’s proxy network was built to outlast its nuclear program’s destruction and would remain operational after any kinetic strike; second, that the “coalition of one” dynamic would emerge immediately, isolating the United States diplomatically; and third, that without a post-kinetic strategy, military success would not translate into sustainable strategic outcomes.

All three have been validated. Hezbollah has not disbanded. The Houthis resumed operations within hours of the initial strikes. Kataib Hezbollah, embedded in Iraqi security forces, struck U.S. personnel at multiple locations. The Atlantic Council notes that Iran perceives itself to be in an existential conflict in which a cessation of hostilities is merely a temporary pause before the next U.S. or Israeli attack, making a prolonged war of attrition Tehran’s calculated preference. No allied nation has joined the coalition. Spain, Chile, Russia, China, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Egypt have all voiced concern or condemnation.

The Minab school strike crystallizes the post-kinetic strategic deficit I warned about. The Pentagon, having cut by 90 percent the office responsible for civilian harm prevention, and relying on targeting data that pre-dated the construction of a separating wall between the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps base and the school by over a decade, killed more than 170 children. The international legal and diplomatic fallout from Minab alone may have done more damage to American credibility than any single military setback.

II. The Strategic Deficit: Fighting with One Hand

The United States possesses five instruments of national power: diplomatic, informational, military, economic, and legal. In any well-designed national security strategy, these instruments reinforce one another. The Biden administration’s integrated deterrence framework, whatever its shortcomings, at least conceptually addressed the orchestration of all five. The current campaign against Iran has been prosecuted almost entirely through the military instrument. The result is that Iran, which is employing all five instruments simultaneously, has strategic maneuver room that an integrated U.S. approach would deny it.

Tehran has deployed diplomacy through Pezeshkian’s outreach to Russia and Pakistan; information operations through the Minab imagery and global solidarity narratives; military pressure through proxy activation and Strait of Hormuz interdiction; economic coercion through energy infrastructure targeting and shipping disruption; and legal pressure through UN Security Council complaints. Washington has answered with more air strikes and contradictory presidential statements.

The Washington Institute captures the central paradox: while the United States and Israel are clearly winning the war in military terms, if they stopped fighting today they would be judged to have lost. That is the definition of a strategy that depends entirely on achieving a political outcome, regime collapse or unconditional surrender, that military force alone is unlikely to produce on an acceptable timeline, at an acceptable cost, and with acceptable international legitimacy.

III. Strategic Options Across All Instruments of National Power

A. Diplomatic Instrument

The greatest immediate strategic error is the administration’s refusal to designate a credible interlocutor and open back-channel communications with Tehran’s interim leadership. Iranian President Pezeshkian has publicly committed to peace, spoken with Russia and Pakistan, and floated conditions, reparations, recognition of legitimate rights, and security guarantees. These are maximalist opening positions, not preconditions for a conversation.

• Option D-1 – Structured Ceasefire Negotiations via Omani Mediation: Oman has been the United States’ most reliable back-channel to Tehran for two administrations. Senior leaders should authorize quiet, non-publicized contact through Muscat with a focused agenda: a 72-hour humanitarian pause, which can be extended, tied to Iranian suspension of Strait of Hormuz interdiction. This is not capitulation. It is a pressure valve that gives the administration a claim of “winning,” reduces the casualty count, and opens space for a structured end-state negotiation. The Atlantic Council’s expert assessment warns that assuming Iran will stop fighting when Washington decides is the same reasoning that led planners to assume Iran would not respond forcefully to the strikes in the first place.
• Option D-2 – Engage the New Supreme Leader’s Inner Circle Indirectly: Despite Mojtaba Khamenei’s hardline credentials, his regime is new, untested, and facing enormous internal pressure. There is historical precedent for engaging new Iranian leadership precisely because they are unbound by their predecessor’s commitments. The administration should authorize preliminary contact through a trusted third party, Qatar or Switzerland, to explore whether Mojtaba Khamenei is open to a grand bargain: a formalized end to proxy operations in exchange for a legally binding U.S. commitment not to pursue regime change and a phased lifting of sanctions.
• Option D-3 – Arab Coalition Architecture: Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have strategic interests in ending Hormuz interdiction that are as acute as America’s. Rather than treating Gulf states as passive hosts for U.S. forces, senior leaders should elevate Gulf states to active diplomatic partners. Crown Prince Salman’s reported vow to employ military force against Iranian incursions represents a potential burden-sharing opportunity that should be formalized into a collective defense framework, not exploited ad hoc. A visible Arab coalition changes the political optics of “coalition of one” and provides diplomatic cover for a negotiated outcome.

B. Informational Instrument

The United States is losing the information war decisively, and has been since Day One. The images from Minab, pink flowers on a school wall, aerial photographs of mass graves, have now circled the globe dozens of times. Trump’s claim that Iran fired the Tomahawk missile was immediately and comprehensively refuted by Bellingcat, NPR, the BBC, the New York Times, CNN, and eight independent munitions experts. The denial did not reduce the damage. It compounded it.

• Option I-1 – Acknowledge Minab and Get Ahead of the Narrative: Senior leaders should counsel the Commander in Chief to publicly accept responsibility for the Minab strike, commit to a transparent investigation, announce a compensation fund for victims’ families, and announce the reconstitution of the Pentagon’s civilian harm mitigation office. NPR reported that Defense Department cuts had reduced the civilian casualty prevention team by 90 percent. Restoring that capacity is both operationally necessary and strategically communicable.
• Option I-2 – Strategic Narrative Consolidation: The administration has offered inconsistent explanations of its war aims in nearly every public forum. A Quinnipiac poll found that 71 percent of Americans believe this conflict will last months or longer. The administration’s failure to communicate a coherent end-state is feeding that pessimism. Senior leaders should develop and enforce a single, unified strategic narrative with four components: what we have achieved, what remains to be achieved, what success looks like, and how we get there. Every principal, the President, Secretary of War, Secretary of State, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, should speak from the same document.
• Option I-3 – Counter-Narrative Targeting Iranian Domestic Audience: The internet blackout in Iran has dropped connectivity to 4 percent of normal levels, but the IRGC is distributing “white Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) cards” to regime supporters. The U.S. should surge resources to Radio Farda, Voice of America (VOA) Persian, and allied civil society organizations to provide uncensored information to the Iranian population. The Iranian people have a legitimate stake in ending this war and have previously demonstrated the capacity for mass resistance. That is not a policy lever the U.S. should leave unused.

C. Military Instrument

The military instrument has been the dominant, and nearly exclusive, tool of this campaign. The kinetic phase has achieved significant tactical successes: Iran’s nuclear infrastructure has been degraded, its navy substantially destroyed, and senior IRGC leadership killed. However, as I argued in my prior analysis, the IRGC demonstrated after Soleimani’s 2020 killing that it adapts, reconstitutes, and continues. The institutional depth of 180,000 personnel means that leadership decapitation imposes symbolic costs without operationally disabling the organization.

• Option M-1 – Prioritize Hormuz Over Regime Targets: The single most strategically consequential action the U.S. military can take right now is reopening the Strait of Hormuz. Oil has exceeded $100 per barrel and the International Energy Agency (IEA) has characterized this as the largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market. Every day the Strait remains closed, domestic pressure on the Commander-in-Chief intensifies, allied support further erodes, and the economic case for ending the war grows stronger in the minds of the American public. Senior leaders should direct CENTCOM to shift targeting priorities toward Hormuz interdiction capabilities, Iranian naval assets, mine-laying vessels, shore-based anti-ship missile batteries, as the military’s primary contribution to a negotiated end-state.
• Option M-2 – Proxy Degradation with Precision and Legal Grounding: The administration should direct precise, legally grounded strikes against Kataib Hezbollah and Houthi command and control nodes, not mass strikes on areas with high civilian density. The 74 percent of Americans who oppose sending ground troops to Iran must not be antagonized by strikes that look indiscriminate. Precision at this stage is not squeamishness, it is an instrument of domestic political sustainability.
• Option M-3 – No Boots on the Ground Without Authorization: Trump has not ruled out deploying ground troops to Iran. This would be categorically different from the air campaign in legal, political, and strategic terms, and would almost certainly trigger a War Powers Resolution (WPR) confrontation with Congress. Senior leaders should advise strongly against any ground deployment absent a formal Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) and a clear, bounded mission. The Iraq and Afghanistan precedents demonstrate the cost of sending ground forces into countries without a coherent post-conflict political plan.

D. Economic Instrument

Economic warfare has been asymmetrically engaged: Iran is weaponizing energy through Hormuz interdiction while the U.S. has not systematically applied its economic leverage beyond pre-existing sanctions. That asymmetry must be corrected.

• Option E-1 – Coordinated Strategic Petroleum Reserve Release and IEA Engagement: The International Energy Agency has already authorized the release of 400 million barrels of strategic reserves. The U.S. should coordinate with IEA members to release additional reserves on a conditional basis, publicly tied to a ceasefire and Hormuz reopening, creating a direct economic incentive structure for both Iran and the broader international community to support a negotiated outcome. This leverages the economic instrument to reinforce the diplomatic instrument.
• Option E-2 – Targeted Sanctions Relief as a Negotiating Tool: The administration should authorize Treasury to develop a structured, conditional sanctions relief package that can be offered, but not yet granted, as part of a back-channel negotiation. The pre-war nuclear talks demonstrated that economic incentives can move Iranian negotiators. Wartime leverage is greater, not lesser, if the offer is credible and conditioned on verifiable behavioral changes.
• Option E-3 – Counter Iran’s Energy Weapon with Gulf Coordination: Senior leaders should convene an emergency meeting with Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Kuwait to surge production and explicitly compensate for Hormuz-related supply disruption. The economic cost of the Strait closure is driving domestic pressure on the Commander in Chief, a CNN analysis notes that oil prices have “erased a key talking point” on the domestic economy. Turning that liability into a managed response is both economically and politically necessary.

E. Legal Instrument

The legal instrument is the most neglected element of U.S. national power in this campaign and it is creating compounding liabilities.

• Option L-1 – Seek a Congressional AUMF: Operation Epic Fury was launched without congressional authorization. The Washington Post poll found that a leading reason Americans oppose the war is the absence of congressional approval. Seeking an AUMF retroactively, with clearly defined geographic and temporal limits, accomplishes three things: it broadens domestic political legitimacy; it constrains mission creep by defining end-state conditions; and it complicates Iranian information operations that frame this as a unilateral imperial adventure.
• Option L-2 – Engage International Humanitarian Law Mechanisms: The Minab strike has drawn UNESCO condemnation, a UN Human Rights Office statement, and a panel of 18 independent UN experts on children’s rights. The administration’s current posture, denial, followed by investigation, followed by continued denial at the presidential level, is the worst possible legal strategy. Senior leaders should direct the Office of General Counsel at DoD to prepare a thorough, transparent legal review of the Minab strike and present its findings to Congress and the UN, with compensatory commitments. The legal cost of denial exceeds the legal cost of accountability.
• Option L-3 – UNSC Resolution Framework: The United States should work with allied nations at the UN Security Council to pass a resolution establishing a ceasefire monitoring framework with verifiable Iranian compliance requirements: suspension of proxy operations, mine removal from Hormuz, and IAEA access to any surviving nuclear facilities. This provides an international legitimacy architecture for a negotiated end-state that neither the U.S. nor Iran can construct bilaterally at present.

IV. Endgame: What Does Success Actually Look Like?

Senior leaders must answer a question that the administration has conspicuously avoided: what is the minimum acceptable outcome that allows the U.S. to declare strategic success, disengage, and sustain the outcome?

The maximalist answer, regime change, unconditional surrender, democratic transition, is operationally implausible without a ground force that the American public will not support and that no allied nation will provide. Mojtaba Khamenei’s installation, backed by an IRGC that has retained, by the latest estimates, substantial institutional depth—means that decapitation did not produce regime collapse. It produced a more hardline successor.

A sustainable minimum acceptable outcome includes: (1) a verifiable end to Iranian nuclear weapons development, with IAEA access and monitoring; (2) a sustainable reduction in proxy operations against U.S. forces and partners, enforced through ongoing economic pressure; (3) reopening of the Strait of Hormuz with international monitoring; and (4) a legal framework, either bilateral or multilaterally brokered, that provides both sides a dignified exit from active hostilities.

That outcome is achievable. But it requires the United States to fight the war on all five fronts, not one.

Conclusion: The Network Remains, But So Does the Opportunity

My prior analysis concluded that Iran’s proxy network would outlast the nuclear program’s destruction. That remains true. But two weeks of conflict have also revealed something that was not fully predictable: Iran’s new leadership is under profound pressure. The new supreme leader is untested. President Pezeshkian has publicly committed to peace. The IRGC is depleted at its senior levels. Domestic Iranian unrest, while suppressed, has not been extinguished.

A Marist poll found that 54 percent of Americans disapprove of Trump’s handling of Iran and 56 percent oppose military action. The Quinnipiac poll found 74 percent oppose ground troops. The Commander in Chief has domestic runway for a negotiated exit that he can credibly frame as victory, if he acts before the casualty count, the oil price, and the Minab narrative foreclose the political space.

Robert Pape, writing in Foreign Affairs, has framed this precisely: “a grinding regional war marked by energy price spikes, U.S. casualties, and uncertain objectives will cause disquiet at home…By widening the theater and prolonging the war, Tehran is shifting the contest from a battle of military capabilities to one of political endurance.”

Iran is waging a war of attrition against American political will. That is the actual battlespace. The United States has the tools to contest it. The question is whether senior leaders will pick them up.