By Ayyan Kazmi
Iran has suffered very heavy damage since the war began. However, the Iranian regime remains in charge despite suffering heavy destruction, which makes “how this ends” the central question, not a side issue.
The backdrop is ugly because Hormuz is not a side theater or a peripheral region. The U.S. Energy Information Administration says the strait has recently carried about 1/5th of global oil consumption and around 1/5th of global LNG trade, so even an imperfect disruption can create a global energy shock.
Scenario 1: Coordinated U.S.-Israeli off-ramp
Washington and Tel Aviv can decide they have degraded enough Iranian military and nuclear capacity to stop short of regime collapse. They pair a pause in strikes with maritime de-escalation terms, indirect talks, and a face-saving formula for all sides.
It’s too idealistic an outcome.
But it’s possible that Trump wants out before U.S. casualties and oil prices get worse; Israel agrees because the marginal gains from further strikes are falling; Gulf states push hard for de-escalation; Iran accepts a partial climbdown while claiming survival.
This is the least bad outcome. Shipping resumes unevenly, insurance costs stay elevated for months, and Iran preserves regime continuity while rebuilding covertly. Trump sells it domestically as “mission accomplished”; Israel claims strategic degradation; Iran claims resistance. The war ends not with surrender but with an armed pause. The big downside is that this could be only an intermission if there is no inspection, deterrence, and maritime enforcement framework behind it. Media reporting points toward demand for this kind of exit, because advisers are already pressing for an off-ramp while the administration publicly projects victory.
Scenario 2: Israeli Continues Attacks with U.S. support in the background
Trump stops short of full U.S. disengagement but reduces the American role to intelligence, missile defense, logistics, tanker escorts, and occasional strikes, while Israel carries the main coercive burden.
Trump wants to tell the U.S. public the war is no longer “America’s war,” but he does not want the optics of abandoning Israel or losing outright.
This becomes a semi-outsourced war. Washington lowers its visible exposure but remains strategically entangled. Israel inherits the hardest part: suppressing Iranian rebuilding, retaliation through proxies, maritime harassment, and periodic missile exchanges. The U.S. still pays real costs through naval risk, higher energy prices, and reputational ownership. This may be politically attractive in the White House because it sounds like “ending” the war without actually ending the conflict. It is unstable because Iran would have every incentive to bleed Israel while trying to split Washington from Jerusalem. Trump’s public “we’ve won” posture points to that even as officials privately expect weeks or longer and more forces are moving in.
Scenario 3: Trump declares victory and walks away
Trump announces that U.S. objectives were achieved, sharply narrows U.S. military action, and reframes any continuing violence as Israel-Iran business.
Domestic politics turns sour, MAGA pressure rises, markets remain jumpy, and the White House decides the political cost of continuation is worse than the strategic cost of ambiguity.
This is a politically neat but messy exit. In the short run, Trump gets the headline he wants. In the medium term, Iran almost certainly tests the boundary through missile attacks, deniable maritime coercion, cyberattacks, proxy reactivation, and nuclear hedging. Israel then faces pressure either to escalate alone or absorb a lower-level war of attrition. The result is not peace but a transfer of mess to Israel — which compelled Trump to step in. Washington would still be blamed for any disorder because it helped start the war and then left an unresolved coercive environment behind. One scenario under discussion is that Trump “simply declares victory and calls it quits,” which is why this is a possibility.
Scenario 4: Forever war” with a new name
Not a big Iraq-style occupation, but a recurring campaign of strikes, escorts, sanctions, interceptions, cyber operations, proxy attacks, and retaliatory salvos.
Neither side can impose a decisive outcome, but neither can afford to look defeated. Iran keeps enough coercive capacity to threaten shipping and partners; the U.S. and Israel keep enough superiority to punish Iran without solving the political problem.
This is the most plausible bad equilibrium. The administration can truthfully say there are no large U.S. ground forces, but the conflict still becomes a long war in cost, politics, and periodic casualties. Hormuz does not need to be hermetically closed to keep prices elevated; sustained risk and insurance disruption can do much damage. EIA has already warned that an extended Hormuz disruption is the main upside risk to oil prices, and the WSJ reports insurers and shippers are already reacting to the threat environment.
This kind of war would likely feature repeated “last rounds” that are not the last round, periodic U.S. re-entry after every Iranian provocation, chronic pressure on Gulf partners, political corrosion at home because the mission never fully ends.
So, it may not look like Iraq 2003, but it can still become a forever war in practice.
Scenario 5: Wider regional escalation
Iran broadens the target set to Gulf energy infrastructure, regional bases, shipping, cyber targets, and partner states, while the U.S. and Israel widen theirs in response.
A mass-casualty strike, a sinking, an attack on Gulf oil facilities, or a major Israeli civilian casualty event pushes both sides over the line.
This is the scenario where the war stops being primarily about Iran’s nuclear and missile capacity and becomes a contest over the whole regional order. Gulf leaders are already privately furious, would face impossible choices: support the U.S. quietly and absorb retaliation, or distance themselves and fracture the anti-Iran coalition. Oil and LNG disruptions become more severe, and global recession risk rises.
Scenario 6: Tactical nuclear use by the U.S. or Israel
One side uses a low-yield nuclear weapon against an Iranian military, command, or hardened nuclear target in hopes of forcing capitulation.
This is the most dangerous and least reliable scenario. It is far more likely to produce global shock, Iran hardening, and uncontrolled escalation than neat capitulation.
A nuclear strike would recast the war for Iran as existential, further strengthening the Iran’s determination to survive, especially if leadership and command structures remain partly intact. Instead of ending resistance, it could validate the argument that only an actual nuclear deterrent can protect Iran in the future.
First outcome would be that even states that dislike Iran would recoil. Second, it could accelerate rather than end nuclear proliferation logic across the region. If a non-nuclear state is hit with a nuclear weapon, every vulnerable state learns the same lesson: acquire a deterrent or remain exposed. Third, it would likely rupture the political coalition around the war, isolate Washington, and sharply increase the risk of retaliatory escalation through every remaining Iranian tool like missiles, cyber, shipping, and attacks on partners.
So, the likely sequence is not tactical nuke → capitulation → peace. It is much closer to tactical nuke → global rupture → intensified Iranian determination → long-term proliferation and escalation risk.
Scenario 7: Iran’s collapse
Continued strikes and elite losses trigger succession conflict, internal fragmentation, or partial state breakdown.
It’s unlikely to happen.
Collapse does not guarantee a friendlier new government; it can produce civil conflict, IRGC fragmentation, unsecured strategic sites, refugee flows, and competing armed centers. US intelligence warned removing the supreme leader could empower other hard-liners, not produce moderation.
Iran war has cost US, Israel and Arab nations more than what was initially expected but can still lead to an off ramp which can bring this war to a timely end before it escalates globally, endangers the world order, erodes the alliance system, threatens global energy security, destabilises Middle Eastern economies and makes de-escalation either more difficult or more costly and embarrassing.
