A FIVE-PART SERIES
HOW IRAN IS REWRITING THE RULES OF AMERICAN MILITARY POWER
A five-part examination of how Iran’s asymmetric strategy is exposing the limits of concentrated American military power.
Iran’s war with the United States is revealing a larger transformation in military power. Capabilities once concentrated in the hands of a few advanced states are becoming cheaper, more distributed and increasingly difficult to suppress.
This five-part series examines what Iran’s asymmetric strategy is exposing about American vulnerability, the return of mass, escalation without resolution and the changing logic of deterrence.
PART
IRAN KEEPS EXPOSING NEW AMERICAN VULNERABILITIES—THE PROBLEM IS WE DON’T KNOW WHAT COMES NEXT
The United States may not be fighting a fixed Iranian arsenal. It may be fighting an Iranian learning curve.
PART
AMERICA BUILT AN EXQUISITE MILITARY FOR A WORLD THAT NO LONGER EXISTS
The United States built extraordinary capability into a relatively small number of expensive systems. Its adversaries are learning how to distribute capability across cheaper, expendable ones.
PART
THE ESCALATING STALEMATE
The danger is not merely that neither side can impose its preferred outcome. It is that both sides can keep discovering new ways to raise the cost.
PART
WHO NEEDS THE BOMB?
Iran may be discovering that the most usable form of deterrence is not necessarily nuclear.