By Policy Tensor - March 8, 2026

Irrespective of the ever-shifting war aims peddled out by Administration officials, there is a clear and obvious sense in which strategic victory and defeat are defined here. If the United States cannot, either through direct denial or military coercion, suppress Iran’s attacks on its own assets and those of its allies and protectorates, that would constitute a strategic defeat for the United States. If the US declares mission accomplished whilst the Iranians are still firing their weapons at the oil monarchies, US military bases, Israel, and, above all, if Hormuz is still closed, that would constitute an unambiguous strategic defeat for the United States.

By the same token, if Iran can continue its attacks and keep Hormuz closed despite whatever the US throws at it, until such a time as the US offers a ceasefire, it would’ve succeeded in reestablishing deterrence. That would constitute a strategic victory for Iran. This is not a definitional question; it is a question of the perception of adversaries, third parties, and disinterested analysts. The Western media spin won’t count; it would just be too blatantly obvious.

As I showed you on Twitter, the mechanics of the drone war are quite daunting. The crucial variables here are the rate at which the US can degrade Iranian drone production sites (d_{fac}) and the rate at which the Iranians can rebuild and repair the same (r_{fac}). The governing factor is the ratio, r_{fac} / (d_{fac} + r_{fac}). This ratio controls the dynamics of the rate at which Iran can sustain counter-value attacks across the gulf and the length of time it can keep Hormuz closed.

Even under conservative but realistic assumptions favorable to the US, it is really hard to see how . . .

[SNIP]