As the conflict with Iran lingers, the world is watching the fight with bated breath. What most are not seeing, however, is the strategic shift now underway in the war’s dynamics, as Iran’s military effectiveness declines while the capabilities, and the resolve, of the United States, Israel and assorted nations in the Gulf strengthen. The result is a protracted, lower-intensity war of attrition – one that, despite the current speculation, favors Washington and its allies.
Here, it’s useful to think of the conflict in terms of phases. The war’s first phase was defined by shock and decapitation, involving the elimination of key regime leaders and the establishment of airspace dominance. Both Washington and Jerusalem obviously hoped that this might be enough to precipitate regime collapse, or at least force Tehran to surrender.
For the Iranian regime, however, this was a formative moment. Its response reflected acute existential distress, bordering on hysteria: wide-ranging launches that consolidated the quiet regional coalition that had already been arrayed behind the U.S., while sharply depleting its own arsenal of drones and ballistic missiles. This loss of equilibrium during the first week of the war severely degraded Iran’s ability to prosecute its own planned strategy of attrition, which centered on blockading the Strait of Hormuz.
Phase two, from the allied perspective, has focused on the systematic destruction of Iranian military infrastructure, logistics chains, and defense industry, together with targeting nodes of the regime’s sprawling internal security apparatus. Tehran, however, has viewed this as a chance to catch its breath and begin implementing its plan to sap America’s political will. It has done so by blocking the Strait to trigger an energy crisis and by attempting to coerce Gulf states into pressuring Washington to end the campaign.
This brings us to Phase three, which Iran begins with most of its stocks of offensive weapons depleted or destroyed, and the defense-industrial base it counts on to reconstitute them shattered. This is visible in the plummeting rate of Iranian fire; over the first two-and-a-half weeks of the war, Israel has absorbed just 10% of the damage it sustained during the shorter “Twelve Day War” of June 2025. Gulf states have borne the brunt of Iranian rocket barrages to date, but they too now face fewer ballistic missiles and more attacks by cheaper unmanned systems. Those, however, will be effectively dealt with through defense adaptation and ongoing U.S. efforts to seek and destroy Iranian UAV units.
The central battle, then, is the one over control of the critical Hormuz waterway. But here, too, Iranian effectiveness can be expected to decline sharply while that of the U.S. will steadily improve.
That is because the Trump administration has dispatched the Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) from the Pacific toward the Gulf. This detachment was not chosen by accident; it is the U.S. unit best trained to counter adversaries’ sea-denial tactics. If activated, its likely mission will be to consolidate American air superiority in the Gulf by establishing a foothold on the ground, possibly by seizing the Iranian-held islands at the heart of the Strait. Such a move would give the U.S. the ability to provide overwatch to maritime traffic – and to augment American efforts to carry out mine-swiping operations while continuing to hunt remaining Iranian missiles, UAVs, and speedboats.
There is breathing room for this strategy to work. Global energy markets currently seem volatile, but they entered the war with a supply surplus and so afford a window of at least several weeks to restore safe transit through the Strait before Iran’s tactics truly begin to bite.
A war of attrition is inherently a contest between logistical and industrial capacities. Iran appears on the back foot here as well, not just because of the near-total destruction of its supply and production chains but also due to the relatively rapidity with which the U.S. and its allies have managed to mobilize. Recent worries over interceptor shortages are dissipating as U.S.-Israeli-Gulf procurement outpaces the declining Iranian launch rate.
Indeed, this war may end up being the catalyst that the West needed to move from rhetoric to concrete investments in defense-industrial capacity.
The downward curve of Iranian military effectiveness, moreover, is meeting an unexpectedly steep upward curve on the other side, both militarily and politically. Iran’s clerical regime is now in a fight for its survival, with senior figures being eliminated, internal security organs failing to plug breaches, and segments of the Iranian public quietly girding for potential renewed street action. The regime’s existential hourglass, in other words, is rapidly running out.
If the war’s first phase was a jump-start, and its second was a steep climb, the third act of “Epic Fury” may end up resembling a glide path. Iran’s capacity to punish its neighbors is rapidly diminishing. The remaining threat, primarily from UAV strikes, is something the U.S. and its partners are learning how to manage.
Within weeks, the Strait of Hormuz could return to something close to “business as usual.” Iran’s regime, though, assuredly will not.
About the Author:
Brig. Gen. (res) Eran Ortal is a Visiting Scholar at the American Foreign Policy Council in Washington, DC, and the former commander of the Dado Center for Interdisciplinary Military Studies of the Israeli Defense Forces.