Wars rarely end on political will alone, and this conflict is constrained by a dense web of strategic, economic and security pressures that neither side can easily escape.
What began with stated goals—containing Iran’s nuclear program, degrading its missile and regional capabilities, and “helping” the Iranian people—has hardened into a confrontation between objectives that are arguably incompatible.
As the conflict spreads into the arteries of the global economy, ending it will require more than a shift in rhetoric—or even policy. A durable ceasefire would depend on mediators capable of sequencing reciprocal steps and bridging fundamentally incompatible aims.
More likely, the war will end not through decisive victory, but at the point where continued fighting no longer improves either side’s position and the mutual threat environment begins to recede.
Incompatible endgames
For the United States and Israel, the conflict forms part of a broader attempt to reshape the Middle East’s security architecture. Since October 7, Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly invoked a “new Middle East” in which Iran’s regional reach is sharply curtailed.
Drawing on past confrontations, including the 12-day war of June 2025, Washington and Tel Aviv appear to be seeking tangible outcomes: dismantling key military capabilities and preventing their reconstruction—an objective that may prove harder than the initial blow.
Iran’s logic is different. Tehran is pursuing what might be called coercive endurance: safeguarding regime survival while preserving deterrence by imposing high costs on its adversaries. Its demands—compensation and assurances against renewed war—serve not only strategic ends but domestic ones, helping sustain elite cohesion and legitimacy.
Regional actors, particularly Persian Gulf Arab states, and external powers with major energy interests remain cautious, oscillating between defensive positioning and watchful restraint. For now, mediation remains peripheral. The war is being shaped less in diplomatic forums than under fire.
A war of arteries
The Strait of Hormuz has evolved from a geographic chokepoint into a central strategic lever. Iran’s approach rests on the premise that disrupting this vital waterway transforms a bilateral confrontation into a global economic crisis.
Energy prices become not just an indicator but a weapon, intended to erode political will in Washington and its allies by destabilizing markets and raising costs worldwide.
Washington, in turn, has focused on Kharg Island—Iran’s primary oil export terminal and the loading point for roughly 90 percent of its crude exports. The threat to Kharg is a direct counter to Tehran’s Hormuz leverage. If Hormuz raises global costs, Kharg raises the cost of survival for Iran itself.
This duel points to a central constraint: the war will move toward closure only when both sides conclude that choking each other’s economic lifelines yields diminishing returns compared with the systemic risks to global energy markets.
Any durable settlement would therefore require a new security arrangement that guarantees safe passage through Hormuz while removing the threat to Iran’s export infrastructure.
Question of authority
The killing of senior political figures, including Ali Larijani, has raised concerns about gaps in coordination at the center of power. The question is whether an institutional structure still exists capable of accepting defeat—or even signing a ceasefire.
Yet the continuation of Iranian strikes suggests the system’s resilience does not rest on individuals alone. Tehran’s military order, shaped by a doctrine of decentralized “mosaic” defense, appears to have maintained operational coherence.
That resilience, however, raises doubts about whether a ceasefire could produce lasting stability while the machinery of war remains intact.
Inside Iran, external attacks appear to have strengthened nationalist sentiment among parts of society, yet leadership losses could also trigger fissures within the security establishment or embolden dissent. The balance between cohesion and fracture remains unclear.
For now, political and military leadership appear aligned in their belief that the situation remains manageable.
Some in Washington therefore see a more realistic objective not as immediate regime collapse but as forcing Tehran into a form of strategic accommodation—perhaps through the rise of more pragmatic figures capable of imposing restraint on military actors.
Such an outcome could allow Tehran to concede in practice while presenting the result domestically as survival or even victory.
Whether that path is viable remains uncertain. Internal purges, factional tensions and competing strategic visions continue to complicate any transition, even as some voices within Iran’s security establishment advocate widening the conflict.
Ultimately, how the war ends will depend not only on economic and regional pressures but on a deeper unknown: how much organizational capacity, military discipline and political authority remain in Tehran to accept a new strategic order.
Wars of this kind end when exhaustion converges with recognition. The decisive question is whether there remains a clear address in Tehran capable of signing—and enforcing—a ceasefire, and what form that political will ultimately takes.
