Iran still enjoys escalation dominance

And no, it is not overplaying its hand

A common take among analysts is that Iran may be overplaying its hand. Chatham House’s Sanam Vakil spelled out her case on the pages of Time magazine. She points out correctly that ‘Tehran’s leadership fears a staged unwinding of its leverage’, as a result of what I have described as the game of cat and mouse. She goes on to suggest that ‘Escalation, in this logic, is meant to raise the cost of the standoff enough to force Washington back to the table on broader terms’.

That’s a misreading of Iranian objectives. The escalation is not intended to ‘force Washington back to the table’ at all. Rather, the escalation — attacking every ship that disobeys Iranian authority by taking the Oman route — is meant to preserve Iranian leverage. The Iranians believe, quite correctly, and as Vakil herself tells us, that their leverage will erode if the Hormuz weapon does not remain firmly in their grip.

We are told that the Iranian wager is premised on the assessment that Trump does not have the appetite or the stamina for a costly fight: ‘Tehran expects him to want to avoid rising energy prices, American casualties, and another open ended war in the Middle East, particularly with midterm elections approaching.’ This Iranian assessment, she insists, is incorrect: ‘But Tehran may be misreading the source of Trump’s caution. … His reluctance to accept an open-ended war coexists with a deep aversion to humiliation, creating the risk that failed coercion will lead not to restraint but to further escalation.’

But is this quite right? Suppose that we perturb the premise. Let’s say the Iranians think that there is a good chance that Trump will not let Iran keep Hormuz. Would they then be willing to compromise of holding on to Hormuz? Why? What path does Iran have to security against US-Israeli depredations if it does not control Hormuz? Should the Iranians let him neutralize the Hormuz weapon if they think the US will ramp up attacks on Iran? Or even launch a ground invasion as Azizi reckons?

The Iranians know very well that they are at war with the dominant military power in the world. They understand that US objectives have not really changed from February. The US would still like very much to destroy Iran as a functioning state; to remove it as a factor tout court. The only reason the US sued for peace was that the interdiction campaign to disarm Iran failed and Iran was able to impose costs on the US and its regional geopolitical satellites.

What exactly do the Americans have to offer if they want Iran to remove their sword over Hormuz? There was a possibility of reopening Hormuz and keeping it open. And that required tying the hand of both sides. There was a deal to be had. It required honoring the MOU. The US refused to honor its commitments and instead set about chipping away at the Hormuz weapon with the game of cat and mouse. Now the Iranians have thrown down the gauntlet and that possibility is foreclosed. The Iranians are not now going to relinquish their control over Hormuz.

The US is now trapped. Vakil is quite right that accepting exclusive Iranian authority over Hormuz is a humiliation Trump cannot swallow. But the military options for retaking Hormuz are uniformly poor and come with substantial costs and risks. In fact, the Iranians have excellent counters to all escalation options available to the United States.

The idea of escalation dominance emerged from nuclear strategy. In a counterforce nuclear war, both sides try to degrade and destroy the other’s nuclear capabilities. In such a contest, the superior side’s relative position improves after a counterforce exchange. The superior side therefore enjoys escalation dominance. This has implications for world order. The balance of nuclear capabilities conditions the outcome of nuclear crisis.

But escalation dominance is a general concept in game theory. The enemy enjoys escalation dominance if, for every move available to you, he has a good counter. If you escalate, the relative balance shifts in favor of the enemy and against you.

In order to understand why Iran enjoys escalation dominance, we have to examine what happens if the US makes different moves. Let’s do this systematically.

Pure compellence case: US escalates counter-value attacks

This is the move the US has selected at this time. The Iranians have already spelled out their counter. They are promising both a horizontal escalation and a reply in kind. If the US does not pull back from its counter-value attacks, Iran has told the Houthis to impose the Red Sea blockade that has so far been held in a reserve as a gun to the Saudi head to keep them in line. This is a very big deal. Iran has also declared that, if the US continues to attack Iranian infrastructure, then ‘all infrastructure across the region will be smashed’.¹

These are excellent counters. Is the US prepared to see the Gulf and the world economy destroyed to prevail? Possibly. But if so, it will have to prove it. And in any case, the Iranians have no interest in giving up on Hormuz out of fear that the region will be totaled.

Minor ground incursion case: US occupies outlying islands

We have been told that Trump has reviewed war plans to seize the Iranian islands in the Persian Gulf. This includes Kharg Island in the northern Gulf, as well as the islands close to Hormuz in the southern gulf that are claimed by the UAE— Abu Musa and the Greater and Lesser Tunb.

Kharg is the main loading terminal for Iranian oil and of great strategic significance to Iran. The smaller islands near Hormuz can help in controlling Hormuz. And both, if successfully seized and held, can serve as bargaining chips to coerce the Iranians to relinquish their stranglehold on Hormuz.

The Iranian counter to this is pretty straightforward. They will attack the landing forces. And if US forces are able to seize the islands — not a given — they will attack the occupying forces. Force protection proved very hard on US bases on the Gulf littoral. The US servicemen who survived at the Kuwaiti base have harrowing stories to tell. Iranian attacks on US forces occupying Iranian territory will be even more powerful.

Major ground invasion case: US occupies the southern coast

In order to occupy any major chunks of mainland Iran, there are only two options. You can either launch an amphibious invasion or you can go overland. Both pose very difficult challenges.

An amphibious invasion would require massing the landing forces somewhere. This can hardly be done on the Gulf littoral itself — the massed forces would sitting ducks for plentiful and highly accurate Iranian SRBMs. More plausible is a sea-borne attack on the northern littoral of the Gulf of Oman, the Chabahar-Konarak corridor.

Amphibious assaults are hard though. The marines will take a lot of casualties in an attempt to establish a beachhead.² Even if they are successful, there is a long fight between establishing a beachhead and seizing control of Hormuz. In the meantime, they will come under heavy fire and direct attack by Iranian ground forces. Recall that Iran has a million men under arms. A decent historical model for such a conflict is Iwo Jima, which Engel (1954) used to verify the Lanchester model of attritional warfare.

The overland route is essentially the route taken by Saddam’s forces. The US could amass forces in Israel, Jordan and even Syria. Since these are only exposed to scarce long-range Iranian MRBMs and drones (which are easier to interdict for a major force with substantial air defenses), they would suffer fewer attacks and casualties in the preparatory phase than if they were massed on the Gulf littoral.

However, there is a massive problem with this war plan via Iraq. Namely, the fact that the entire population of southern Iraq is friendly to Iran and hostile to the US. We all saw the turnout for the ayatollah’s funeral in Iraq. Millions showed up to pay their respect and pledge their allegiance.

Khamenei funeral procession in Najaf, Iraq.

Iraqi Shia militias retain substantial fire power and the capacity to not only harass but seriously fight US forces in what would amount to a rear-area for the invasion forces.

Of all Iran’s regional proxies, the Iraqi militias have proven the most consistent direct threat to U.S. forces — responsible for more than 180 attacks on U.S. bases in the 18 months before the war began, including the drone strike at Tower 22 that killed three American service members in January 2024. Deeply embedded in Iraq’s official security architecture, they emerge from this war with greater public standing and strategic importance — their relative weight within Iran’s proxy network having grown as Hizballah and Hamas absorbed losses, and a regional narrative the war itself helped write now working in their favor.

Shuker and Milburn. War on the Rocks. “Outgunned, But Not Outplayed: Iran’s Theory of Victory.”

As any military man can tell you, trying to mount a major land campaign for a hostile rear area is a recipe for disaster. In effect, the US would be fighting not just the Iranians but also the Iraqis, if indeed not Hezbollah and the Houthis as well.

Suppose that despite the odds US forces are able to occupy southern Iran and gain control of Hormuz. Then what? Iran has great strategic depth. US forces cannot occupy more than a small fraction of a country the size of England, Germany, France and Italy combined. The reason is very simple. The US does not have the land army for the job. It can field no more than fifteen divisions even with a draft. US Army Manual calls for something like sixty for a country the size of Iran.

This means that even after a successful invasion and occupation of southern Iran, the Iranians will be able to mount attacks on the occupying forces from their unoccupied sanctuary areas. The probability that the US could win a protracted ground war against Iran is remote.

Even if it defeats the standing forces of the Iranian military, the Iranians will transition to a guerrilla war. Recall that Iran has 40 million men of military age, all of whom have received at least some military training. By contrast, all of Vietnam had just 10 million men of military age and back in 1965, the US had twice as many men in the army. The upshot is that the Iranians have excellent reasons to think they can prevail in a protracted ground war.

In sum, Iran enjoys escalation dominance because it has effective counters at every level of escalation. This does not mean that the US will not get sucked into a war anyway. The problem is that the picture of the world the principals carry in their heads is wrong. They really, really think that Iran is a bit player that cannot possibly defeat ‘the most powerful state in history’ — that there must be a way of defeating Iran.

But there isn’t. The truth is that the US does not have the military means to seize Hormuz from Iran because Iran is not a bit player but a great power. There is no leg of the escalation ladder where the US can prevail because Iran enjoys escalation dominance.

The question is not whether Iran can be defeated. It cannot. The question is whether Trump is authoring the final chapter of the empire.

1. The quote is from the video of the Iranian spokesman, not the text Reuters report. I have included screenshots of the video, just in case there is any doubt about the source.

2. It is interesting to note as an aside that no other power in the world has any real counterpart the US Marine Corps. Back in the late-1940s and early-1950s, the Army and the Navy ganged up to pressure Congress to dismantle the service. The Marines fought a rear-guard battle and got Congress to permanently forbid administrative changes that would undermine the Marine Corps as an independent arm of the US military. This episode is known as the Revolt of the Admirals. The Douglas-Mansfield Act of 1952 is also known as the Marine Corps Protection Act.