When Iran struck the Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan with missiles and drones on July 17, killing two American soldiers and wounding several others, it lit a fuse that neither Washington nor Tehran has been able to put out since.
By July 20, the United States had carried out 10 consecutive nights of airstrikes against Iranian territory, targeting air defense networks, radar stations, missile infrastructure, drone facilities, and port installations across southern Iran. Total American fatalities in the current conflict reached 17.
Iran has not backed down. And there is no political mechanism in sight for stopping the cycle.
Each Exchange Sets a Higher Floor for Retaliation
The White House's calculation — that overwhelming airpower could rebuild deterrence and force Iranian restraint — has produced the opposite result. Each round of US strikes has sped up the retaliation cycle rather than dampening it.
This reflects a structural mismatch that no amount of air dominance can resolve. The United States cannot guarantee safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz for every oil tanker and liquefied natural gas (LNG) carrier through bombing alone.
Iran, in turn, cannot defeat US forces in a conventional theater. But it commands an asymmetric toolkit of missiles, drones, naval mines, and regional proxies capable of steadily raising the cost of maritime insurance, energy supply chains, and allied-nation security. Every exchange moves the acceptable threshold for the next one higher.
Iran's decision to expand its attacks beyond its own borders — striking US-affiliated facilities in Jordan, Bahrain, and Kuwait — reflects this deliberate strategy of internationalizing the risk.
The attack on Kuwait's power generation and desalination infrastructure was a particularly pointed escalation. Military bases can be evacuated, but a crippled water and electricity grid places an entire city's survival at stake. Tehran is signaling to every Gulf state that the price of proximity to American forces is now measured in civilian infrastructure.
Khamenei's Killing Fused Martyrdom, Nationalism, and Anti-American Rage
Understanding Iran's current posture requires taking the death of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei seriously as a political event, not merely a military outcome.
The large-scale national mourning that followed did not simply channel grief — it mobilized it. Tehran's streets filled with crowds demanding vengeance, with effigies of President Trump hung in public and a giant billboard depicting him in a black coffin appearing at Revolution Square.
Then Trump made things considerably worse.
During Iran's national mourning period, he publicly declared that the US had possessed the opportunity to eliminate Iran's remaining senior leadership while they were gathered at the funeral — and had chosen not to, only because it was necessary to preserve a negotiating partner.
Whatever the intent — most likely a show of leverage — the effect inside Iran was to reframe a national funeral as a missed mass assassination. For a political culture shaped by Shi'a martyrdom tradition, that framing does not produce submission. It hands the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) precisely what it needs to transform public grief into organized, legitimized revenge.
The feedback loop extends to Trump's own security posture. After the NATO summit in Ankara, he returned to the United States on the older Air Force One — better equipped with defensive systems — rather than the newer Qatar-gifted aircraft previously earmarked for presidential travel.
Trump has not formally confirmed a direct connection to assassination intelligence. But he has acknowledged publicly that he may be the primary target on Iran's list, and has threatened devastating retaliation if any attempt on his life succeeds. The conflict has evolved far beyond nuclear facilities and shipping lanes into open threats between heads of state.
Decapitation Removed Figures, Not the State — and Empowered the Hawks
The US strategy in this conflict drew from a recognizable playbook: eliminate Iran's nuclear and missile capabilities, remove its top leadership to create a power vacuum, and count on internal pressure to complete the transition. Precedent from Iraq and Libya apparently led some in Washington to believe that removing the figures at the top would cause the system below them to collapse.
Iran proved a fundamentally different case.
The IRGC, the religious establishment, the security services, local administrative structures, the missile corps, and the intelligence networks all continued operating after senior figures were killed. The Iranian public did not take to the streets on Washington's behalf.
The space vacated by the removed leadership was not filled by reform-minded moderates or Western-oriented factions. It was filled by hardline IRGC commanders whose authority depends on maximizing resistance and framing that resistance as righteous revenge.
The decapitation campaign also destroyed the political oxygen that Iranian moderates needed to function. When national territory is under sustained bombardment and the supreme leader has been killed by a foreign power, advocating compromise becomes functionally equivalent to betraying the martyrs.
Trump calculated that eliminating Khamenei would weaken the theocracy's grip. The practical result was to fuse martyrdom, national dignity, and anti-American identity into a more cohesive political force — and to deliver the IRGC a more complete mandate over the Iranian state than it had before.
No Exit Path — and Netanyahu Keeps Opening New Fronts
The Financial Times has observed that the Trump administration re-engaged the United States in direct military conflict with Iran without articulating a coherent victory definition or a credible exit strategy.
The stated objectives have shifted repeatedly: from dismantling Iran's nuclear program, to regime change, to securing freedom of navigation through the Strait of Hormuz. US average gasoline prices have climbed back above $4 per gallon, and polling suggests most American voters do not believe the costs are justified. The military escalation has been relentless; the political pathway out remains nonexistent.
*Haaretz* military analyst Amos Harel has noted that both Washington and Tehran are currently attempting to limit direct Israeli involvement in the main theater. But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has continued striking targets in southern Lebanon, meaning any ceasefire framework could be invalidated by a third front at virtually any moment.
The problem this creates for diplomacy is structural. Washington is asking Tehran to restrain Hezbollah as a condition of any deal, while being demonstrably unable to compel Israel to halt its own parallel operations. No Iranian leadership, hardline or otherwise, will accept an arrangement whose enforceability depends on a condition the other party cannot control.
The Warning Taiwan Cannot Afford to Misread
What makes this conflict so difficult to end is that it has long since outgrown the bilateral frame.
The United States cannot convert air dominance into a political settlement. Iran has extended its retaliation outward — into global energy markets, shipping insurance calculations, the strategic positioning of Gulf states, and the activation of regional proxies. So long as Israel continues operating in Lebanon, no ceasefire arrangement will hold without Netanyahu's cooperation, which Washington cannot guarantee.
The lesson for Taiwan is not about what the United States should have done differently in the Middle East. It is about what this conflict reveals concerning the limits of external reliance as a security strategy.
An ally's support matters enormously. But national security built exclusively around the expectation of timely foreign intervention is structurally fragile. The US-Iran conflict demonstrates that once a war begins, political resolution does not automatically follow even the most decisive military action.
Countries that weather conflict most effectively are those that can absorb an initial strike, maintain social and economic function under sustained pressure, and preserve the capacity to negotiate from a position that has not been obliterated. That is the foundation Taiwan needs — not as an alternative to alliance relationships, but as the bedrock without which those relationships cannot be made to hold.
*The author holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of British Columbia, Canada, and is an associate professor certified by Taiwan's Ministry of Education, as well as a practicing psychiatrist.
Original Article in Chinese （Related： Trump's China-Russia Dilemma: The Harder Washington Pushes, The Closer They Get ｜ Latest ）
