The United States and Iran have entered a fragile tactical truce after signing the landmark Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on 17 June 2026, halting months of devastating direct warfare. Following a conflict that began with major U.S.-Israeli airstrikes, the interim deal establishes a 60-day negotiating window aimed at hammering out a comprehensive peace settlement. As part of the initial de-escalation, Washington has lifted its destructive naval blockade on Iranian ports, while Tehran has moved to reopen the critical Strait of Hormuz to toll-free commercial shipping and agreed to dilute its enriched uranium under international oversight.

The US-Iran war has hopefully resulted in two important outcomes. The first is that the US should have realised that it cannot bully into subjugation each and every nation, while the second is that Iran will have to change the objective of its nuclear programme to utilising its enriched uranium for peaceful purposes only. Both these outcomes are good for the world. Let us address the first outcome. The recent war against Iran has fundamentally challenged American assumptions about international power dynamics. By demonstrating that even overwhelming conventional and technological superiority cannot guarantee political submission, the conflict has forced the United States to confront the structural limits of sheer military dominance in asymmetrical conflicts.

At the outbreak of the conflict ~ initiated by sweeping joint U.S. and Israeli airstrikes on Iranian infrastructure and military sites ~ Washington expected to rapidly degrade Tehran’s defensive capabilities and force the regime to yield on long-standing nuclear, regional, and political issues. However, the reality of the ensuing months exposed the severe friction between military supremacy and actionable geopolitical outcomes. Rather than collapsing under coercive pressure or accepting American terms, Iran leveraged its vast geographical depth, domestic resilience, and agile asymmetric capabilities ~ such as drone strikes and mobile missile launches ~ to absorb heavy blows while simultaneously imposing catastrophic costs on the global economy.

By severely disrupting or entirely blocking critical maritime and energy routes in the Strait of Hormuz, Tehran managed to wield an asymmetrical deterrence that directly counterbalanced American technological dominance. Perhaps the most defining realization for U.S. strategists was that the destruction of physical infrastructure and the decapitation of leadership do not automatically translate to political capitulation. While the massive bombardment inflicted heavy damage upon Iran’s conventional military assets and nuclear facilities, it proved incapable of eliminating the adversary’s will to fight or the technical knowledge required to maintain its strategic posture.

Furthermore, instead of........

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