Nada Salam
The easiest way to misunderstand the war with Iran is to follow it one day at a time.
A U.S. strike is followed by an Iranian response. Washington escalates its rhetoric, Tehran signals an opening for negotiations, a mediator arrives with another proposal, and within hours military aircraft are back in the air. Each development appears to change the direction of the conflict.
It rarely does.
The daily drama matters, but it does not explain the war. Much of what determines its direction is taking place at a deeper level, where long-term economic and strategic interests intersect with private negotiations, undisclosed understandings and backchannel communications that the public may learn about months or even years later.
That is why interpreting this conflict primarily through Donald Trump is misleading.
Trump matters enormously. His preference for overwhelming pressure, his willingness to use military force and his familiar pattern of escalating before offering a deal have clearly shaped the conduct of the confrontation.
But the United States does not deploy military, economic and diplomatic power on this scale in one of the world’s most strategically important regions simply because a president has decided to settle a score with Iran.
There are interests here that outlast presidents.
Iran’s nuclear program and Israel’s security are central to the confrontation, but they are not the whole story. There is also the Strait of Hormuz, global energy security, maritime trade routes, the future American military posture in the Gulf, the regional balance of power and China’s expanding economic and strategic presence across the Middle East.
Above all, there is a larger question: who will have the power to shape the regional order that emerges from this conflict?
Seen from that perspective, this is not simply Trump’s war.
He is the president executing it, and his personality determines much of its style and tempo. But he is pursuing strategic objectives that have accumulated over successive American administrations.
Trump returned to the White House with a particularly aggressive answer to the Iranian problem. Containment was no longer enough. Washington would seek to alter the equation that allowed Tehran to use its nuclear capabilities, ballistic missiles, regional influence and position on the Strait of Hormuz to compensate for the overwhelming conventional superiority of its adversaries.
Whether that strategy succeeds is another matter.
There is also another war taking place largely outside public view.
Between military operations, governments are communicating. Intermediaries carry messages. Possible concessions are tested. Guarantees are discussed. Red lines are explored. Proposals appear and disappear without ever becoming public.
This is why diplomacy and military escalation should not necessarily be viewed as contradictory.
In conflicts of this kind, a missile can also be a negotiating message.
When Washington attacks, it is not merely destroying a military asset. It is communicating something about the price of rejecting its terms. When Tehran retaliates, it may not be seeking a wider war so much as demonstrating that excluding Iranian interests from any settlement will carry costs of its own.
Even apparently contradictory developments become easier to understand through this lens. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian can offer to return to an understanding with Washington while Iranian and American forces exchange fire.
Force and diplomacy are not always competing tracks. Sometimes one is being used to improve the terms of the other.
And that is precisely why predicting this war from public information is so difficult.
We do not know most of what is being discussed privately. We do not know the real red lines of either side, or what concessions might already be considered acceptable behind closed doors.
More importantly, we still do not know exactly what Washington defines as a successful endgame.
Is neutralizing Iran’s nuclear threat enough? Is securing unrestricted passage through Hormuz the objective? Does Washington require restrictions on Iran’s missile capabilities? Or is the ambition considerably larger — to fundamentally reshape the balance of power in the Middle East?
The answer to those questions will determine when this war ends, not the number of missiles launched this week.
Nor is there any guarantee that Washington will achieve the outcome it wants. History is full of wars launched with clear objectives that produced consequences their architects never anticipated. Iran, despite the enormous military and economic pressure it faces, is not without leverage. And Hormuz gives Tehran an unusual ability to export the costs of confrontation to the global economy.
Declarations of victory or defeat after every round of fighting are therefore premature.
The real contest is not over what happened yesterday. It is over what the Middle East will look like when the shooting eventually stops.
Until that becomes clear, this should not be understood as another temporary Middle Eastern crisis. It is a dangerous transitional struggle whose outcome could redefine the region’s balance of power — and whose consequences may extend far beyond Iran and the United States.