The US-Israel war against Iran has now lasted a month with no end in sight. Strategies and risks are escalating, raising the stakes and causing more destruction. The questions about ending the conflict seem to have been lost in the fog of war. As the war reaches one month and both sides are trying hard to find an exit through the best offensive strategy, the question remains: have both sides realised the conflict’s strategic reality, which is shifting between winnability and survivability?
The Asymmetrical Hold
The current conflict is torn between winnability and survivability, with the US pursuing two strategies: first, undermining Iran’s strategic will or immobilising it; second, exiting the conflict by declaring victory after weakening Iran’s military and nuclear capabilities. The US’s strategic focus is on achieving victory through extensive use of force, in coordination with Israel. Meanwhile, Iran’s twin objectives are to inflict maximum damage and pain through credible offensive deterrence, both kinetic and non-kinetic, and, secondly, to simply survive rather than win through asymmetrical warfare and an active defence strategy of disruption and strategic diversions. The spectrum of war, upon close examination, reveals a complex and dangerous point of conflict, making the situation more intricate—a high-friction point for strategy and decision-making on both sides.
The High Friction Point
Highly noted military strategist Carl von Clausewitz, in his seminal work titled “On War”, emphasised high friction warfare- a military strategy that refers to areas of intense resistance, operational bottlenecks, or geographic locations where conflict causes significant delays and strategic dilemmas. In other words, it is where a seemingly straightforward military strategy on paper becomes difficult in practice due to multiple external and internal variables causing delays and dilemmas. A similar situation was seen in the early phases of the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian war that began in 2022, where a simple Russian strategy was to deliver a shock-and-awe campaign against Ukraine and seize territories within weeks, but it has instead become years of struggle. Russia’s anticipation of a quick, decisive victory turned out to be a long war of attrition due to a high-friction point in the strategy, where the Russians focused only on winnability and did not anticipate multiple variabilities, thus creating a high-friction point between decision and execution.
Now Russia is imposing so much friction on Ukraine to break its strategic will to survive, and that has put the conflict in a deadlock, with one side focusing on paralyzing the enemy because if the enemy survives for long, the long-term sustainability of superior power is also threatened.
The Iran-Iraq Trap
During the initial phase of the Iraqi invasion of Iran, Saddam Hussein’s leadership believed a quick and decisive victory was achievable because Iran was internally weakened and political-military tensions were increasing after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. This led Iraq to expect the imminent fall of Khomeini. Another reason Iraq anticipated an easy win was Iran’s weak military, which struggled with logistics and maintenance. Additionally, Saddam had ambitious plans for rapid domination, including seizing Iran’s strategic interests like the oil-rich province of Khuzestan and gaining control of the entire Shatt al-Arab waterway. He also hoped for an uprising by the ethnic Arab population against the new Iranian regime, but that uprising did not occur because ethnic Arabs aligned themselves with their identity rather than the invading force.
Soon, Saddam’s plan for a quick victory turned into an eight-year attrition war that ended in a stalemate. Even then, the war reached a stage of high friction and was trapped by a mindset focused on winnability and survival. The high friction resulted from underestimating Iran’s political environment and the difficult geography—harsh deserts and impassable southern marshes slowing logistical movements. Besides internal challenges, the Iranian counteroffensive also shocked Iraqi leadership, as their strategy of massive human wave attacks and ideological fervour disrupted Iraq’s initial blitzkrieg, which initially seemed promising and perhaps a final blow against the Iranian regime.
By the late 1980s, Iraq shifted to a defensive stance, no longer pursuing invasion but instead focusing on self-defense. Saddam’s strategy was to survive on the battlefield, which Iran had aimed to dominate during the early stages of the invasion; however, by mid-1982, Iran had successfully pushed Iraq back to the international border. Nonetheless, Iranian forces saw an opportunity to become a winning force by launching a counter-invasion against Iraq under the operation codenamed Ramadan in July–August 1982. Surprisingly, Iraqi forces’ strong defensive positions and strategy stalled Iranian plans by inflicting damage and causing massive casualties. Despite pushing Iraq back to the border, Iran failed to capitalise on a strategic opportunity to break through Iraq’s defensive lines. Even here, a high point of friction arose for Iranians, who misjudged Iraqi defensive strategies.
Two major lessons from the Iran-Iraq war’s first high-friction points are that they can flip the battlefield in anyone’s favour. Second, high-friction wars should be fought with a survivability mindset, using flexible, simple objectives to ensure rapid adjustments in changing scenarios. Once these are achieved, the winning dimension automatically opens up in the war, as survivability, sustained support, and tactical victories lead to strategic victory.
Turning High Friction War
Rapid blitzkrieg and synchronised decapitating joint strikes by the US-Israel, giving a complete shock-and-awe effect to Iran last month, cast an impression that wiping out the leadership and shocking the enemy, leading to instability, can topple the regime or cause systemic paralysis of Iranian strategic capabilities. However, this quickly fell flat when the war turned into a high-friction contest. The high-friction points or elements were first Iran’s massive retaliation and asymmetrical capabilities that ensured long-term survivability and, second, most importantly, the will and survivability of leadership working on a completely decentralised structure, known as the mosaic strategy. The misjudgment on these two counts by the US-Israel turned this war into a high-friction contest, exposing a huge gap between war on paper and war on the ground. The conflict has now shifted: for the US, survivability concerns involve a global energy crisis and strategic chokepoints, such as the Red Sea and Strait of Hormuz; for Iran, it is about ensuring survivability through active defence, maximum offensive deterrence, and disruption to the US and Israel. In such a scenario, winnability thinking seems slim because if Iran survives with its missile and nuclear capacity intact, then the US has no face-saving option, and for the US to continue the war against Iran, it has to ensure its navigation through geopolitical and economic headwinds. Amidst all the debate over win and survive, one thing is clear: survival in modern-day conflicts is the key to managing and countering asymmetries of power, but a question still looms for both sides about how far they can survive and sustain themselves to emerge from Clausewitz’s high-friction trap.
