War often begins with confidence and ends with confusion. What appears, at the outset, as decisive leadership can quickly turn into strategic entanglement. The current crisis in the Middle East illustrates this pattern with unsettling clarity. For months, many scholars of international relations and military strategists warned that a confrontation with Iran would be neither simple nor contained. Iran is not an isolated state like some smaller adversaries the US has confronted in the past.

Yet those warnings appear to have been brushed aside. The logic behind the gamble seems to have been deceptively simple: apply overwhelming pressure, demonstrate military resolve, and force Iran to retreat.

But Iran's response has demonstrated precisely why many experts warned against escalation. Rather than capitulating, Tehran has expanded the theatre of confrontation. The most strategically significant development is the disruption of oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz where any sustained disruption instantly reverberates through global markets.

Iran has also........

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