Wars are often sold as brief episodes of coercion. A few strikes, a few demonstrations of force, a few calculated escalations — and then, supposedly, the other side folds. That appears to have been the original fantasy behind the American war on Iran: strike hard, move fast, intimidate Tehran, and finish the campaign before oil markets fully grasped what was happening. This was, after all, the template for Venezuela that worked so well. Netanyahu, Witkoff, and Kushner had Trump’s ear, and they made the case that this would be a slam-dunk, and Trump bought it. He had also made promises to demonstrators in Iran and faced a massive loss of credibility (which meant he had to do something).
But the fantasy he bought into is now colliding with reality.
The losses the United States is incurring in this war are beginning to accumulate in ways that can no longer be dismissed as trivial friction. Iran has reportedly managed to destroy at least ten radar installations across the Middle East. Most were American-owned, while the rest had been supplied to U.S. allies. That matters far beyond symbolism. Early-warning radar is what gives a missile defense network depth and reaction time. When those installations are knocked out, more Iranian missiles slip through the defensive curtain. That means greater vulnerability not only for
American bases, but for regional infrastructure and for Israel as well.
The air war, too, is proving more difficult than the public mythology of American dominance would suggest. U.S. Central Command reportedly acknowledged that Iranian air defenses managed to hit at least one F-35 stealth fighter. The pilot was reportedly injured, and the aircraft made what was described as a “hard landing” — diplomatic language that may conceal a far more serious loss. Whatever the precise details, the broader significance is clear. It punctures the old Lockheed Martin fantasy of invisibility and undermines the convenient claim that Iran has somehow lost control of its own airspace. If Iranian defenses are still capable of threatening advanced American aircraft, then Washington cannot simply shift to cheap gravity bombing and routine strike packages. It must continue to rely on expensive and scarce standoff munitions, which means the war remains both militarily constrained and financially costly.
Elsewhere, the attrition is mounting by inches. The aircraft carrier Ford reportedly had to leave the region for repairs after a fire destroyed some six hundred berths aboard the ship. Already infamous for technical problems, the vessel may now require a far longer overhaul than anyone wants to admit. A second carrier has reportedly been pulled back to the southern Arabian Sea for fear that it, too, could be exposed to Iranian attack. That retreat creates another problem: distance. The farther carriers are pushed from the battlespace, the more American air operations depend on time-consuming aerial refueling.
And even that refueling architecture is showing signs of strain. Some five U.S. KC-135 tankers were reportedly hit during an Iranian strike on Saudi Arabia. Another was lost, and another was damaged, in an in-air collision. At least three F-15s are said to have been destroyed in alleged friendly-fire incidents near Kuwait. Of the hundred MQ-9 Reaper drones the United States has acquired, roughly ten have reportedly been lost in recent reconnaissance missions over Iran.
None of this, taken individually, would cripple a military as large as that of the United States. But wars are not measured only by catastrophic single events. They are measured by accumulation. And this war is still only in its third week. Losses that seem manageable on day twenty-one can look very different on day sixty, day ninety, or day one hundred and twenty.
Against that background, Washington is moving more forces toward the theater. An Amphibious Readiness Group of three ships carrying roughly 2,200 Marines has reportedly been ordered from Japan to the Middle East, while another is expected to leave San Diego. Yet these deployments are less impressive than the headlines suggest. Each ARG — effectively a Marine Expeditionary Unit — contains only about 800 troops suited for actual ground combat operations. The rest are support and logistics personnel. These are forces designed for raids, beach assaults, seizures of landing strips, and short-duration expeditionary missions. They can support themselves for perhaps a week before they require relief by larger conventional forces. Those follow-on forces are still missing.
That is why the speculation surrounding dramatic American landing operations deserves much more skepticism than it has received. There has been chatter about seizing Kharg Island, the key terminal from which Iranian oil is loaded for export. But to reach Kharg, U.S. amphibious forces would have to pass through the Strait of Hormuz under intensely dangerous conditions. And taking the island would be only the beginning. Holding it under Iranian artillery, missiles, and drone attack would be a profoundly costly undertaking — less a clean operation than a suicide mission.
The smaller Iranian islands within the Strait are often discussed as easier alternatives. They are not. They, too, lie well within Iranian strike range. Occupying any of them would require a sustained campaign and a willingness to absorb losses on a scale that Washington has shown little appetite for in recent years.
The same goes for the loud talk of reopening the Strait of Hormuz by escorting civilian shipping. In theory, of course, the United States can do this. In practice, the forces required are simply not in place. A genuine convoy-protection mission would need roughly a dozen destroyers, minesweepers, and substantial aerial support. Yet at least two of the three U.S. minesweepers that should be in the Middle East are reportedly in Malaysia, while most available destroyers are already tied up protecting carriers. Reopening Hormuz is therefore not a matter of issuing orders and hoisting flags. It is a matter of assembling capabilities that may take weeks or even months to put into place.
This is where the war begins to reveal its true structure. The Trump administration, by all appearances, hoped to finish the Iran campaign before oil prices truly moved. It wanted a coercive demonstration without a global energy shock. But Iran did not submit, and the chance for Washington simply to “chicken out” has narrowed sharply. It takes two sides to stop a war, and Iran has little incentive to make concessions while under attack. Yet even now, the administration appears not fully reconciled to the reality that it has wedged itself into a long, expansive conflict.
Its desperate efforts to suppress oil prices make that plain.
Under normal conditions, the world consumes roughly 100 million barrels of crude oil per day. With the Strait blocked or severely constrained, around 15 million barrels per day are effectively missing. The first market response to such a shock is to draw down reserves and stored inventories. Washington has reportedly lifted sanctions on Russian oil stored at sea and is considering doing the same for some 140 million barrels of floating Iranian reserves. Strategic petroleum reserves may also be tapped. But these are stopgaps, not solutions. The decisive issue in an oil shock is not merely the volume of reserves, but the flow rate — how much can be delivered to market per day. U.S. salt-cavern reserves can release around 1.2 million barrels a day. Total global reserve flow is around 2 million barrels a day. Against a 15-million-barrel daily shortfall, that is little more than a bandage on a severed artery.
Paper prices are already diverging from physical reality. Futures may still hover around $100 a barrel, but product markets reportedly already exceed $150. Saudi forecasts point to $180 in early April, with $200 by mid-month no longer sounding far-fetched. Natural gas and LPG prices are likely to rise even more sharply, because roughly one-fifth of total capacity is now missing. And the problem does not end with fuel. Nearly half the global helium supply — essential for chip production — is disrupted. Sulfur becomes scarce. Urea and other fertilizers become far more expensive. Jet fuel and naphtha, both critical to modern industrial systems, are beginning to vanish from a reliable supply.
This is what makes the Gulf War so dangerous: it is never only about oil.
When jet fuel becomes scarce, air travel contracts. When fertilizers become scarce, food production suffers. When food prices rise, poorer societies do not merely complain — they fracture. Hunger creates unrest, riots, and revolt. The public may grumble first about gasoline prices, but the deeper consequences of a Gulf war arrive later, when the cost of food, transport, chemicals, manufacturing, and daily life begins to climb all at once.
And yet this crisis is unfolding in a region whose supposed American partners are themselves among the world’s most fragile states.
There is much loose talk about drawing the world’s most fragile states, the Gulf Arab monarchies, more directly into the war against Iran. But this language betrays a fundamental ignorance of what those states actually are. They are rich, yes. They possess formidable financial assets, glittering skylines, and impressive procurement contracts. But wealth is not the same as resilience.
Demographically, they are brittle. In much of the Gulf, native citizens are either a narrow majority or a minority in their own states. The labor force, the service sector, construction, logistics, and even many strategic industries depend heavily on expatriate populations with no deep stake in national military projects. These are not societies built around mass mobilization, national sacrifice, or prolonged war-making capacity. They are societies built around rent distribution, managed consumption, imported labor, and political quiet.
Geographically, they are exposed to almost unbelievable extremes. They are flat, urbanized, coastal, and intensely concentrated. Their critical infrastructure — ports, airports, oil terminals, desalination plants, petrochemical complexes, financial districts, luxury real estate, and tourist hubs — sits within reach of Iranian missiles and drones. They lack strategic depth. They cannot trade space for time. They cannot absorb sustained attack and simply retreat inland, because in many cases, there is scarcely any meaningful inland refuge to retreat into.
Economically, they are even more vulnerable than they appear. Their two great industries are energy and tourism. Both are exquisitely sensitive to instability. Energy infrastructure can be struck directly. Tourism can be killed by fear alone. A missile landing near a luxury hotel, a drone over a skyline, a disruption at an airport, a refinery fire visible on social media — any of these can shatter the carefully cultivated image of safety on which Gulf tourism depends. The very sectors that generate wealth in the Gulf are the most easily disrupted sectors by war.
In other words, the Gulf states are not in any serious position to take on Iran in a prolonged conflict. To ask them to do so would not be a strategy. It would be an invitation to economic self-destruction and perhaps internal instability.
That, in turn, is why the United States will have trouble simply walking away.
For decades, Washington has functioned as the armed guarantor of the Gulf order. It protects shipping lanes, underwrites the survival of monarchies, and provides the strategic umbrella beneath which oil exports, tourism, finance, and elite consumption can continue. If the Gulf states cannot themselves bear the burden of confrontation with Iran — and they cannot — then any escalation that threatens the regional system falls back, almost automatically, onto the United States.
This is the trap.
Washington cannot easily escalate to a decisive victory because Iran is too large, too armed, too capable of retaliation, and too integrated into the geography of Gulf disruption. But neither can Washington easily disengage, because the states it has spent decades protecting are structurally incapable of replacing American power. The Gulf monarchies are not Sparta with sovereign wealth funds. They are fragile commercial city-states with hydrocarbon rents, imported populations, exposed coastlines, and few real wartime options.
The Trump administration would prefer a compliant but still resourceful Iran — weakened enough to submit, intact enough to remain useful. Israel and its American lobby seem to want something far more radical: the destruction of Iran and perhaps the broader shattering of the Gulf order itself. That is why there are increasing efforts to incite the Persian Gulf’s Arab states, and even Turkey, into openly joining the war. If these states can be dragged into direct confrontation, the battlefield widens, the burdens spread, and Washington may hope eventually to reduce its own visible role while continuing to supply weapons from behind the lines.
That is a familiar pattern. It is also an extraordinarily dangerous one.
Because if even one Gulf state takes the suicidal step of fighting Iran with its own means, it will not produce a neat anti-Iran coalition. It will produce cascading vulnerabilities across the peninsula, strikes on infrastructure, capital flight, a collapse in tourism, export disruptions, political anxiety, and the possibility that some of the world’s richest states begin to discover how little strategic depth money can buy.
This is why the war on Iran is becoming something larger than a campaign. It is becoming a test of whether the entire Gulf order can survive sustained conflict. The United States is already paying military costs. It is sliding toward energy, economic, and strategic costs. Its local partners are too fragile to take over. Its enemies are too capable of being dismissed. And the assumptions that governed the opening days of the war — quick victory, manageable escalation, stable oil, intimidated Iran, secure Gulf allies — are dissolving one by one.
What remains is the harsher truth.
The region will never be the same. The region may never recover. This is very bad news globally, with many regions, i.e., Europeans and South Asians, heavily affected by the drop in trade with the region. They will never forgive Israel or the United States. And, American consumers facing higher energy costs, will also not forget that this was a war of choice.
America is no longer fighting a war it can neatly win, and it is no longer free to leave a war whose consequences it can safely ignore. This is a huge strategic blunder with potentially catastrophic consequences and no off-ramp.
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