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A month after the United States and Israel began military strikes on Iran, any hopes of a quick and decisive victory have been tempered by weeks of counterstrikes. The immediate prospects for a diplomatic off-ramp look inauspicious as Washington and Tehran believe that their respective campaigns are putting the other side under sufficient duress to make maximalist demands.

A particular kind of confidence precedes wars of choice. It belongs to leaders who believe they can calibrate violence: The strikes will be sharp, the aims limited, and the escalation controlled. The adversary will be chastened rather than provoked, and the war will remain obedient to those who began it.

A month after the United States and Israel began military strikes on Iran, any hopes of a quick and decisive victory have been tempered by weeks of counterstrikes. The immediate prospects for a diplomatic off-ramp look inauspicious as Washington and Tehran believe that their respective campaigns are putting the other side under sufficient duress to make maximalist demands.

A particular kind of confidence precedes wars of choice. It belongs to leaders who believe they can calibrate violence: The strikes will be sharp, the aims limited, and the escalation controlled. The adversary will be chastened rather than provoked, and the war will remain obedient to those who began it.

Over the course of the war, the United States and Israel have been able to deliver significant blows to Iran: targeting senior political and military leaders, degrading Iran’s stocks and production of missiles, and sinking scores of its naval assets. Yet Tehran has been able to launch regular salvos of drones and missiles in response at Israel, U.S. bases in the region, and Gulf Arab states. A string of attacks against vessels off its southern coast, especially in and around the Strait of Hormuz, has helped sharply curtail traffic through the vital waterway.

Talk of potential off-ramps and negotiations has swirled over the past week. But given the wider irreconcilability of Washington’s and Tehran’s positions, an escalatory turn seems likelier. For the United States, that........

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