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Oil prices have been spiking since the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, leading reporters and analysts to ask when the war will end. They generally ask President Trump, whose answer varies from “very soon” to “four to five weeks”. Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth says it is anywhere between three to eight weeks. But whatever the date given, the assumption is that the war ends when the United States says it is over.
However, this assumption ignores the reality of warfare, where “the enemy also gets a vote”. Both the US and Iran have their own theories of victory and their own “termination conditions” for the war – and those conditions are mutually exclusive. If the United States declares victory but Iran keeps the Strait of Hormuz closed with mines and Uncrewed Surface Vessels (USVs), the war is not over. Both sides appear to fundamentally misunderstand the situation, and this analysis concludes that the conflict will likely go on for far longer than either side wants.
Theories of Victory
A theory of victory is the broad plan for how a country will end a conflict and get its adversary to agree to favourable terms. A 2024 study by the RAND Corporation – a US defence think tank – defines it as “a causal story about how to defeat an adversary” that identifies the conditions under which the enemy will admit defeat and outlines how to create those conditions.
The authors highlighted five general types of victory: dominance, denial, devaluing, brinksmanship and cost imposition.
Dominance (such as unconditional surrender) means comprehensively defeating the enemy, leaving it physically unable to defend against further attacks or mount counterattacks.
Denial means convincing the enemy that it cannot win, even if it cannot be decisively defeated.
Devaluing means convincing the enemy that any victory will be Pyrrhic – not worth the cost.
Brinksmanship convinces the enemy that the risks of vertical escalation – responding to an attack with an even greater counterattack – are too great.
Finally, cost imposition convinces the enemy that continuing the war will cost too much to justify.
Each adversary creates a theory of victory from one or more of these, to convince the other side to sue for peace on favourable terms. It is cost imposition that both the US and Iran are pursuing, in different ways.
A nation’s goals and objectives for a war are about what it wants to achieve; its theory of victory is about how it plans to achieve them. Therein lies the problem for the United States.
The United States’ Theory of Victory
The Trump administration’s stated goals have been constantly shifting, but appear to have settled on destroying Iran’s navy, eliminating its ability to launch and produce missiles, preventing Iran from supporting proxies and ensuring Iran can never produce a nuclear weapon. These are goals, however, rather than a plan for how they will be achieved.
President Trump has called for Iran’s “unconditional surrender”. The last two countries that unconditionally surrendered to the United States were Germany after Berlin fell and Japan after Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Inducing unconditional surrender with only a conventional air campaign seems highly unlikely without extreme vertical escalation – use of a nuclear weapon, destruction of Iranian freshwater infrastructure, or a massive land invasion – none of which the United States has shown any inclination for.
Instead, the US appears to be following a cost imposition strategy. It has targeted much of Iran’s military capabilities and leadership, but has not yet broadly attacked oil production, electricity or water resources.
It is unclear how much destruction Iran is willing to endure, but the threshold is likely very high: the leaders making decisions are not beholden to the people, nor greatly affected by the conflict aside from the risk of dying in an air strike. So far, Iranian leadership has made it clear it is uninterested in returning to the negotiating table.
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Iran’s Theory of Victory
Iranian demands for a peace agreement were posted on X by Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, who wrote that “the only way to end this war – ignited by the Zionist regime & US – is recognising Iran’s legitimate rights, payment of reparations, and firm international guarantees against future aggression”. “Legitimate rights” presumably include Iran’s right to develop nuclear power. Both demands are non-starters for the United States and Israel. Like the US, Iran’s theory of victory is one of cost imposition – but it differs in the details.
Iran has imposed cost in several ways. It has destroyed expensive equipment, such as the AN/FPS-132 ballistic missile radar worth roughly half a billion dollars. It is forcing the US to expend costly Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) and Patriot interceptor missiles against targets that cost far less to produce – the US reportedly used around 800 interceptors in the first week alone – and the US has burned through 10% of its total inventory of Tomahawk cruise missiles in the opening days.
Iran has also closed the Strait of Hormuz, attacking at least 16 vessels, while still moving about 1.5 million barrels of its own oil per day, mostly to China. The Wall Street Journal reports that Iran is selling more oil than before the war, reaping the benefits of high prices caused by the conflict. It has also mounted attacks on Gulf states friendly to the United States, costing their neighbours additional revenue.
The strategic logic suggests Iran believes it can drain enough US military assets, and cause enough economic damage, to encourage sufficient external and internal pressure on the United States and Israel to end the war.
Iran appears to assume that the US military will also want the conflict to end, given the rising costs and slow production of the high-end munitions being used. Tehran likely hopes that high fuel prices and a worsening economy will cause the American public to demand an end.
Iranian leadership appears to believe it can sustain this pressure indefinitely usi