The US-Israeli war on Iran has exposed the limits of the American military model built around technological superiority and precision strikes.
During the first six months of the war, the United States achieved broad operational superiority and inflicted major military and economic damage on Iran. Yet it failed to secure a decisive victory, while Tehran continued launching attacks and negotiations aimed at ending hostilities remained stalled.
The war has therefore raised a broader question: can this model of warfare still achieve its political objectives, or has its viability become increasingly dependent on whether US decision-makers can avoid provoking public anger at home?
Broad Military Superiority Without Decisive Victory
When the United States, alongside the Israeli occupation state, launched its war against Iran at the end of February, the prevailing assumption was that Iran’s comparatively modest military and weakened political system would be unable to withstand a prolonged high-technology war of the kind favoured by Washington.
With artificial intelligence, precision-guided munitions and platforms such as aircraft carriers and stealth aircraft, many observers assumed the United States would be capable of forcing Iran to submit to its demands while facing relatively limited domestic consequences.
In an article published by the Financial Times, Jacquelyn Schneider, a fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, identified several outcomes that could indicate that this American model of warfare was no longer effective. These included failure to achieve a decisive victory, the conflict drifting into state-building operations or guerrilla warfare, and the accumulation of enormous economic costs.
After the opening months of the war, Schneider argues that the United States had effectively dominated this stage of the conflict.
US forces carried out more than 13,000 strikes, destroyed the Iranian air force and a large portion of the Iranian navy, assassinated the supreme leader and numerous senior commanders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and imposed a blockade on Iranian ports.
The damage was not confined to the military sphere.
The war devastated Iran’s economy, producing immediate effects on inflation and resource shortages, while reconstruction costs were estimated at between $200 billion and $300 billion.
Heavy Damage and Billions Needed to Rebuild US Stockpiles
Despite this operational success, the United States has not achieved a decisive victory.
Hardliners have taken control in Iran, while the fate of the country’s nuclear programme remains unclear despite the possibility that it was damaged by US-Israeli strikes.
Negotiations aimed at ending hostilities have also stalled.
Iran has continued launching missile attacks against US forces and American allies across the region, while navigation through the Strait of Hormuz, and now the Red Sea, remains at risk.
Schneider argues that America’s strategic success remains unclear, even though the operational cost is easier to calculate.
Eighteen people have been killed and at least 624 injured.
That toll remains far lower than US casualties during the ground wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam, but it is substantially higher than during the last major US air campaign in the Balkans in the 1990s.
During the current war, the United States lost or suffered damage to 42 aircraft, including four F-15s, one F-35, one E-3 aircraft and more than 20 Reaper drones.
By comparison, the United States lost only one F-16 and two Predator drones during two years of air warfare in the Balkans.
The financial cost has also extended well beyond battlefield losses.
Operations against Iran have cost the Pentagon $37.5 billion, in addition to another $67 billion required to rebuild weapons stockpiles that have fallen to dangerously low levels.
A further $5 billion may be required to repair damaged facilities across the region.
The chief economist at Moody’s Analytics estimated that the “average American household will pay $1,000 because of the war”, either through taxes required to sustain military spending or through higher fuel prices.
A Costly War Without Widespread Public Backlash
By virtually every measure, Iran represents a failed example of the American approach to warfare.
Yet the success or failure of this model is not determined primarily by battlefield results. Rather, it depends on whether prolonged, high-technology wars can shield political decision-makers from the anger of the American public.
Battlefield success can make wars more popular among Americans, but this is not always the case.
The Tet Offensive during the Vietnam War demonstrated how the United States could defeat the Viet Cong militarily while still losing domestic political support.
Conversely, the Korean War generated relatively little public anger even as thousands of US military personnel and workers were killed, offering an example of how Americans can become resigned, or even indifferent, to losses in the face of failure.
Polling indicates that most Americans disapprove of the war with Iran, although support is higher among Donald Trump’s political base.
Despite this, the war has so far generated only limited domestic unrest.
There have been no mass demonstrations and no widespread resignations from within the military.
The death of a US Navy helicopter pilot in the Arabian Sea also attracted little public attention.
Meanwhile, despite some declines, the stock market has continued to perform strongly and oil prices have fallen.
Military Technology Confronts the Problem of Cost and Adaptability
At the same time, the US military budget remains heavily dependent on expensive precision-guided munitions delivered by destroyers and stealth aircraft.
These systems are difficult to scale quickly and difficult to adapt rapidly to changing battlefield conditions.
Uncrewed systems also remain primarily focused on reducing personnel casualties rather than lowering costs or creating fundamentally new military missions.
Meanwhile, the US defence industrial base continues to favour large, rigid and expensive weapons programmes.
For Schneider, the real political test may come in November, when the midterm elections reveal whether voters are prepared to punish Republicans for initiating the conflict.
If no such political punishment occurs, Congress and the White House are highly unlikely to change the way they employ the US military.
That would leave the task of reform to veterans of the war, who would be required to develop new doctrines and theories of victory, alongside new approaches to military personnel and weapons systems.
Veterans of the Vietnam War were able to transform the US military profoundly, including through the creation of an all-volunteer force and changes to America’s theory of victory.
That transformation was driven partly by their belief that the American public was willing to hold political decision-makers accountable.
Today, however, it remains unclear whether the average American citizen is concerned enough to impose such accountability at all.
