When the war began, Washington’s calculation was that it would last about two to four weeks to topple the regime in Iran. Now the war is entering its seventh week and the regime in Iran still prevails, despite spectacular elimination of its top military and government leaders.

Since January 2020, following drone attacks in Baghdad that killed IRGC Commander Qassem Soleimani, the enmity against Israel and America has deepened and spread uncontrollably to widen the war zone that stretches across all Arab countries hosting US military, diplomatic, and economic assets.

No longer is it a war between Israel and Iran or the US and Iran. It is now a war between Arab countries and Iran as well. More dangerously, it has triggered Iran’s so-called allies—China, Russia, and North Korea—to reap economic and strategic advantage from the expanding conflict.

Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, Qatar, and even Oman prefer to see a weakened Iran resulting from continued US and Israeli bombardment, while other Arab countries are nervously hoping that eventualities of the war would not make them Iranian missile and drone targets—the reason they remain undecided amid declining trust in US security umbrella, given Iran’s attacks on the US bases.

If the regime in Iran can be decapitated, the Arabs would need bigger US security umbrella for their future survival, fearing rebuilding of Iran’s military might. But if the US and Israel ever fail to do so, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and other such US allies would need a kind of nuclear counterbalance of their own to create a dynamic equilibrium that would somehow remain fragile in the future.

Such security fragility is caused by the distributive attention that the US has, having to mend fences with its reluctant NATO allies over President Donald Trump’s ambition on Greenland and their refusal to join America’s war in the Strait of Hormuz for which NATO allies were never consulted with.

Europe may need to have its own security architecture, because the US will spend decades focusing on Iran, Palestine, Ukraine, and Taiwan—the settlement of all these conflict zones still remains elusive. And China may be calculating the right timing for entering Taiwan should the US military primacy is drained out for the war of attrition in Iran.

In the on-going war of attrition which the US did not anticipate previously, North Korea has every opportunity to sell weapons to Iran, despite the fragile rapprochement that Mr. Trump initiated when he stepped across the Panmunjom DMZ border and was amicably escorted by Kim Young Un to Pyongyang on 30 June 2019.

Reports this week show that North Korea has, for the last 14 months, transferred at least 500 Hwasong-18 ICBMs to Iran, the intercontinental ballistic missiles that have a range of 15,000 kilometers, capable of reaching major cities in Europe and many parts of America.

China may not have been sitting silently since the war began on February 28th, given the need to secure 80 percent of its oil supply from Iran, not to mention new Chinese investment pledge of up to US$400 billion over 25 years under the 2021 Iran–China 25-year Cooperation Program, focusing on energy, infrastructure, and other sectors in exchange for discounted oil.

Such Chinese and North Korean economic interests certainly dictate the ways in which their foreign and military policies operate on Iran, even as President Trump is planning to visit Beijing in about a month’s time.

Mr. Trump had previously planned to visit Beijing from March 31st to April 2nd but it was postponed due to escalation of the war in Iran. This visit will probably reduce the Sino-US tension to a considerable degree, but it will not cancel Chinese commitment to invest $400 billion in Iran—the reason China will continue to back Iran and ensure its future stability for the investments to be realized.

The visit may also result in Mr. Trump’s hope that China will not touch Taiwan to cause instability in East and Southeast Asia where the US maintains billions of dollars worth of investments—as does China itself—and this would mean that East and Southeast Asia would not be the next battle ground at least for now.

In order not to broaden the Iran war theater to the rest of Asia, albeit the absence of a panacea, a more logical approach is to bring the Iran war to an end. That would stop the war of attrition, stop draining US military and economic energy, reduce Iranian terror cells’ operation, stop innocent casualties, and set the stage for the establishment of a new regional architecture in the Middle East.

Otherwise, there will be no real winner and no real loser in the war. The US is very experienced in war from the sky, Iran is ready for in war on the ground. And attacking Iran from the sky cannot change the regime on the ground.

Besides, Iran’s geographical location poses a big challenge for successful ground operations by invading foreign troops. And Iran is also known for its steadfastness in sustaining years of wars—the US lacked this experience in Vietnam and Afghanistan.

Even against Mr. Trump’s overoptimism, Iran is still firing at many US assets in the Middle East, Israel is still undergoing Iranian attacks, and the IRGC has vowed to defend the country at any cost. Even those Iranians who are against the regime may change their minds if they themselves fall victim to continuous bombardment.

What appears to have been forgotten is that Iran is not just fighting physical battles, it is fighting a multifaceted war with a die-hard conviction that one may lose the battle to win the war; and even the strongest nation on earth can lose the war if it does not realize that cultural defense, one again, cultural defense is what sustains Iran so far despite Western sanctions.

For the US, the war needs to be ended quickly with victory on its side. For Iran, the war must be stretched out as a war of attrition to drain America’s military and economic strength. Iran would eventually play victim as its last resort to arouse sympathy from Muslim nations. But before that happens, it would continue to target US military, economic, and diplomatic assets not just in the Middle East but in many other parts of the world as well through its sleeper cells now creeping inside the US and elsewhere.

General Ebrahim Zolfaghari, the spokesman of Khatam Al-Anbiya Headquarters has made an appeal to pro-Iranian Arab and Muslim countries to join Iran in forming what he described as a security and military alliance—presumably similar to NATO—following Mr. Trump’s repeated expressions of disappointment over Europe’s rejection to help the US unblock the Strait of Hormuz and his threat to leave the NATO alliance.

General Zolfaghari’s appeal is based on the example that Saudi Arabia and Pakistan had in 2025 signed a mutual defense pact which may have inspired other Muslim countries to follow suit or establish an Islamic NATO, taking advantage of NATO’s worsening cracks that Iran assumes could lead to disintegration.

I personally don’t believe that an Islamic NATO can be realized easily given their lack of military primacy and severe consequences they would face in the event such a move defines them as adversaries to the US—whose presence and contribution they still need to ensure stability in their respective strategic environments.

Considering all those factors, the most logical—though not the best—way to pursue, is to end the war in Iran sooner rather than later, otherwise the warring parties will lose and bystanders will win, selling weapons to inflate their pockets. [*]

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)