Writer Jeffrey Silverman argues that bombing alone has never decided a war, and that the current air campaign against Iran is no exception.
In an article published by the Russian magazine New Eastern Outlook, Silverman said the United States had trapped itself in a cycle of proxy wars in which every escalation narrows the room for manoeuvre, until “the war nobody wants” becomes unavoidable.
He wrote that, contrary to what the US government and what he described as its propaganda arm in the mainstream media seek to convince the public, “no war has ever been won by bombing alone”.
Regardless of how much damage air power causes, ground forces are ultimately required to impose control, he argued.
The Dilemma of a Ground Invasion
According to Silverman, it has now become clear, even to the most ardent supporters of US President Donald Trump, that the air assault on Iran must either be abandoned or escalated into a ground invasion.
The key questions, he wrote, are how such an invasion would occur, what forces would carry it out and from which direction.
One theory suggests that Washington could use Kurdish forces to launch a ground invasion from Iraq, while the United States intervenes by land from the Gulf.
Silverman said he was beginning to consider this possibility credible based on Trump’s statement: “We have others invading on our behalf.”
He argued that the Middle East had entered a dangerous stage in which deterrence and escalation were unfolding simultaneously, describing proxy wars as a cowardly tactic used to ignite wars while pretending the initial spark came from elsewhere.
The latest rounds of US attacks, he added, may also be intended to “prepare the battlefield” along the Gulf ahead of a ground operation.
Manipulating the Markets
Silverman warned that further escalation could destroy oil and refining facilities not only in Iran but across the region, sharply reducing the volume of supplies available for transport through strategic waterways.
He claimed that global oil reserves, including the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve, were being depleted, while the refining sector was in an even worse condition than crude oil supplies.
As a result, petrol prices could rise dramatically, he said.
Silverman argued that events had reached a point where Trump would decide that he needed to return to negotiations, even if only temporarily.
According to his assessment, Trump continues the bombing until the economic impact peaks, then attempts to pause, allowing markets to recover before repeating the cycle.
Silverman said it appeared as though Trump was using war and threats of war to manipulate markets and reward his financiers.
He claimed that Trump owed a political debt to what he described as the Zionist lobby for financing his election and helping him remain in power.
The Illusion of De-escalation
For a brief period, Washington appeared to believe that the Middle East was entering another familiar cycle: retaliation, followed by a pause, then negotiations.
Trump’s decision to suspend direct strikes on Iran in recent days was presented as an opening for diplomacy and as a sign that military pressure had created enough leverage to test Tehran’s willingness to negotiate.
However, Silverman argued that this opening may already have closed on 28 July, when the US Central Command announced that American and Saudi forces had carried out coordinated air strikes on what it described as “terrorist logistics and weapons sites” used by Iran-backed armed groups in eastern Iraq.
He said the significance of those strikes extended far beyond Iraq.
Armed groups in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen were now bearing the consequences of what was happening to Iran, while the United States was striking those groups in an attempt to achieve military effects without entering a direct confrontation with Tehran.
Silverman argued that Iran was at least comparable to Washington in conventional firepower and held the advantage of fighting on its own territory.
According to him, the latest US messaging suggested that Washington now viewed the chain of command between Tehran and its regional partners as direct enough to make the distinction between a “proxy” and the “principal party” strategically meaningless.
Lessons from History
Historically, Silverman wrote, prolonged proxy wars often produce the opposite of their intended result.
Every intercepted missile, drone attack and retaliatory strike narrows the political space available for compromise while expanding the scope of military operations.
Although Washington and Tehran do not appear to be seeking an all-out war, he argued that history offers little reason for optimism.
The First World War, Silverman noted, did not begin because European governments wanted a continental conflict.
It emerged because alliance commitments, the logic of retaliation and miscalculation overwhelmed political restraints.
In his view, the Middle East now carries many of the same structural risks: multiple state and non-state actors, overlapping battlefields, unclear chains of command and increasingly narrow decision-making timelines.
The greatest strategic danger, he argued, lies not in deliberate escalation but in accumulated escalation.
Weapons and Stock Markets
Silverman said energy markets were already reflecting the possibility of a wider conflict.
Oil prices had risen sharply as investors recognised the risk of the war spreading across the Gulf and threatening shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.
This, he wrote, served as a reminder that regional wars rarely remain regional for long.
He added that diplomacy had not merely failed but had never truly been placed on the table, at least by the United States and Israel.
Diplomacy, however, requires an element that is increasingly absent from the current crisis: time.
The Middle East, he argued, had entered a dangerous phase in which efforts to restore deterrence were occurring alongside continued escalation.
Washington believes that stronger military responses will re-establish deterrence.
The Delusions of ‘Greater Israel’
Silverman said Tehran, meanwhile, appeared convinced that calibrated proxy attacks could impose costs on other states without triggering a full-scale war.
Both assumptions, he warned, cannot remain valid indefinitely.
He argued that bloodshed carried out in pursuit of the delusions of “Greater Israel”, or as part of Washington’s cycles of market manipulation, does not make war cleaner.
Instead, it makes war dirtier, longer and more likely to spiral into a comprehensive regional catastrophe that no party wants.
Deterrence and escalation cannot coexist forever, Silverman wrote.
Every “precision” strike on a proxy, every Saudi-American raid described as “self-defence”, and every Iranian drone or missile that crosses a border further narrows the possibility of retreat for all sides.
According to Silverman, proxies eventually become principal parties, the principal parties are then drawn into confrontation, and “the war nobody wants” becomes a war fought by everyone.
He concluded by saying that Trump, trapped by circumstances of his own making, appeared “increasingly mentally unstable”, consumed by revenge and anger, and lacking both a coherent strategy and the ability to listen to anyone rational.
Silverman also said he did not expect a ground invasion before September at the earliest, due to the extreme heat and water scarcity.
