Aletho News

Behind US war drums against Iran: No goals, no plan, no off-ramp

Al Mayadeen | February 20, 2026

As the United States continues to amass unprecedented military firepower in West Asia, the largest such build-up since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, a senior analyst at the Atlantic Council is warning that Washington has yet to answer fundamental questions about what a military campaign against Iran would actually achieve, or what catastrophic consequences it might unleash.

In a piece published this week, Nate Swanson, director of the Atlantic Council’s Iran Strategy Project and senior advisor on Iran policy to successive US administrations, outlined six critical questions that US policymakers appear unable, or unwilling, to answer before potentially launching a “massive, weeks-long” aggression against Iran.

The analysis, while emerging from a Washington policy establishment that has long driven the logic of “maximum pressure” against Tehran, nonetheless lays bare the incoherence and recklessness of the current US posture.

No clear objective, no clear endgame

Swanson acknowledges that the White House has failed to define what it hopes to achieve militarily. The possible objectives he outlines, leveraging a strike to force nuclear concessions, decapitating Iran’s leadership, or launching symbolic attacks to appear supportive of rioters, each carry “significant obstacles.”

Most notably, Swanson concedes that Iran’s leadership appears to have calculated that dismantling its defense capabilities would be more dangerous than absorbing a US strike. In other words, Washington is considering going to war against a country that has already determined it will not surrender to US demands, regardless of the military cost.

No diplomatic path

Swanson is frank that a diplomatic off-ramp is effectively closed, though the reasons illuminate where responsibility lies. The Trump administration, he notes, is not seeking a deal in the conventional sense but something closer to “an Iranian surrender pact.”

Iran, meanwhile, insists on its sovereign right to a civilian nuclear program. The vast gap between the two positions is less a failure of Iranian diplomacy than a reflection of maximalist US demands that leave no room for negotiation.

The human cost

One of the more significant acknowledgements in Swanson’s piece is the human toll of the June 2025 unprovoked Israeli war on Iran, which the US supported. Over 900 Iranians were martyred in the aggression, including many civilians.

He cautions that a new, prolonged campaign would risk far greater casualties, which is something the great majority of Iranians would oppose. The analyst also notes that Iranians did not come out to protest against the government during the twelve-day war, so there is no reason to believe a large-scale US aggression would trigger protests to overthrow the Islamic Republic.

Regional alarm bells ignored

Arab and Turkish partners of the United States have spent the past month urging Washington to step back from the brink, with Gulf states publicly refusing to permit US use of their airspace for attacks on Iran. The regional consensus against military escalation is striking and largely being ignored in Washington’s war calculus.

Swanson also raises the possibility of Iran retaliating against Gulf states if it cannot de-escalate, echoing the 2019 precedent when Iran struck UAE and Saudi Arabian infrastructure during the last “maximum pressure” campaign. It is a reminder that Washington’s wars rarely stay contained to their intended theatres.

A war machine in search of a justification

Swanson’s analysis, despite being authored from within the US foreign policy establishment, ultimately underscores a troubling reality. The United States is on the edge of a potentially devastating war without a clear objective, without a viable diplomatic track, without regional support, and against the wishes of 70 percent of its own population.

The questions Swanson is asking should have been answered before B-2 bombers were positioned in Diego Garcia and carrier strike groups were dispatched to the Gulf.

That they remain unanswered speaks not to a failure of analysis but to the nature of a foreign policy apparatus that treats war as a tool of first resort.

February 20, 2026 - Posted by aletho | Militarism, Wars for Israel | Iran, Israel, Middle East, United States, Zionism