The joint U.S.-Israeli air campaign against Iran has entered its fourth week, but a growing body of analysis suggests the war's basic logic favors Tehran. The United States needs a decisive outcome. Iran does not.

That is the central argument advanced by Ilan Goldenberg, who served as Iran Team Chief at the Pentagon under Obama and later advised Vice President Kamala Harris on the Middle East. Writing in Foreign Affairs, he outlined a dynamic that echoes the counterinsurgency failures in Iraq and Afghanistan, "Hvylya" reports.

In those earlier conflicts, the United States needed near-total control of territory, governance, and security. The Taliban and the Iraqi insurgency only needed to hide among the population and sustain violence at a level that undercut confidence. A similar dynamic is now emerging, Goldenberg argued, albeit in a different domain. For Washington and its partners, success requires ensuring the free flow of energy, protecting critical oil infrastructure in the Gulf, and maintaining regional stability.

For Tehran, the bar is far lower. It may be enough to "periodically attack an occasional tanker in the Strait of Hormuz," strike energy facilities, or launch drone attacks that penetrate Gulf defenses. Even if the vast majority of Iranian strikes are intercepted, Goldenberg argued, the few that get through can have a disproportionate impact - rattling global markets and reshaping perceptions of risk far beyond the physical damage they cause.

Iran has sustained consistent attacks for three weeks. And even if it runs low on long-range missiles, there are few indications the U.S. and Israel can degrade Iran's drones, short-range missiles, and mines enough to prevent it from wreaking havoc across the Gulf. The aftermath of last June's 12-Day War is instructive: after extensive strikes, Washington and Jerusalem declared Iran's capabilities dramatically set back, only to discover that Tehran was rearming at a much faster rate than anticipated.

Also read: WSJ: Iran's Energy Weapon Marks a New Phase in Great-Power Competition.