Little has gone as Washington planned in the war against Iran. The Iranian people have not risen up, one hard-line leader has been replaced by another, Iranian missiles and drones keep hitting targets across the Middle East, Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz, driving oil and gas prices up worldwide, and Tehran has rejected a 15-point U.S. plan for a ceasefire, in sharp contrast to Trump’s demand for “unconditional surrender.”
As a scholar who researches U.S. forever wars, I believe the answer is simple: Trump, like other U.S. presidents before him, has fallen into what I call the trap of asymmetric resolve. This occurs when a stronger power with less determination to fight starts a military conflict with a far weaker state that has near boundless determination to prevail. Victory for the strong becomes tough, even close to impossible.
When it comes to Iran, the Islamic Republic wants – and needs – victory more than the United States. Unlike the U.S., the Iranian government’s very existence is on the line. That gives Tehran many more incentives and effective countermeasures through which to fight on. Typically, in asymmetric wars the stronger side does not face the same potential for regime death as the weaker side, leading to lesser resolve and difficulty sustaining the costs of war required to defeat the weaker, more determined rival.
Such dynamics have played out in conflicts dating back to the sixth century B.C., when a massive Persian army under Darius I was checked by a much smaller, determined Scythian military, leading to a humiliating Persian retreat. For the U.S. in the modern era, wars of asymmetric resolve have likewise not been kind. In Vietnam, an estimated 1.1 million North Vietnamese civilians and Viet Cong fighters died compared to 58,000 U.S. troops, yet the U.S. gave up after eight years. In Afghanistan, the Taliban lost about 84,000 fighters compared to around 2,400 U.S. troops over 20 years, yet the U.S. ultimately sued for peace, cut a deal and left, and the Taliban immediately returned to power.
Unlike 2025’s 12-day war that largely targeted Iranian military installations, including its nuclear sites, Trump and the Israelis are now directly threatening the survival of the Iranian government. Killing the supreme leader, a slew of other powerful figures, and encouraging a popular uprising made this crystal clear. Tehran is responding as it said it would were its survival to be at stake: retaliating against Israel, Arab Gulf nations and U.S. bases across the region, as well as largely closing the Strait of Hormuz to commercial traffic. It is going all-in to cause as much pain as it can to the U.S. and its interests.
Iran has suffered the disproportionate number of losses in the current war, both in terms of human casualties and depleted weaponry. As of mid-March, there have been upward of 5,000 Iranian military casualties and more than 1,500 Iranian civilian deaths, compared to 13 dead U.S. service members. Yet, Tehran isn’t backing down, saying on March 10, “We will determine when the war ends.” Such Iranian resolve seemingly confounds Trump. Before the war, he wondered why Iran wouldn’t cave to his demands, and he has since conceded that regime change – seemingly a major U.S. goal at the war’s onset – is now a “very big hurdle.”
