War between the United States, Israel, and Iran has now moved from threat to reality. What had been framed as coercive diplomacy backed by calibrated force has crossed into open interstate confrontation. Yet the underlying logic that produced this outcome has not changed. The road to war was not paved by a sober calculation of costs and benefits, but by an illusion of control: the belief that Washington could coerce Iran into submission through threats, deployments, and limited strikes without triggering a broader regional conflagration.

In a single press conference aboard Air Force One, President Trump advanced mutually contradictory claims. He asserted that the United States had brought peace to the Middle East after 3,000 years of conflict by destroying Iran’s nuclear programme, while simultaneously giving Iran ten days to conclude a nuclear agreement. If the nuclear programme had already been eliminated, the rationale for negotiation was unclear. If peace had already been secured, the logic of threatening renewed war was equally incoherent.

Let us not be distracted by President Trump’s appetite for headlines, which often produces  contradictory statements, and instead focus on a single question: how did coercion evolve into open war?

From Coercion to Escalation

Following the twelve-day Israel–U.S. war on Iran, I argued that the United States was unlikely to wage another war unless it is prepared to pursue regime change. Such an objective would require  the deployment of tens of thousands of troops on Iranian soil—something the Trump administration has shown no willingness to commit to.

However, when Trump claimed concern for the Iranian people and declared that “help” was on its way, he simultaneously positioned aircraft carriers, destroyers, submarines, and strategic  bombers in the region—the largest U.S. military buildup there since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. As a result, it became evident that Washington’s objective was to coerce Iran into accepting an agreement it would otherwise reject. 

By manufacturing an atmosphere of fear, the Trump administration sought to compel Iran to accept its terms for “peace by force,” that is, “peace by subjugation”: dismantling its nuclear programme, limiting its missile capabilities to short range, and abandoning its regional alliances. Had fear succeeded, it would have amounted to a clean political victory for Trump. When it did not, the logic escalated toward direct military strikes designed to compel compliance; and as events now demonstrate, that logic has crossed into open confrontation.

Yet this strategy rested—and continues to rest—on a precarious assumption: that Iran would deliberately confine the conflict to a limited war in order to preserve its regime. But what if Iran chooses a comprehensive regional war instead? Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had warned shortly before he was killed on February 28, 2026 in a joint U.S.–Israeli strike: “The Americans should know that if they start a war, this time it will be a regional war.” Hezbollah, the Houthis, and several Iraqi military groups have likewise made clear that they would not remain neutral in any war aimed at Iran. Miscalculation is not  a stable strategy; it is a slippery path. 

The Cost of Escalation

The costs of war are precisely what have historically restrained the United States. Those costs have not disappeared simply because hostilities have begun. Once American aircraft and missiles began striking Iran, retaliation became predictable: Iran and its allies would respond by targeting Israel and U.S. military bases across the Middle East. They could  also close the Strait of Hormuz and Bab al-Mandab, strike oil installations in the Gulf, and attack American economic and political interests throughout the region. Any sustained disruption of these critical chokepoints or energy facilities would likely trigger a sharp rise in global energy prices. Such a shock would quickly feed into inflation, raising the cost of food, transport, and air travel, and would likely be accompanied by rising unemployment.

If these actions inflict significant American losses, the United States may be compelled—out of a perceived need to save face—to escalate further. That escalation would likely take one of two forms. The first would involve deploying tens—perhaps hundreds—of thousands of troops to overthrow the Iranian regime, signalling a forceful return to large-scale U.S. military engagement in the Middle East. Such a move would directly contradict Trump’s National Security Strategy, which calls for avoiding “forever wars,” states explicitly that the days when the Middle East dominated U.S. foreign policy are “over,” and emphasises shifting greater regional security responsibility to partners, above all Israel. The second option would be the use of nuclear weapons to impose a decisive end to the conflict, presented as an alternative to deep military entanglement.

Both options, however, carry immense political and economic costs that the United States would be unwilling to bear. A large-scale troop deployment would almost certainly erode the domestic political base that brought Trump to power under the slogan “no more foreign wars” and would likely exact heavy electoral costs on the Republican Party.

Beyond domestic politics, renewed entanglement in the Middle East would prevent the United States from devoting sufficient military, financial, and political resources to confronting China, tightening pressure on Europe, or sustaining its coercive policies in Latin America. History suggests that once drawn back into the region, the United States would struggle to exit quickly, as in Iraq and Afghanistan.

War itself would also impose immense fiscal costs. By Trump’s own account, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan cost the United States approximately seven trillion dollars—an experience that has left a deep imprint on domestic political calculations. A renewed large-scale conflict in the Middle East would almost certainly erode the political base that brought Trump to power under the banner of ending “forever wars,” while constraining the United States’ ability to concentrate resources on priorities elsewhere, from China to Europe and Latin America.

These prohibitive costs are precisely what have prevented a U.S. war on Iran in the past, and they remain structurally operative even now. Previous U.S. presidents—George W. Bush, Obama, and Biden—refrained from striking Iran’s nuclear facilities primarily out of concern over Iran’s likely response. For this reason, President Bush resisted Israeli pressure to escalate and, in Obama’s case, turned to negotiation and a formal agreement, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, having concluded that the alternative was a war whose costs were well understood and deemed unacceptable.

The Risk of Miscalculation

In fact, two additional variables once reduced the likelihood of an all-out regional war. First, with the exception of Israel, U.S. allies in the region—including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Egypt, and Turkey—expressed clear opposition to a war with Iran, citing the immense political, economic, and security costs such a conflict would impose across the region. Moreover, Saudi Arabia and several other Gulf states informed Iran that they would not permit their airspace or territory to be used for a U.S. attack.

Second, Trump’s political temperament favoured short interventions, decisive outcomes, and conflicts that impose no visible costs on American forces—a Venezuela-style approach rather than a prolonged war. Jeremy Shapiro of the European Council on Foreign Relations identifies a similar pattern in Trump’s use of force: a preference for limited strikes, achievable objectives, and the avoidance of extended involvement and large troop deployments. Taken together, these factors initially pointed away from a sustained regional war.

However, an intervening variable has rendered this logic less certain and may help explain why hostilities have now emerged. It is Iran’s previous responses to the assassination of General Qasem Soleimani, the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC) Quds Force, and to subsequent U.S. strikes on its nuclear facilities. In both instances, Iran acted with notable restraint. Following Soleimani’s killing, Tehran ensured that advance warning reached the U.S. side—via intermediaries—before striking the Ayn al-Asad base in Iraq. It adopted a similar signalling strategy when it later struck the Al Udeid base in Qatar after U.S. attacks on its nuclear facilities.

In the Al-Udeid case, Trump publicly thanked Iran for providing prior warning. In the Soleimani case, he later pointed to the killing as evidence that decisive strikes could be carried out without triggering uncontrollable escalation, declaring that “we killed the number one terrorist in the world, Soleimani, and it should have been done 20 years ago.”

Iran’s earlier restraint emboldened Washington to bomb its nuclear facilities in June 2025. And because, in Trump’s assessment, those strikes also failed to provoke severe retaliation, Washington may have come to believe it could go further—targeting Iran’s leadership, military assets, or even civilian infrastructure—without incurring serious consequences. That misjudgement of restraint and retaliation has now contributed to the outbreak of wider hostilities.

In fact, the course of the war thus far suggests that the Trump administration’s central assumption was fundamentally mistaken. Rather than confining its response in order to preserve regime survival, Iran has struck—and continues to strike—U.S. military installations across the Middle East, including bases in Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Jordan, and Iraq, in addition to targeting Israel directly. The geographic breadth of these strikes alone challenges the premise that escalation could be tightly contained.

Moreover, Iran’s response does not appear static; it shows signs of deliberate escalation. Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps broadcasts have been received on maritime radio stating that “no ship is allowed to pass the Strait of Hormuz,” a critical energy transit chokepoint, underscoring both Tehran’s capability and its intent. Such steps transform the conflict from a bilateral military exchange into a systemic confrontation with global economic consequences. The closure or disruption of Hormuz is not merely a tactical move—it is a strategic lever affecting energy markets, maritime insurance, and global supply chains.

At the same time, Iran’s regional allies appear to be on standby, preserving the option of widening the conflict if escalation continues. Whether Hezbollah in Lebanon, armed groups in Iraq, or the Houthis in Yemen enter the conflict more directly will depend on the trajectory of U.S. and Israeli operations. The mere possibility of their activation reinforces the reality that this war cannot be neatly compartmentalised.

What was framed in Washington as calibrated coercion has instead revealed the limits of control. The assumption that Iran would absorb strikes without expanding the theatre of conflict underestimated both Tehran’s willingness to escalate and the structural interconnectedness of the region.

The central issue is no longer whether war with Iran was avoidable. It is whether its expansion is avoidable.  The illusion that shaped U.S. policy was not that Iran was weak, but that escalation was manageable—that calibrated force could impose compliance without triggering systemic consequences. The events of the past day suggest otherwise. What began as coercion has already widened geographically, economically, and strategically. Military strikes have spread across multiple theatres amid Iranian pledges to make this war extremely costly for the United States and Israel.

The illusion of control did not end when the war began; it remains embedded in the logic of escalation. Whether this conflict stabilises or widens will depend not on rhetoric, but on whether decision-makers rediscover what earlier U.S. administrations understood—that in the Gulf, limited war is rarely limited for long.

For that realisation to take hold, however, diplomacy must replace incremental coercion. This is where Canada, working in coordination with its European allies and key Gulf partners, can help re-establish channels focused on containment, maritime stability, and crisis communication. The alternative is the persistence of a dangerous assumption: that force can be calibrated without systemic consequence. History suggests otherwise.

© OpenCanada