What’s Really Driving the Strategy Behind Trump’s War on Iran | Opinion

With the Iran war in its third week, questions are swirling over the administration’s aims, its conduct of the conflict and the trajectory that Iran itself might take. The White House, which by most accounts anticipated a quick victory over the Islamic Republic, now finds itself faced with an entrenched adversary that does not appear prepared to compromise—at least not yet. At the same time, a number of other variables are also shaping Washington’s strategic calculus. 

1. The Current Conflict Is Very Much an Information War

In recent years, the information domain has emerged as an increasingly important arena of global competition. Thus Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine has been accompanied by a veritable deluge of disinformation designed to sow disorder in the West and generate sympathy for Moscow’s objectives among Global South nations. Narrative warfare likewise played an outsized role in the recent Gaza conflict, with terror group Hamas adroitly capturing—and then shaping—the global narrative. 

The same dynamic is visible with Iran. The war has unleashed a torrent of disinformation and fabricated content through which the Iranian regime (and its sympathetic partners) has sought to reshape popular perceptions about the war and its own military performance. 

So far, the United States has done little to push back against these distortions. That is a major oversight. Tehran’s false claims require sustained rebuttal, not only to correct the record but also to advance Washington’s priorities, from mobilizing more international participation in securing the Strait of Hormuz to encouraging Iran’s own domestic opposition. 

2. The Energy Panic Is Overblown for Now

Iran’s clerical regime has long seen its strategic position atop the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of world energy flows, as a key geopolitical weapon. It’s no surprise, therefore, that the Islamic Republic is now attempting to manipulate the regional energy picture to its advantage. Regime officials have threatened to shut down tanker traffic through the Strait, warned that the waterway could become unnavigable, and blustered about holding foreign vessels at risk. All this has had its desired effect, with news channels and social media platforms now awash with commentary about the catastrophic effects that such disruptions might have on the world energy market. 

But the actual picture is significantly less dire. In a recent analysis, Ariel Cohen of the Atlantic Council details that the high-water mark for oil prices in the past quarter-century came in 2008, when oil hit $147 per barrel—equivalent to roughly $223 per barrel in today’s dollars. Current prices are nowhere near those levels. Moreover, the past couple of decades have seen regional producers like Saudi Arabia and the UAE erect workarounds to keep regional oil flowing in the event of a disruption of traffic through the Hormuz. Moreover, Cohen notes, other potent oil producers (like Nigeria and Azerbaijan) have the ability to surge capacity to the market, thereby helping offset losses from the Strait. 

All this helps explain why the White House so far appears relatively sanguine about the global energy picture. None of this means that the energy dimension of the current conflict is insignificant; far from it. But Iran doesn’t nearly have the international community over a barrel at present. 

3. All Roads Lead to China 

Much of the media coverage of the current war has portrayed it as primarily a bilateral confrontation between Washington and Tehran—or, at most, as a trilateral one involving Israel as well. In truth, the conflict is well and truly international. Iran has continued to target its neighbors with drones and missiles in an attempt to get them to lobby Washington to roll back its military campaign. Moreover, what happens with Iran has tremendous implications for both Russia and China, with whom the Islamic Republic has forged close strategic ties in recent years. 

China in particular has become an economic lifeline for the Iranian regime. Some 90 percent of Iranian crude now flows to the PRC, making the Chinese market indispensable for Iran’s ayatollahs. But the dependency cuts both ways. China may be less reliant on Iran specifically, but it is heavily leveraged on the region as a whole, which cumulatively provides more than half of its total oil imports. 

Prior to the conflict, the PRC was getting some 5.35 million barrels of oil daily via the Strait of Hormuz. With the outbreak of hostilities, that figure has dropped sharply. Beijing now obtains just one-fifth of that total (1.22 million barrels a day), because only Iranian ships are currently freely transiting the Strait. 

China is now scrambling to compensate, including by rerouting tankers to the Red Sea. Nevertheless, Beijing’s deep reliance on Middle Eastern crude represents a significant point of leverage—particularly if Washington manages to gain greater control of energy flows through the Strait. 

That calculation may help explain President Donald Trump’s recent decision to postpone his planned meeting with China’s Xi Jinping, originally scheduled to start later this month. After all, when that summit does eventually take place, Washington will want to ensure that it has as much leverage over Beijing as possible. 

These features make the current war about far more than simply Iran’s nuclear program—or even the potential for political change in Iran. Rather, the conflict is shaping up to be a key test of whether the Trump administration can translate military success into more lasting strategic leverage on a global scale. 

Ilan Berman is senior vice president of the American Foreign Policy Council in Washington, D.C. 

The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.