Opinion: Reasons for optimism in the U.S.-Israeli campaign in Iran

While cable-news chyrons have blared a drumbeat of gloom about the unfolding U.S.-Israeli campaign in Iran, a growing counter-chorus inside the foreign-policy establishment contends that the war is quietly delivering strategic gains that were considered unattainable only a month ago.

Writing in The New York Times on 12 March, columnist Bret Stephens chastised what he called “relentless pessimism,” noting that predictions of “another Iraq” are surfacing barely two weeks into a conflict many analysts believe will conclude before April. Wall Street Journal deputy editor Matthew Hennessey amplified the point a day later, arguing that American outlets are “flooding the zone with negative coverage” while ignoring operational successes.

That narrative is beginning to draw pushback from specialists with battlefield and sanctions experience. Mark Dubowitz and Richard Goldberg of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, in a 16 March essay for The Atlantic, concede the fight is “unfinished” yet insist “the outlines of victory are beginning to emerge.” They credit President Trump’s strike on Kharg Island with crippling Iranian radar, Revolutionary Guard protection, and coastal defenses while deliberately leaving the oil terminal intact—thereby positioning CENTCOM to throttle Tehran’s economic lifeline if tanker traffic can be safely restored.

Muhanad Seloom, an assistant professor at the Doha Institute and former U.S. State Department adviser, offers a parallel assessment in Al Jazeera. He argues critics err by “measuring the wrong things,” noting that Iran’s ballistic-missile arsenal, nuclear infrastructure, air-defense grid, navy, and proxy command networks have all suffered “systematic, phased degradation.” Seloom emphasizes that the price of inaction—a nuclear-capable Iran able to close the Strait of Hormuz at will—far outweighed the costs now being tallied.

Both analyses highlight intangible shifts: Iran’s supreme leader is reported dead, his successor wounded, and the regime’s most potent levers of regional coercion are, for now, degraded beyond quick repair. Dubowitz and Goldberg term these developments “once-unimaginable strategic gains for the free world,” while Seloom concludes that “the strategy—measured in degraded capabilities rather than cable news cycles—is working.”

The consensus among this cohort is not that the war is free of risk, but that the arc of the campaign, when viewed against the baseline of a month ago, justifies guarded optimism. Whether CENTCOM can translate battlefield gains into durable containment of Iranian power remains the open question driving the next phase of operations.