How 100 Days of Iran War Exposed US Vulnerability

As the United States’ war against Iran hits the 100-day mark, early military triumphs have given way to a costly stalemate that could have severe consequences for perceptions of Washington’s might abroad.

What began as an overwhelming display of U.S.-Israeli power has devolved into something of an endurance contest, one being closely studied by allies and adversaries alike. While the final outcome remains uncertain, one lesson is clear: for all the U.S.’ military superiority, it’s far from invincible.

Despite killing Iran’s supreme leader and many top figures, wiping out a significant portion of its arsenal and imposing a crippling trade blockade, the Islamic Republic has not only survived the joint U.S.-Israeli assault, but managed to exert countermeasures both on the battlefield and at the negotiating table.

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A Lesson America’s Rivals Are Already Studying

The most consequential of Iran’s fightback methods has been its weaponization of the Strait of Hormuz. It’s a tactic that has throttled global oil and gas trade and contributing to U.S. war fatigue in the form of rising energy prices, and could be replicated in future conflicts.

“I would worry, for example, that the Chinese would take a lesson from the Iranian capture of the Strait of Hormuz,” Ryan Crocker, a former U.S. ambassador who serves today as nonresident senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told Newsweek.

“It’s not the only strait in the world. There is the Malacca Strait, and more significantly, the Strait of Taiwan,” Crocker said. “And it may demonstrate to the Chinese that, hey, if you want to achieve regional or even global strategic objectives, you don’t have to resort to all-out warfare, you can just exert a stranglehold on key bodies of water.”

Ultimately, he felt the setbacks were predominantly at the policy level, arguing that “the problem isn’t our military, the problem is our political decisions.”

The War’s Biggest Surprise: Iran Survived

Part of the challenge in assessing the success or failure of the U.S. intervention is the deliberate obfuscation of objectives on the part of the Trump administration. The president has openly declared an approach of refusing to broadcast his aims, keeping observers guessing.

The most consistent goal identified by Trump has been ensuring that Iran could never possess nuclear weapons, a capability officially rejected by the Islamic Republic despite its advanced uranium enrichment. Washington has also, at times, named degrading Iranian missile capabilities, ending its support for Axis of Resistance allies and, ultimately, regime change as outcomes in the interest of the U.S.

Yet some recent reports undermine the White House’s narrative of total victory in several areas.

The International Atomic Energy Agency issued its first wartime findings Wednesday claiming that Iran’s nuclear facilities, though already damaged by U.S. and Israeli strikes during the 12-Day War last June, have not been significantly further set back since the onset of the current conflict. U.S. intelligence officials quoted in several U.S. and Israeli media outlets have also spoken to evidence of Iran rebuilding its missile prowess.

As for the Iranian government, the Islamic Republic appears to have largely rallied behind the slain Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s son and successor, Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, rather than fracture. The hard-line Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is widely assessed to have become especially influential under an absentee yet likely vengeful ruler who has the authority to rescind his late father’s official ban against nuclear weapons.

Trump initially slammed Tehran’s decision to appoint the younger Khamenei, having sought a direct say in who would oversee Iran. He shifted his tone on Friday however, describing the new ruler as a “professional” with a “very good reputation” in “some circles.”

Still, Crocker saw little success in the quest to find more amenable leadership in Iran, as the U.S. had achieved following the Delta Force raid to abduct Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in January. He described the new Iranian leadership as “harder and nastier than the old one.”

“What is very, very clear is you’re not going to bring down this regime by airstrikes,” Crocker said. “Look at who these guys are. They’re all IRGC generals, officers, past and present, and more importantly, they’re all veterans of the Iran-Iraq War. They lost half a million people in that war, and Mohsen Rezaei, who has emerged as a key figure in the new regime, commanded the IRGC throughout that war, and famously advised [Ali Khamenei’s predecessor, Ruhollah] Khomeini not to accept the 1988 ceasefire.”

In a recent interview with CNN, Rezaei—a near-30-year member of Iran’s elite Expediency Discernment Council—said it was incumbent on Trump to “break this deadlock” in negotiations and warned against any notion of a U.S. invasion.

“Then the world will understand Iran’s true capabilities, because our land power is many times greater than our missiles,” Rezai said.

Why This Doesn’t Look Like Iraq or Afghanistan

Iran’s ability to repel a U.S. invasion remains untested and may remain so. The White House has signaled little appetite for the kind of boots-on-the-ground approach employed in the U.S.’ last two major conventional wars in the region launched against Taliban-led Afghanistan in 2001 and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in 2003.

The Trump administration also has comparatively less to show for its endeavor when compared with the 100-day marks of those two conflicts. Both resulted in relatively quick oustings of hostile governments, even if the long-term consequences proved more complex, with the Taliban insurgency ultimately prevailing amid a U.S. withdrawal two decades later and Iraq exposed to competing insurgencies that gave rise to both the Islamic State militant group (ISIS) and Iran-backed militias.

The Cost of Maximal War Aims

Although the White House has not officially named toppling the Islamic Republic as a primary war goal, a report by The New York Times cited sources indicating this was a leading objective for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who supposedly convinced Trump that the Iranian government could capitulate under severe military pressure.

“NYT reporting on Trump’s pivotal meeting with Netanyahu in the White House Room showed clearly that regime change was the key objective,” Steven Simon, former National Security Council senior director for the Middle East and North Africa and now senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and visiting professor at Dartmouth College, told Newsweek.

“The chairman of the Joint Staff framed U.S. objectives as eliminating Iran’s ability to challenge the U.S. militarily in perpetuity,” Simon said. “These are maximal war aims, neither of which has been achieved, nor will they be unless the U.S. invades and occupies Iran or uses nuclear weapons—both unlikely scenarios. “

Simon also argued that Trump’s core aim of permanently denying Tehran access to a nuclear weapon “is difficult to assess since Iran was not making one, according to U.S. intelligence.”

Even if infrastructure was decimated in the 12-Day War, the enriched uranium remains buried yet conceivably salvageable, “so in the near-to-medium term, the current conflict wouldn’t appear to have been necessary to achieve Trump’s nuclear goal,” Simon said.

He drew parallels between Trump and former President George W. Bush, whose handling of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq would prove controversial.

“If you are a foreign government, you would be prudent to factor in the extreme peculiarity of the Bush 2 and Trump 2 administrations, which were and are virtually unique in their incapacity for strategic thinking and in their unsurpassed control over Congress during their first term [Bush] and second term [Trump],” Simon said.

“With 9/11 in the background, Bush was immune to criticism, while Trump himself was 9/11 for the Republican Party and congressional independence,” Simon added.

“This combination of foolishness, self-confidence and political immunity is relatively rare in American history. So broad judgments about what the U.S. could or couldn’t achieve to counter strategic challenges in the future would probably be unwise.”

Did Washington Underestimate Iran?

Mostafa Najafi, a Tehran-based security analyst, identified three ways in which he believed the U.S. had miscalculated going into the war.

“The first was Iran’s geography: a country whose size, strategic depth, and geopolitical position are unmatched by any regional actor. The Strait of Hormuz is an integral component of that geopolitical advantage,” Najafi told Newsweek.

“The second was Iran’s population. With tens of millions of citizens, Iran possesses a capacity for mobilization and endurance that exceeds many outside expectations.”

“The third was the evolution of Iran’s military doctrine, which shifted from a predominantly defensive deterrence model toward one centered on imposing tangible costs on its adversaries,” Najafi said.

Prior to the beginning of the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran, he said that Tehran had “largely operated within a predictable strategic framework,” resting on three pillars: “excessive restraint, strategic caution, and a persistent effort to avoid a full-scale regional war.”

Such consistency allowed the U.S. and Israel to largely anticipate Iranian moves and dictate the course of escalation. But this changed when Iran ultimately came through with its longstanding threats to strike neighboring Arab states hosting U.S. military bases and disrupt Strait of Hormuz traffic.

The Next Phase Won’t Be Fought With Missiles

While clashes persist, the focus of the war has moved from military operations to diplomatic wrangling. Talks remain deadlocked, however, and frustration appears to be mounting, particularly in the White House, as evidenced by Trump confirming a heated exchange with Netanyahu regarding his ally’s actions in Lebanon, a theater Tehran has linked to any peace deal given its historic partnership with the Hezbollah movement.

But Najafi pointed out that Iran also faces major challenges ahead.

“Iran’s adversaries appear to have concluded that defeating the country through direct military action would be far more costly than they had originally anticipated,” Najafi said. “As a result, the primary focus is likely to shift toward economic attrition, psychological warfare, and efforts to undermine domestic cohesion.”

“For this reason, the most important battle facing Iran in the years ahead will not be fought solely in the waters of the Persian Gulf,” he said. “Rather, it will be waged in the arenas of economic performance, governance, and the preservation of national unity. If Iran succeeds in managing these challenges, many of the objectives its adversaries hoped to achieve through military confrontation will remain out of reach.”