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this post was submitted on 15 Jun 2026
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I am very well aware of the disparity in military power between the two sides, but to be honest I’m pretty surprised at what little strategy Iran seem to have in this conflict, beyond “lob drones and missiles at infrastructure in neighbouring countries and hope some of it hits”.
There has been surprisingly little in the way of asymmetrical warfare. No significant cyber attacks. No direct attacks on US interests in other countries (beyond the aforementioned lobbing of drones/missiles in nearby gulf countries). No injection/activation of terror cells into US soil. No successful sneak attacks in the night against US forces. No hostage taking. Nothing.
About the only thing they’ve had going for them is keeping the straight closed. And if the announced peace deal is real and it gets opened up again, then they’ve lost even that. They could likely keep it closed at this point until it really hurts, letting the world know who is ultimately to blame — but if the US administration is to be believed (difficult, I know!) it seems they gave up on even that.
I’m not disappointed (the Iranian regime can fuck right off) — but for a country that has been calling for the “death” of the “great Satan” United States for the last several decades I was expecting some sort of strategy. Tossing missiles around isn’t really “strategy” — and if they tried anything else it was apparently so ineffectual as to be not notable.
All of which makes me wary of the announcement of a “deal” to actually end the war. I half expect Iran is playing games here just trying to drag things out, looking like they’re an honest partner on the world stage, all the while keeping oil flowing as slowly as possible while they wait out stored oil to completely dry out globally.
I think the US admin is as much the one playing games here as Iran in regards to the peace deal. I think that trump wanted good news and figured he could get a bump from announcing a peace deal.
And I do think Iran has had some pretty solid strategy here, direct attacks on civilian infrastructure in the US would probably generate some amount of public support for the admin, which would not be in Iran’s interest. The best leverage they have for winning the war is public opinion in the US In the lead up to the mid terms. That and pushing a wedge between the gulf states and the US.
By focusing on the industrial targets in the gulf states, taking out oil infrastructure, hitting expensive military targets like AWACs planes, and just generally exhausting the US’s supply of interceptor missiles. They’re making this super painful for the US in a way the maximizes public discontent in the US while minimizing opportunities for the US media to propagandize.
And they also need a very good peace deal, something that will be hard for trump to just back out of again in 6 months. They’ve been very clear on what they want and these constant delays have largely been down to the us admin basically ignoring everything they’re asking about, that and Israel refusing to be bound by any agreements the US makes. If anything the US admin has been playing stupid games by agreeing to negotiations and then just refusing to negotiate other than to demand more. I’ll be pretty surprised if the current deal that Iran is agreeing to goes though, I suspect this is just the US admin fishing for positive headlines to juice the market. Realistically the US is on a timer, if they can’t get at least some capacity going again before the strategic reserves of oil run out then we’re looking at the global economy going on life support.
I’m not saying the leadership in Iran are some strategic masterminds, but they’re mildly competent and the decision makers in the US just… aren’t. Like, it’s pretty easy to win a game of chess when your opponent is a chimp that keeps eating it’s own pieces.