Defining the Goals of the Iran War

Going after the unacceptable threat Iran posed to American, Israeli, Gulf Arab States, European, and Asian military and political interests — and understanding the destructive hand of China behind the mullahs — was not a mistake. It was recognition of the stakes for the civilized world.

But the US and Israel, indispensable allies at many levels, have to take account of their differences in threat level and capabilities, and forge a political as well as military path together.

Two points to make in wartime:

First — achievable goals are essential to ending a war. Corollary 1: It is easier to start a war than end one Corollary 2: Every war must end

Second — there are things you don’t know and won’t know (although in some cases, people knew, but people weren’t listening.

President Donald Trump said in his State of the Union address: “They [the Iranians] have already developed missiles that can threaten Europe and our bases overseas, and they’re working to build missiles that will soon reach the United States of America.”

He was right, but dismissed with a collective snicker.

My husband, security analyst Dr. Stephen Bryen, ran the statement through Google Gemini and found disparaging references to the President in The Washington Post, The Guardian, American Progress, PBS NewsHour, PolitiFact, The New York Times and CNN, among others.

He found “experts” who told us that the range of Iran’s ballistic missile arsenal was about 2,000 km, which made Israel and the Gulf States potential targets, but allowed the Europeans to claim immunity. In 2025, a Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) assessment posited that Iran was “years away” from possessing a viable ICBM.

They were wrong.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told NBC News in February, “We are not developing long-range missiles … we have limited the range below 2,000 kilometers.”

He lied.

Trump was right. The range is closer to 4,000 km, technically putting Paris in range (about 4,200 km from Tehran).

[Aside: Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) said in a TV interview that Iran had enough uranium to make nuclear bombs, but there was no reason to do anything about it because Iran’s missiles couldn’t yet reach the US. Is he still sure?]

The unwillingness to see and understand threats is, in some ways, an admirable attempt to avoid war. War is terrible. No one wants war. War may kill the enemy, and surely it will also kill innocents. But the decades-old idea that one could negotiate with terrorists is a huge failing in the Western world.

The Oslo Accords were not peace. Temporary deals with Lebanon are not peace. Multiple Gaza ceasefires were not peace. Operations Rising Lion and Midnight Hammer were not peace. The return of the Israeli hostages was not peace.

Israel collected intelligence and built an extraordinary military force in cooperation with the United States, while the US built Massive Ordnance Penetrators (MOPS). But it also assumed that giving the people of Gaza a decent life, including work permits in Israel, would keep things calm.

It worked at some level until October 7, 2023.

After that, Israel’s determination to defend its citizens forced a reckoning. It would no longer ignore Iran. President Trump agreed. Last summer’s attack on Iranian assets was a masterpiece of coordination and cooperation.

But it wasn’t enough.

The attacks launched this year were designed not only to eliminate Iran’s weapons and weapons-producing capability, but to put in place a new strategic pattern for behavior.

Much of the Arab world has come to his thinking. UAE, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Iraq and even Qatar, seeing that they are targets for Iran, not allies, have stepped up. Azerbaijan, too. Syria is silent and Lebanon is trying to figure out how to get rid of Hezbollah. In Europe, the Czech Republic and Estonia defied the EU resolution on the war.

In the past few days, Japan and several European countries appear to have awakened to the fact that their future, their security, and their people are on the firing line.

The late Fred Iklé, a defense strategist and official in the Reagan administration, wrote a book entitled Every War Must End. He was writing primarily, but not only, about American wars. For Iklé, who passed away in 2011, the essential lesson was that it is much easier to start a war than to successfully conclude one. Having achievable aims — both military and political — and stopping when they have been met — is the key to success.

The alternative is to slog along with grinding casualties until the conflict peters out ignominiously when public opinion no longer supports the effort. The French, he pointed out, were the military victors in Algeria — as were the Americans in Vietnam — but in both cases, the Western power withdrew without a political victory, and public disillusionment hampered the government at home and abroad for years after.

The Russians left Afghanistan when it produced unacceptable grumbling at home. More recently, the US left Afghanistan and northern Syria.

In none of those cases was the war over; in each case, people continued to die on the ground when we went home.

But Israel is home. Israel needs victory to ensure peace — how you define that between allies is precisely the point. And America and Israel must find a definition of victory that works for each.

Shoshana Bryen is Senior Director of the Jewish Policy Center and Editor of inFOCUS Quarterly magazine.