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A vessel at the Strait of Hormuz, as seen from Musandam, Oman, on Thursday. (Reuters)
Neither Washington nor Tehran wants the next world war. Both are making sure the world doesn’t notice that. Since the ceasefire that followed the February 28 war effectively collapsed, the United States and Iran have settled into something more calculated than chaos. Call it controlled escalation. Each side hits harder. Neither side wants to be blamed for starting round two.
Look at the American side first. The strikes have widened well beyond military targets. Roads, bridges, power stations, industrial sites — all have been hit in the latest waves. There are unconfirmed reports of damage to desalination infrastructure too, a detail that deserves independent verification before anyone repeats it as fact. What Washington has conspicuously avoided is the Bushehr nuclear plant. That restraint is not sentimental. A leak into Gulf waters would poison the region for generations, and everyone in the Pentagon knows it.
President Trump’s public posture has hardened with each American casualty. After Iranian strikes killed US service members in Jordan, he wrote on Truth Social that Iran would “pay for that killing many times over.” He said he had given that as a direct order to “every Leader in the Military.” The number of American dead since February has climbed past a dozen, with the latest round alone claiming several service members in Jordan. This is the American president’s most dangerous threshold. Not battlefield maps — coffins draped in flags arriving at Dover.
Iran, for its part, has widened its own geography of retaliation to include Bahrain, Kuwait, and Jordan. The head of the Gulf Cooperation Council did not mince words, calling the strikes on civilian infrastructure in Kuwait and Jordan a “war crime” and a “highly dangerous escalation.” Notably, neither side appears interested in stepping back from that description.
Iran’s calculus is different from Washington’s, but it points toward the same conclusion: keep the fire burning, don’t let it become an inferno. Tehran cannot sustain a full war lasting months. Its oil exports are already strangled. Its economy is bleeding. And yet a controlled, chaotic middle ground — enough disorder to raise the cost of the war for Washington’s regional partners, not enough to invite the kind of retaliation that could finish the regime — may be the best hand Iran has left to play.
That is precisely why Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has staked out the Strait of Hormuz as non-negotiable Iranian ground. “The Strait of Hormuz is NOT international waters,” he declared, insisting the waterway is shared only with Oman and governed by Iranian consent. Tehran has signaled it intends to charge for passage, dressed up as navigation assistance or cleaning fees, rather than call them tolls outright. Control of the strait is not a bargaining chip for Iran. It is leverage they intend to keep exercising with or without Washington’s blessing.
Then there is the Israeli variable, the one that could turn controlled escalation into an uncontrollable one. Fragments from an Iranian strike aimed at Aqaba, Jordan — a stone’s throw from Eilat — have already landed on Israeli soil. For now, Israel is holding back, and the reason is instructive.
Prime Minister Netanyahu has told his own cabinet that Israel might eventually have to “deal with the Iranians alone, without US backing.” Trump has been just as blunt in private, reportedly warning Netanyahu: “You better be careful, or you will be on your own very soon.” Israel wants America standing beside it before it strikes Iran directly. Without that guarantee, Jerusalem knows it cannot absorb the retaliation alone. Iran, meanwhile, has made its own warning explicit: if Israel attacks, the response will not be measured.
So what tips this from managed conflict into open war? Two triggers stand out. The first is American casualties climbing high enough and fast enough that a president already stung by falling approval ratings and rising oil prices decides restraint has become politically unaffordable. The second is Iran deciding that full-blown regional chaos, rather than a slow bleed, is now the more useful strategy — since controlled escalation is already costing Tehran its oil revenue without buying it anything in return.
Qatar and Pakistan continue shuttling between the parties, trying to drag both back to the negotiating table. Nobody knows how long that will take. What is clear is that Araghchi and his negotiating counterparts have shown no appetite for compromise on Hormuz, and Washington has shown no appetite for absorbing more flag-draped coffins in silence. Controlled escalation, by definition, is a wager that both sides can keep their fires exactly as large as they want them. Wars have a way of proving that wager wrong.
- The writer is a prominent news anchor, programme presenter and media instructor.
