Iran's ballistic missile force is largely destroyed. Its command and control is disrupted. Its leadership has been decimated. And yet the regime's rational move, according to two of America's most prominent foreign policy analysts, is to keep fighting - because every additional day of war hurts the United States more than it hurts Tehran.
Historian Niall Ferguson and former Council on Foreign Relations president Richard Haass laid out this paradox on the Conversations with Coleman podcast, as covered by "Hvylya".
The asymmetry is structural. President Trump faces midterm elections, consumer anger over gas prices, and a global energy crisis that deepens with each week of conflict. Iran's leadership under Khamenei's son faces none of these pressures. "The current regime is incentivized to keep the violence going because it maximizes the pain inflicted not only on the US but on its allies and friends in the region and the wider world," Ferguson said.
Even Iran's diminished military capacity serves this strategy. Ferguson predicted that by the end of the week, Iran would have zero ballistic missile launching capability - but would retain the ability to fire Shahed drones with disrupted command and control. That is enough. "I don't think we can eliminate their drone capabilities," Haass said. As long as a single drone can threaten a tanker in the Strait of Hormuz, global shipping remains paralyzed and oil prices stay elevated.
The political math is equally lopsided. "The American public, which is already somewhat skeptical, is going to be in full revolt against the enterprise" if the war stretches into April, Ferguson warned. Trump "can't end it this week, he knows that. He needs to end it this month." Iran's autocratic system, by contrast, has no electorate to answer to and no midterms to worry about.
Haass framed it in historical terms: the Iranian regime "might have slightly more flexibility or ability to sustain a war than ours" precisely because it is repressive rather than democratic. Wars, he argued, are ultimately won by resilience - and on that front, the objectively weaker party may have the edge.
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