The corridors of the Pentagon and the Iranian camps are shrouded in a strange silence. This is not the silence of intent but of an impending conflict, acknowledging that the next attack in the Middle East may set off a chain reaction that war game planners are unsure of.

The questions that loom large in the region are straightforward: When will the second American-Israeli operation take place? What is President Trump waiting for to unleash the full fury of the American juggernaut? Has Iran, once the central fixation of his administration, fallen lower in the list of priorities that now includes Venezuela and Greenland?

But beneath these tactical questions lies a far more ominous truth. “Restraint” may actually be a code word for paralysis born not of tactical calculation but of the chilling knowledge of all sides possessing weapons they hesitate to use.

The arithmetic of unaffordable victory

While acknowledging that war games conducted by the U.S. Defense Department have consistently shown that America has overwhelming kinetic power to destroy Iranian infrastructure, power grid, communications network, and command centers, it is what happens on Day Two, or Day Twelve, that defies prediction. 

This is the kind of uncertainty that clouds planning meetings. The June strike wave continued for twelve days. But Iran may be able to launch a massive number of supersonic missiles against Israeli cities and U.S. bases throughout the Gulf region. And no one knows how long the next round of conflict might last, whether in the Situation Room, the Israeli security cabinet, or Iran’s........

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