For nearly five months, the United States has bombed Iran with the stated aim of neutralizing a regional adversary. Yet after thirteen consecutive nights of airstrikes, American intelligence agencies have concluded that the campaign is unlikely to force Tehran to make concessions. The war that was sold as a short “excursion” has become a strategic quagmire—and the administration, having once demanded “unconditional surrender,” has run out of ideas.
Into this vacuum steps Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iran’s former foreign minister, with a comprehensive vision recently published in Foreign Affairs. His argument is deceptively simple: ending the war and sustaining the peace requires a fundamental shift in regional security architecture. But buried beneath the diplomatic prose is a devastating indictment of US strategy—and a warning that Washington ignores at its peril.
Zarif writes that the US and Israel initiated these conflicts assuming that sustained military pressure could either coerce Tehran into submission or trigger the collapse of the Islamic Republic. None of their actions—including unprecedented attacks on Iran’s political and military leadership—has forced Tehran to pivot. This miscalculation is fatal. The administration has sold the public a narrative of total victory so many times that the term has lost all meaning. If Iran has been “obliterated,” why is it still fighting? If the U.S. has won, why is it still bombing?
Thomas Friedman’s recent NY Times column; which I shared below earlier, rightly grouped Trump, Netanyahu, and Putin as a triumvirate of leaders who all drank their own Kool-Aid. Putin convinced himself Ukrainians would welcome Russian rule and that Kyiv would fall in days. Trump and Netanyahu applied the same logic to Iran and Gaza. Each started a war of choice expecting quick victory; each discovered the adversary would not fold. Netanyahu has expanded the Gaza war to Lebanon, Yemen, and Syria—for him, forever war is the only option. The US, at least theoretically, seeks a negotiated settlement to pivot to the Indo-Pasifika. These objectives are incompatible, yet Washington prioritizes the counsel of Jerusalem over its own intelligence.
Zarif’s most provocative claim concerns Israel’s role. “Israel has demonstrated repeatedly that it wants to sow chaos throughout West Asia to sustain its military dominance,” he writes. Israel’s systematic elimination of credible Iranian interlocutors, threatens to foreclose the diplomatic space that Trump’s dealmaking calculus requires. This is not mere anti-Israeli rhetoric; it reflects a genuine structural obstacle to peace.
To break the cycle, Zarif proposes a Muslim West Asian Dialogue Association, to negotiate collective security, economic integration, and non-aggression pacts. The proposal is ambitious, even idealistic. But it rests on a truth Washington has stubbornly refused to accept: Iran cannot be bombed into submission. “Only diplomacy, a new peace agreement, and a new security framework produced by regional states and for regional states will allow the US to turn its attention elsewhere,” he writes. That line exposes the administration’s greatest vulnerability.
Successive US administrations have shared the goal of reducing America’s long-term burden in West Asia to focus on the Indo-Pasifika. Past instruments—the 2015 nuclear deal, the Abraham Accords—were all aimed at neutralizing Iran so Washington could pivot. This war has done precisely the opposite. It has diverted strategic attention and redeployed critical weapons systems from Asian theatres. The pivot has become an empty promise. Zarif understands this irony: the US has trapped itself in a conflict it cannot win nor leave.
The common thread binding Trump, Netanyahu, and Putin is arrogance—the refusal to acknowledge that the adversary has agency, resolve, and a stake in survival. That arrogance turns wars of choice into wars of attrition. Zarif’s vision may not be the answer—it is, after all, a proposal from an adversary seeking to preserve its regime. But dismissing it out of hand would be a strategic error. For the first time in this conflict, a senior Iranian official has offered a pathway that acknowledges US interests while insisting on Iran’s legitimate role in regional security.
The question is not whether Iran can outlast US bombs—it will. The question is whether Washington possesses the wisdom and the courage to try something different. Until the United States recovers a sense of strategic humility and stops mistaking noise for leadership, it will remain trapped in a cycle of perpetual escalation with no exit ramp. Zarif has cracked open a door. The only question that remains is whether anyone in Washington is willing to walk through it.
Pasifika Talanoa by a traveled ITaukei Fijian 