The costs of quick power: America’s Iran strike

The US struck Iran while negotiations were still alive — again. On 26 February, Omani mediators described the latest round of US-Iran talks in Geneva as having achieved significant progress, though inconclusive, with a massive American military buildup looming just over the horizon. Two days later, Washington and Jerusalem launched a coordinated assault. Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was confirmed to have been killed in the joint strikes.

The paradox is now impossible to ignore: when diplomacy becomes the staging ground for a surprise attack, Washington may win a short-term battle for escalation dominance while systematically dismantling the very bargaining environment required to prevent endless war.

The US strike delivered real tactical gains — disrupting Iran’s leadership and showcasing allied interoperability — but it also imposed steep and compounding costs: regional escalation, economic shocks through the Gulf, a credibility hit to diplomacy and a long-term erosion of the “rules-plus-allies” order Washington claims to defend. This is not just about Iran; it is about whether American power is becoming more coercive, less governable and dangerously expensive.

In war, tempo is a weapon. Washington seized it. The operational shock achieved by targeting Iran’s senior leadership, including the reported death of its supreme leader, has disrupted command-and-control and forced Tehran into a reactive posture. For now, the initiative rests with the US-Israeli coalition. A leadership vacuum, even temporarily, buys time and sows confusion in a regime already facing internal succession battles.

The operation also served as a pointed signal to both allies and adversaries that the American alliance network, while strained, remains functional. The UK authorised the use of its bases for limited, defensive strikes against Iranian missile launchers and participated in regional air defence. The EU, despite urging restraint, condemned Iran’s retaliatory strikes as violations of sovereignty, revealing a baseline alignment against Iranian escalation. Germany’s Friedrich Merz, while expressing reservations, backed the core US goal of curbing Iran’s nuclear programme and called for a “day after” plan. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, who just weeks earlier at Davos had positioned Canada to lead a coalition of “middle powers”, offered full-throated political support for the US mission while carefully insisting Canada was “not party to the military buildup or planning”. This is NATO-in-spirit, if not NATO-in-law — a conditional but still potent demonstration of collective capability.

Domestically, the strike served a narrow but immediate political purpose for President Trump. Just one week prior, the Supreme Court had dealt him a major blow by striking down his use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to impose global tariffs. The strike on Iran instantly recentred the media narrative on national security, allowing the President to reclaim the “commander-in-chief” mantle and shift the headline economy away from judicial setbacks and economic uncertainty. 

Finally, in the financial markets, the dollar benefited from its traditional safe haven status, strengthening against the euro and yen as investors priced in instability. But this is a narrow gain with a brutal asterisk: a stronger dollar can coexist with higher oil prices and global volatility, creating inflationary pressures that boomerang back onto the American economy.

These gains, however, are time-sensitive and dwarfed by a cascade of accumulating costs. The most immediate is the escalation cost. Once Iran demonstrated its ability to strike US personnel and Gulf economic nodes, America inherited an open-ended protection burden. US military deaths and serious injuries have already been reported. Every day after the first strike is a referendum on whether escalation control is real — or wishful.

The legitimacy of the operation is also under severe strain. The Pentagon briefed Congress that there was no specific intelligence indicating Iran intended to attack US forces first, critically undermining the administration’s core justification of imminent self-defence. The International Commission of Jurists has condemned the strikes as a “grave violation of the United Nations Charter”. The UK’s posture — refusing to endorse the initial attack’s legality while helping to mop up its consequences — illustrates the friction. When your closest partners defend themselves but will not defend your rationale, your coalition is functional, but brittle.

Furthermore, the Iranian resilience and defiance are perhaps turning a planned short, high-intensity operation into a long, multi-theatre drain on US power. Even before the attack, senior commanders warned that a major Iran campaign would burn through scarce precision munitions and air defence interceptors — the same items needed for Ukraine, NATO reassurance and Indo-Pacific contingencies. Carrier availability is another constraint. Maintenance delays already reduce how many carriers can surge at once, and shifting strike groups toward the Middle East inevitably thins visible deterrence elsewhere. Meanwhile, US defence-industrial capacity has struggled to match wartime demand, contributing to delayed foreign military sales and limiting rapid replenishment.

If the current conflict continues, the result is predictable: higher operational tempo, sustained losses and growing opportunity costs in Europe and Asia — undercutting Washington’s relative advantage over China and Russia and contradicting any strategy of retrenchment toward the western hemisphere and homeland.

Theologically, by killing Khamenei, a figure Iranian doctrine designates as the naib-e imam (deputy of the Hidden Imam), Washington handed Tehran a ready-made narrative of martyrdom. Official statements already frame the assassination as an echo of Karbala — casting America as Yazid (the second Umayyad caliph) to Hussein (grandson of the Prophet Muhammad)’s slain Imam. This transforms a geopolitical conflict into a religious duty, painting the US not merely as a political adversary, but as a blood-stained, permanent enemy in the Shia moral universe.

Compromise becomes heresy; retaliation becomes worship. Washington has activated a narrative inheritance that will justify attacks on American interests for a generation, locking the conflict into a realm where containment and resolution become fundamentally impossible.

Public consent at home is thin and highly conditional. A poll found that only 27% of Americans support the strikes, while 56% believe Trump is too eager to use force. Crucially, support evaporates among key demographics if casualties rise or energy prices spike. This limited political runway increases the risk of half-measures or abrupt policy swings, signaling weakness to adversaries.

The economic shockwaves through the Gulf are not collateral damage; they are a direct strategic cost. The UAE was forced to close its stock markets for two days — an extraordinary admission of systemic stress. Global benchmark pricing agencies like Platts have disrupted their assessments due to shipping chaos in the Strait of Hormuz. Marine insurers are cancelling war-risk cover, tanker costs are surging and vessels are anchoring. War is not priced only in blood; it is priced in insurance clauses, freight rates and broken benchmarks.

Most damaging for the long term is the credibility burn on diplomacy. When talks happen under threat and end in strikes, future negotiations become nearly impossible to initiate. Oman, the key mediator, has seen its capital and goodwill squandered. Analysts now warn that Trump’s disregard for diplomatic norms is accelerating the very hedging behaviour — including a rush toward nuclear deterrents —  the strikes were meant to prevent. As Professor John Mearsheimer bluntly noted, Iran’s failure to acquire a nuclear weapon was a major mistake.

Finally, there is the nuclear paradox. The IAEA has stated that it has “no indication” that Iran’s nuclear sites were hit in this wave of attacks. The US may have paid massive escalation costs while failing to deliver demonstrable nuclear rollback. Worse, the strike has likely pushed Iran toward even less cooperation with inspectors, creating a classic “less insight, more fear, more strikes” spiral. You can bomb facilities. You cannot bomb uncertainty.

The ledger is clear. The benefits are time-limited: a temporary operational shock, a conditional show of alliance strength, a short-term agenda reset and a fleeting dollar bump. The costs, however, are compounding: US casualties, a legitimacy deficit, a weak domestic mandate, disrupted energy logistics, a burned diplomatic channel, a degraded inspection regime and the dangerous mirage of regime change, which US officials themselves are sceptical of likeliness of regime change.

Does this scare smaller states into compliance? Partially. It proves Washington’s willingness to use force. But it also teaches a dangerous lesson: that negotiations offer no safety and that escalation can shock the global system, incentivising rivals to pursue more aggressive hedging, dispersal, and — ultimately — their own ultimate deterrents.

First, define an end state that is not a slogan. If the goal is “no Iranian nuke”, articulate what that means operationally, especially given the IAEA’s current inability to verify damage. If the goal is regime change, admit the plausibility problem and its catastrophic cost.

Second, rebuild a credible off-ramp through Gulf mediation — but with guarantees. Oman’s channel must be repaired with tangible assurances that the US will not use negotiation windows for military planning.

Third, stabilise the global economic plumbing. Treat war-risk insurance, tanker rates, and benchmark disruptions as strategic indicators, not background noise.

Finally, fix the legitimacy deficit. Publish a clearer legal and intelligence rationale than “trust us”, and work with allies to avoid coalition brittleness. The world saw America prove it still has allies and still can strike. But if Washington turns diplomacy into a trap and the Gulf into a blast zone, it wins tactical headlines while steadily shrinking the strategic space that makes American power sustainable.

Related: Strategic patience: How China navigates the Iran war | Why China stays measured on US-Israel strikes against Iran | Middle East turmoil: A surprising boost for China-US stability?