<\/p>\n
\n\tThe United States and Iran appear locked into their six-month-old war, with both lacking a clear path to victory and each clinging to unrealistic ideas about what their adversary will accept to end the conflict.<\/p>\n
\n\tIranians are already suffering immensely. Thousands have been killed in strikes by America and its allies, while thousands more have been murdered by Tehran\u2019s ruthless security apparatus, and the country\u2019s economy has been devastated by decades of sanctions and war.<\/p>\n
\n\tMore than 750 U.S. service members have been wounded since the war began on Feb. 28, with 18 killed in action. America is spending tens of billions of dollars on military operations in the region. The Pentagon is now focused on protecting the transit of oil through a chokepoint in the Persian Gulf, in an effort to return maritime trade there to its pre-war levels.<\/p>\n
\n\tIt\u2019s a resource-intensive effort whose effectiveness is hotly debated<\/a> while independent data<\/a> begins to accumulate. But even if the effort is working as successfully as the White House claims, only a fraction of the daily volume of pre-war oil traffic<\/a> is passing through the Strait of Hormuz.<\/p>\n \n\tNegotiations brokered by multiple third parties have led nowhere. Iran does not trust the United States, nor vice versa. Experts say Tehran\u2019s goal now is to make the conflict costly enough that the United States and Israel are deterred from carrying out future attacks.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cThe lesson in Tehran is that neither diplomacy nor a temporary ceasefire has yet produced durable restraint from the United States. That deepens the argument that Iran still has not established enough deterrence,\u201d says Negar Mortazavi, a senior non-resident fellow at the Center for International Policy, and the host of The Iran Podcast<\/em>.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cIran\u2019s doctrine is now shifting from primarily defensive deterrence toward a more offensive form of coercion. The thinking is that simply responding when the United States escalates is not enough,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n \n\tWhile its regular military has been eviscerated in the conflict, Iran has other tools at its disposal.<\/p>\n