Washington signals that decades of hesitation are over — and that the balance of power in the Middle East may be shifting decisively in America’s favor.

For nearly half a century, successive American administrations treated the Islamic Republic of Iran as a problem to be managed rather than defeated. Sanctions were tightened, then loosened. Negotiations began, stalled and resumed. Red lines were drawn, blurred and quietly abandoned. The result was not moderation in Tehran, but the steady expansion of Iranian influence across the Middle East.

Now the calculation in Washington appears to have changed. President Donald Trump and his allies increasingly argue that the old strategy of containment has failed — and that the clerical regime survives chiefly because the West repeatedly loses its nerve at decisive moments.

That view has become the organizing principle of America’s renewed confrontation with Tehran.

The regime’s enduring miscalculation

Iran’s leadership has long wagered that America ultimately fears escalation more than the regime fears collapse. It is a belief forged through decades of experience. Western governments frequently condemned Tehran’s conduct while avoiding direct confrontation with the structures that sustain the Islamic Republic’s power.

From the hostage crisis of 1979 onward, the regime learned an important lesson: time is its greatest strategic asset. Delay negotiations long enough, exploit divisions among Western allies and survive each cycle of pressure until international attention drifts elsewhere.

That logic has shaped Iranian strategy from Iraq and Lebanon to Syria and Yemen. Rather than behaving like a conventional nation-state pursuing limited geopolitical interests, the Islamic Republic built an ideological network of militias and proxy movements stretching across the region. Its........

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