In Iran, the Trump administration fell “prey to the short-war fallacy, focusing inordinately on the power of its means while losing sight of how to achieve its ends,” writes Lawrence Freedman in a new essay. Great powers tend to assume that “moving fast with tremendous force will incapacitate adversaries and achieve swift success on the battlefield,” but “wars do not often end so easily.” Today, the United States’ gambit in Iran “may not turn out to be a long war, but it has already failed as a short war.”
We’ve compiled a selection of Foreign Affairs essays that shed light on how the United States approached the war with Iran—and why the conflict has been so difficult to resolve. Start reading below.
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