As the “phoney peace” in Iran drags on, I am reminded of an old lesson: In the annals of strategic thought, few insights have proved as enduring as Thomas Schelling’s in his 1960 book The Strategy of Conflict: Coercive bargaining is not about the blunt application of force, but about the manipulation of shared risk. In conflicts where neither side can afford outright defeat, Schelling showed that the real contest lies in shaping the environment of danger — raising the costs of escalation, narrowing the exits, and forcing adversaries to calculate how much risk they can bear before they must compromise.

The Trump administration’s approach to Iran seemed to rest on the assumption that sufficiently severe bombardment by its overwhelmingly superior military force would compel capitulation. Yet history suggested otherwise. Severe punishment, when it fails to break an opponent’s will, does not produce submission; it produces a bargaining environment in which both sides become desperate to find a way out that does not humiliate them fatally. In such an environment, the weaker party has every incentive to make the exit as costly and as visible as possible, ensuring that the stronger adversary pays a reputational and strategic price for its miscalculation.

Iran’s position in this confrontation reflects Schelling’s logic. Strategically weaker than the US in conventional terms, it nonetheless possesses asymmetric leverage. The Strait of Hormuz is not merely a shipping lane; it is, in Schelling’s terms, a hostage whose value rises as American desperation increases. By causing disruption of global energy flows, Iran can manipulate the shared risk that binds both sides, forcing Washington to reckon with the costs of escalation not just in military terms but in economic........

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