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The war with Iran is back. For more than a week, American forces have attacked Iran night after night, the widest campaign since the war’s opening days, and this weekend it turned deadly for U.S. troops: an Iranian missile strike on a base in Jordan killed American service members, the first U.S. combat deaths from Iranian fire since March. Iran is hitting back across the Gulf, striking infrastructure in Kuwait, and Tehran’s new supreme leader has dismissed the deal that was supposed to end the war, calling the president’s signature on it “worthless.”
That failure is worth understanding, because it will shape whatever comes next. The memorandum bought a pause, but not peace or an agreement on the key issues that triggered the war. It relieved sanctions in exchange for promises, and when the promises were broken, the war resumed with even more enmity and distrust between the parties. Its collapse is not merely a diplomatic setback; it highlights the failings the next agreement cannot repeat.
Several points are particularly important. Iran’s air-defense network was among the war’s biggest casualties, and rebuilding it was, and continues to be, a regime priority. Historically, Iran leaned on Russia for its top-tier systems. But Russia, consumed by Ukraine, can spare little of the advanced microelectronics, sensors, and optics Iran cannot manufacture itself. Absent outside help, a modern rebuild would take two to four years. The sanctions relief provided in the MOU erased that constraint, and unrestricted crude exports are putting roughly $8 billion into Tehran’s coffers. Specifically, the MOU let Iran bypass Russia and buy these components openly from China, allowing Beijing to help compress the rebuild time to within a year, undoing one of the campaign’s central gains.
That is the trap any expedient deal sets. The regime spends just enough at home to keep the lid on domestic discontent and pours the rest into its military, confident that another disruption in the Strait can again spike global prices, rattle the Gulf, and drag Washington back to the table. It is a temporary headline bought at the price of a permanent strategic deficit.
Beijing gains twice. It sells Iran the hardware, and it exploits the Gulf states’ unease with American drift to deepen its own commercial and political foothold. Every month Washington looks improvisational, China looks like the steadier partner, and a resourceful regime that has already outlasted one attempt to end this is rewarded for holding out. A rearmed Iran, in turn, means resupplied proxies from Lebanon to Yemen, renewed pressure on Israel and the Gulf, and a region that reads American exhaustion as license to hedge toward Beijing.
The war will end eventually, most likely through another negotiation, and this time the terms must be written for enforcement rather than applause. Tie Iran’s exports to unimpeded transit through the Strait, sequester the proceeds for humanitarian use, and include a snap-back of the naval blockade, with other actions to cut off Iranian exports, so that compliance, not promises, buys relief. Condition every dollar of sanctions relief, including the release of frozen assets, on an enforceable ban against foreign military resupply to Iran and against Iranian arms flowing to its proxies. And make any pledge of mutual non-aggression contingent on a definitive agreement that eliminates the nuclear program and commits Tehran to respect the sovereignty of its neighbors, Israel, Lebanon, and Iraq included.
Sanctions alone are not sufficient to ensure Tehran’s compliance and reimposing them while the Strait sits open mostly rewards China, which returns to buying discounted Iranian crude and pockets the spread. Pressure works only when sanctions and the blockade move together.
None of this requires making war on the Iranian people, and the past week shows why the distinction matters. American strikes have now hit bridges, tunnels, and a desalination plant, with reports of thousands of Iranians left without water, and the administration has signaled that more civilian infrastructure is on the target list. Lessons from Russia’s failed effort to force Ukrainian capitulation through wanton attacks on the country’s infrastructure show that this approach is a strategic error as much as a moral one. The regime’s true center of gravity is its money and its military: the IRGC’s commercial empire and smuggling networks, and the air-defense, missile, and fast-boat forces it uses to menace the Strait. Pressure there is potent and reversible, and it spares the power and water that ordinary Iranians, already the regime’s chief victims, depend on to survive, the very systems any peace will be built upon. Destroy them, and Washington hands the regime the one thing it cannot manufacture for itself: a reason for its people to rally to it.
The war has proved twice now that American and Israeli forces can break Iran’s military. The harder task is making it stay broken. That is not accomplished by a deal that finances the rebuild, nor by leveling the infrastructure a future Iran will need, nor by trading strike for strike until the region is exhausted. It is accomplished by sustained economic pressure, credible and reversible military deterrence, and an enforceable agreement with real consequences for breaking it. The first MOU failed that test. The next one cannot, or Americans will keep dying in the Gulf, and the Iran that emerges will be stronger, with Beijing at its back.
About the Authors:
Michael Schwartz is an energy-sector executive and former Gerhard R. Andlinger Visiting Professor in Energy and Environmental Studies at Princeton University. Mike Lyons is a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point, a combat veteran, business leader, and frequent contributor to national media outlets. This piece reflects only the opinions of the authors and not the United States Military Academy or the Department of the Army. This first appeared in RealClearDefense.
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