We're Intensifying the Fight, But to What End?

I spoke to Bloomberg TV about the Trump Administration's war against Iran and the lack of clarity as to what their real goals are for the war.

I sat down with Bloomberg Television today to discuss the current strikes on Iran. While the headlines are focused on the tactical “successes” of the last few days, I’m concerned we are missing the much larger, more dangerous strategic picture.

If you have a few minutes, you can watch the full interview above. For those who want the “TL;DR,” here are the three main points I made:

1. Escalation without an “End State” is a trap

The most dangerous thing in any conflict is to increase the intensity of the fight without a clear definition of what “winning” actually looks like. Right now, we are hitting targets and expanding the scope of the operation, but we aren’t clear on the goal. Are we degrading capabilities? Forcing a negotiation? Pushing for regime change? Without a defined end state, we aren’t following a strategy—we’re just accelerating toward an unpredictable escalation.

2. Arming the Kurds: A recipe for civil war

There is a lot of talk right now about arming Kurdish groups to pressure Tehran from within. In my view, this is a massive gamble with a high probability of backfiring. History shows that injecting weapons into ethnic fault lines like this is more likely to trigger a bloody, protracted civil war than a clean overthrow of the regime. We have to ask ourselves: Is a fractured, war-torn Iran actually what we want for regional stability?

3. The “Popular Uprising” myth ignores the reality of power

I keep hearing the argument that the Iranian people will simply rise up and do the rest of the work. This ignores a brutal reality: the people don’t have the guns; the regime does. And this regime has proven, time and again, that they are perfectly willing to use those guns against their own citizens to maintain their grip on power. Wishing for a revolution is not a substitute for a hard-nosed assessment of the regime’s repressive capacity.

I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments: Do you think we are sliding into an open-ended war, or is this “Maximum Pressure” finally working?