March 23, 2026
Meg Hansen
This joint strike campaign is meant to deliver a twofer: eliminate the brutal Shia theocracy and dismantle its terrorist proxy network.
Yet the massive kinetic wins have not translated into functional success. Iranian missiles still regularly strike U.S. bases, energy facilities, and civilian areas in our allied Gulf states. Maritime disruption continues in the Strait of Hormuz. The regime has named the deceased supreme leader’s son, Mojtaba Khamenei, as his successor. The ayatollah is dead; long live the ayatollah.
Since coming to power, Iran’s clerical regime has used asymmetric warfare as an instrument of state building. It weaponizes the ideology of eternal rebellion to cement its legitimacy at home and export its influence across the Shia world.
This system is optimized to inflict disproportionate losses on its enemies while embroiling them in unending conflict. Like the mythical Hydra of Lerna, it grows two new heads for every decapitation. We have been here before. Yet here we are again, a quarter century on, even as Beijing has become a peer adversary.
Confronting China requires an entirely new strategic playbook and unglamorous work like supply-chain decoupling. But most of America’s political class is neither fluent nor interested in this approach, so it retreats to the familiar terrain of regime change in the Middle East — the geopolitical equivalent of rearranging your closet when a deadline is looming.
Some China analysts have argued that this “procrasticleaning” is in fact a win against Xi Jinping because it knocks off his key Mideast ally. But that triumphalism rings hollow when you account for the Iran war’s toll on the Indo-Pacific theater.
However the Iran war unfolds, it will prove to be a strategic self-own in our great-power competition with China. Two structural constraints inform this prediction.
First, Iran has entangled America in a war of attrition that is straining our finite stockpiles of air-defense interceptors and other critical munitions. Taiwan and our other Asian partners are worried that high-value assets, earmarked for the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, will be diverted to the Middle East.
These fears are already materializing on the Korean Peninsula. The U.S. Forces Korea command has moved 20-30% of its Patriot missile batteries to Osan Air Base amid speculation that they will be shipped to the Middle East. President Lee Jae Myung has confirmed that Seoul and Washington are discussing the redeployment of some U.S. Patriot missile defense systems from the region. South Korea is also scrambling to deliver roughly thirty interceptors to the U.A.E., drawing from its own operational reserves.
At sea, the diversion is even more pronounced. Forty-one percent of battle-ready U.S. Navy ships are concentrated in the Middle East, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). This figure is poised to rise as the USS George H.W. Bush carrier strike group prepares to deploy to the Eastern Mediterranean. The USS Gerald R. Ford and the USS Abraham Lincoln (pulled from its Pacific mission last month) are stationed in the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea respectively. The only U.S. carrier in Asia, the George Washington, is undergoing maintenance in Japan.
The Pentagon is now deploying the Japan-based Marine Expeditionary Unit of roughly 2,500 Marines and sailors, along with the amphibious assault ship USS Tripoli, to the Middle East. As Captain (Ret.) James JB Park of the Republic of Korea Army told RS, these developments preview a future where American resources are stretched thin across multiple theaters at the expense of Indo-Pacific deterrence. If Iran is the opening gambit of a grand strategy to weaken China, then we are starting on the back foot.
Compounding that vulnerability, the war does far less damage to Beijing than its advocates claim. Iran, albeit an important pillar, is not foundational to Xi’s ambitions in the Middle East. China buys more than 80% of Iran’s crude oil at discounted prices, but these barrels account for only 13% of its overall imports. Its energy security is guaranteed by the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states, which supply 42% of China’s crude oil and 31% of its liquefied natural gas.
The China–Iran “Comprehensive Strategic Partnership,” although hyped as $400 billion in potential investment over twenty-five years, has scarcely materialized. The total Chinese investment since 2007 falls just under $5 billion. In contrast, by 2020, Beijing had poured $70 billion into GCC countries across energy, real estate, and infrastructure development.
China sells more missiles to Iran than its neighbors, but it provides Saudi Arabia with access to more advanced weapon systems such as DF-21 intermediate-range ballistic missiles. Its actual Middle East posture, therefore, is to maintain deep ties with the Arab monarchies alongside an opportunistic stance toward Iran, exploiting the latter as a cheap gas station and captive market for Chinese telecom and surveillance products.
If the American offensive against Iran unsettles one of China’s regional interests, it will do so at the cost of cannibalizing our military readiness in the Indo-Pacific. All the while, Beijing is building anti-carrier hypersonic missiles, a nuclear-powered submarine fleet, militarized artificial islands, and an extensive network of deep-water ports and naval bases from Pakistan to Djibouti (“String of Pearls”).
This brings us to the Iran war’s second structural constraint. Short of catastrophic escalation, no military campaign will overthrow the Islamic Republic. Airpower alone cannot compel the regime’s unconditional surrender. The population will not topple the Islamic Republic and install a new pro-U.S. government.
The fantasy chain reaction on which the Trump administration is betting rests on a fallacy about the mechanics of popular uprisings. The people — divided, distracted, and disorganized — have little to no political agency. Only when a counter-elite successfully mobilizes against and replaces the ruling elite does a revolution occur.
Would an invasion by U.S. ground troops incite regime defections and an internal collapse that the air campaign could not? History suggests otherwise. When Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein invaded Iran’s border province of Khuzestan in 1980, he expected to annex oil and water resources and destabilize the revolutionary government of Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Instead, the ensuing eight-year conflict consolidated the Islamic regime (even the local Arab population sided with it), while exhausting Iraq’s military and economy.
We have already suffered an irreversible human tragedy: thirteen U.S. troops have been killed and 200 wounded. Civilian losses across the region are also mounting, with reports indicating 1,351 deaths in Iran, at least 912 people killed in Lebanon, and additional fatalities in Israel and the Gulf states. The material losses also carry a steep price, as replacing expended munitions and damaged equipment requires critical minerals and supply chains dominated by China.
The war will redound to Xi’s advantage. In effect, China is approximating the “offshore balancing” strategy long advocated by U.S. foreign policy realists. By avoiding military involvement and letting regional actors check one another, it incurs none of the costs in blood, treasure, or political capital that America will now have to shoulder.
Meg Hansen
However the Iran war unfolds, it
will prove to be a strategic self-own in our great-power competition with China
As Operation Epic Fury enters its
fourth week, American and Israeli forces can boast of many tactical victories.
They have destroyed 75% of Iran’s missile and drone launch capacity, sunk over
thirty naval vessels, hit critical Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and
Iranian military centers, and killed the highest ranks of the country’s
leadership, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and secretary of
the Supreme National Security Council Ali Larijani.
This joint strike campaign is meant to deliver a twofer: eliminate the brutal Shia theocracy and dismantle its terrorist proxy network.
Yet the massive kinetic wins have not translated into functional success. Iranian missiles still regularly strike U.S. bases, energy facilities, and civilian areas in our allied Gulf states. Maritime disruption continues in the Strait of Hormuz. The regime has named the deceased supreme leader’s son, Mojtaba Khamenei, as his successor. The ayatollah is dead; long live the ayatollah.
Since coming to power, Iran’s clerical regime has used asymmetric warfare as an instrument of state building. It weaponizes the ideology of eternal rebellion to cement its legitimacy at home and export its influence across the Shia world.
This system is optimized to inflict disproportionate losses on its enemies while embroiling them in unending conflict. Like the mythical Hydra of Lerna, it grows two new heads for every decapitation. We have been here before. Yet here we are again, a quarter century on, even as Beijing has become a peer adversary.
Confronting China requires an entirely new strategic playbook and unglamorous work like supply-chain decoupling. But most of America’s political class is neither fluent nor interested in this approach, so it retreats to the familiar terrain of regime change in the Middle East — the geopolitical equivalent of rearranging your closet when a deadline is looming.
Some China analysts have argued that this “procrasticleaning” is in fact a win against Xi Jinping because it knocks off his key Mideast ally. But that triumphalism rings hollow when you account for the Iran war’s toll on the Indo-Pacific theater.
However the Iran war unfolds, it will prove to be a strategic self-own in our great-power competition with China. Two structural constraints inform this prediction.
First, Iran has entangled America in a war of attrition that is straining our finite stockpiles of air-defense interceptors and other critical munitions. Taiwan and our other Asian partners are worried that high-value assets, earmarked for the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, will be diverted to the Middle East.
These fears are already materializing on the Korean Peninsula. The U.S. Forces Korea command has moved 20-30% of its Patriot missile batteries to Osan Air Base amid speculation that they will be shipped to the Middle East. President Lee Jae Myung has confirmed that Seoul and Washington are discussing the redeployment of some U.S. Patriot missile defense systems from the region. South Korea is also scrambling to deliver roughly thirty interceptors to the U.A.E., drawing from its own operational reserves.
At sea, the diversion is even more pronounced. Forty-one percent of battle-ready U.S. Navy ships are concentrated in the Middle East, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). This figure is poised to rise as the USS George H.W. Bush carrier strike group prepares to deploy to the Eastern Mediterranean. The USS Gerald R. Ford and the USS Abraham Lincoln (pulled from its Pacific mission last month) are stationed in the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea respectively. The only U.S. carrier in Asia, the George Washington, is undergoing maintenance in Japan.
The Pentagon is now deploying the Japan-based Marine Expeditionary Unit of roughly 2,500 Marines and sailors, along with the amphibious assault ship USS Tripoli, to the Middle East. As Captain (Ret.) James JB Park of the Republic of Korea Army told RS, these developments preview a future where American resources are stretched thin across multiple theaters at the expense of Indo-Pacific deterrence. If Iran is the opening gambit of a grand strategy to weaken China, then we are starting on the back foot.
Compounding that vulnerability, the war does far less damage to Beijing than its advocates claim. Iran, albeit an important pillar, is not foundational to Xi’s ambitions in the Middle East. China buys more than 80% of Iran’s crude oil at discounted prices, but these barrels account for only 13% of its overall imports. Its energy security is guaranteed by the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states, which supply 42% of China’s crude oil and 31% of its liquefied natural gas.
The China–Iran “Comprehensive Strategic Partnership,” although hyped as $400 billion in potential investment over twenty-five years, has scarcely materialized. The total Chinese investment since 2007 falls just under $5 billion. In contrast, by 2020, Beijing had poured $70 billion into GCC countries across energy, real estate, and infrastructure development.
China sells more missiles to Iran than its neighbors, but it provides Saudi Arabia with access to more advanced weapon systems such as DF-21 intermediate-range ballistic missiles. Its actual Middle East posture, therefore, is to maintain deep ties with the Arab monarchies alongside an opportunistic stance toward Iran, exploiting the latter as a cheap gas station and captive market for Chinese telecom and surveillance products.
If the American offensive against Iran unsettles one of China’s regional interests, it will do so at the cost of cannibalizing our military readiness in the Indo-Pacific. All the while, Beijing is building anti-carrier hypersonic missiles, a nuclear-powered submarine fleet, militarized artificial islands, and an extensive network of deep-water ports and naval bases from Pakistan to Djibouti (“String of Pearls”).
This brings us to the Iran war’s second structural constraint. Short of catastrophic escalation, no military campaign will overthrow the Islamic Republic. Airpower alone cannot compel the regime’s unconditional surrender. The population will not topple the Islamic Republic and install a new pro-U.S. government.
The fantasy chain reaction on which the Trump administration is betting rests on a fallacy about the mechanics of popular uprisings. The people — divided, distracted, and disorganized — have little to no political agency. Only when a counter-elite successfully mobilizes against and replaces the ruling elite does a revolution occur.
Would an invasion by U.S. ground troops incite regime defections and an internal collapse that the air campaign could not? History suggests otherwise. When Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein invaded Iran’s border province of Khuzestan in 1980, he expected to annex oil and water resources and destabilize the revolutionary government of Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Instead, the ensuing eight-year conflict consolidated the Islamic regime (even the local Arab population sided with it), while exhausting Iraq’s military and economy.
We have already suffered an irreversible human tragedy: thirteen U.S. troops have been killed and 200 wounded. Civilian losses across the region are also mounting, with reports indicating 1,351 deaths in Iran, at least 912 people killed in Lebanon, and additional fatalities in Israel and the Gulf states. The material losses also carry a steep price, as replacing expended munitions and damaged equipment requires critical minerals and supply chains dominated by China.
The war will redound to Xi’s advantage. In effect, China is approximating the “offshore balancing” strategy long advocated by U.S. foreign policy realists. By avoiding military involvement and letting regional actors check one another, it incurs none of the costs in blood, treasure, or political capital that America will now have to shoulder.
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