Bombing alone has never won a war — and the current air campaign against Iran is no exception. The United States has trapped itself in a cycle of proxy warfare, where every escalation narrows the space for manoeuvre, and the “war nobody wants” becomes an inevitable reality.
It is now becoming increasingly obvious to even the most fanatical supporters of Trump that the air assault on Iran must either be called off or escalated through a ground invasion.
But how, with which troops, and where?
One theory is that they will use the Kurds to invade on the ground from Iraq, with the US invading from the Persian Gulf. I’m starting to think this makes sense. Trump said, “We have other people to invade for us” (as usual); Kurds, Syrians, proxy fighters, and even Chechens have guns and will travel. The Middle East has entered a dangerous phase in which deterrence and escalation are occurring simultaneously.
It is interesting that all the while, Trump is appeasing Erdoğan to keep Turkey off the backs of the Kurds, and what could be his motivation, as who cares about the Kurds? And the latest rounds of US attacks may be “shaping the battlefield” along the Gulf before a ground move. Only time will tell, but this does all seem to fit together.
Meanwhile, the escalation may destroy the oil and refining sites not only in Iran but also across the region, leaving much less to even be available to move through the straits. And if the Iranians are forced into going for strikes on desalination plants, then the various so-called Gulf states will be uninhabitable, or nearly so.
In any case, I don’t see any positive outlook for this. With oil reserves globally, including the US strategic reserve, running out, apparently refining is in worse shape than crude, so gas may go through the roof. We’ll see.
Apparently it is reaching the point where Trump decides he has to negotiate again, at least a little bit. He bombs until the economic impact gets high, then tries to take a break. And the markets go back up. And then he just repeats it all. It is as if he is using war and threats of war as a way to manipulate markets and play to his funders, as he is obligated to them, the Zionist lobby, repaying them for footing the bill for getting him elected, and staying in power.
The Illusion of De-escalation:
For a brief moment, Washington appeared to believe the Middle East was entering another familiar phase: retaliate, pause, negotiate. President Donald Trump’s decision to suspend direct strikes on Iran in recent days was presented as an opportunity for diplomacy—a signal that military pressure had created enough leverage to test whether Tehran was prepared to negotiate.
That window may already have been slammed shut.
On July 28, U.S. Central Command announced that American and Saudi forces had conducted coordinated airstrikes against what it described as “terrorist logistics and weapons sites” used by Iranian-backed armed groups in eastern Iraq. According to CENTCOM, the operation followed more than 30 drone attacks over a 72-hour period targeting U.S. forces and Saudi energy infrastructure, attacks it says were orchestrated by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Earlier the same day, the U.S. military also reported intercepting an attempted Iranian ballistic missile strike against American forces, describing it as a “surprise attack.”
The official statements leave little ambiguity about Washington’s assessment: the United States is no longer treating attacks by Iranian-backed militias as isolated proxy actions but as operations directed from Tehran. That distinction matters because it lowers the political threshold for broader retaliation.
CENTCOM’s statement can be found at:
https://www.centcom.mil/
Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Defense, meanwhile, confirmed its participation, describing the operation as a legitimate act of self-defense designed to protect the Kingdom’s territory and critical infrastructure.
The significance of the strikes extends well beyond Iraq. Armed groups in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen are now taking the fall for Iran, as the US cannot directly confront Iran in projecting some semblance of “bang for the buck” while avoiding direct confrontation with a country that is at least equal in conventional firepower to the US, and has the home court advantage. Washington has often responded by striking the proxies while carefully avoiding actions that might compel Iran itself into open war.
The latest U.S. messaging suggests Washington now views the chain of command between Tehran and its regional partners as sufficiently direct that the distinction between “proxy” and “principal” has become strategically meaningless. Whether that interpretation is accepted internationally is almost secondary; it fundamentally changes American decision-making.
At the same time, Saudi Arabia’s participation represents a notable shift.
Riyadh spent years attempting to reduce tensions with Iran after the Chinese-brokered restoration of diplomatic relations in 2023. The Kingdom’s leadership prioritized economic transformation under Vision 2030 over regional confrontation. Public participation alongside U.S. forces in strikes against Iran-backed groups indicates that Saudi Arabia increasingly sees its own economic future—including energy infrastructure—as directly threatened by continued attacks.
That alignment should concern Tehran, as it only takes it further in complicating an already complicated diplomacy.
Trump has repeatedly insisted that negotiations remain possible and has argued that military pressure can coexist with diplomatic outreach. Historically, however, sustained proxy warfare has tended to produce exactly the opposite dynamic: every intercepted missile, every drone attack, and every retaliatory strike narrows the political space available for compromise.
Mission Creep
Neither Washington nor Tehran appears to be seeking full-scale war. Yet history offers little comfort.
The First World War was not triggered because Europe’s governments wanted continental conflict; it emerged because alliance commitments, retaliatory logic, and miscalculation overwhelmed political restraint. The Middle East today contains many of the same structural dangers: multiple state and non-state actors, overlapping battlefields, uncertain chains of command, and increasingly compressed decision-making timelines. Perhaps the greatest strategic risk lies not in deliberate escalation but in accumulated escalation.
One drone attack invites one airstrike. One interception prompts another missile launch. Each side insists it is responding defensively while gradually expanding the scope of military operations. Before long, what began as tactical retaliation evolves into strategic war without any formal declaration.
Energy markets are already reflecting that possibility. Oil prices have risen sharply as investors price in the risk that conflict could spread further across the Gulf and threaten shipping through the Strait of Hormuz—a reminder that regional wars rarely remain regional for long.
Diplomacy has not just failed; it was never intended to be an option, at least by the US and Israel. But diplomacy also requires something increasingly absent from the current crisis: time.
The Middle East has entered a dangerous phase in which deterrence and escalation are occurring simultaneously. Washington believes stronger military responses will restore deterrence. Tehran appears convinced that calibrated proxy attacks can impose costs without triggering outright war. Both assumptions cannot remain true indefinitely.
The question is no longer whether the region is experiencing another cycle of violence
It is not obvious whether anyone still controls where that cycle ends. Proxy wars are the coward’s way to light the fuse while pretending the match is someone else’s. Using Kurds, Syrians, Chechens, Iraqi militias, or whoever has a gun and a grudge to do the bleeding for “Greater Israel” fantasies or Washington’s market-manipulation cycles doesn’t make the war cleaner—it makes it dirtier, longer, and far more likely to spiral into the full-scale regional disaster nobody claims to want.
Deterrence and escalation cannot coexist forever. Every “precision” strike on a proxy, every “self-defense” Saudi-American raid, and every Iranian drone or missile that gets through shrinks the space for anyone to climb down. When the oil terminals burn, the Strait chokes, desalination plants become targets, and the Gulf states start looking unliveable; the people who thought they could fight a war by remote control will discover the fire doesn’t care whose flag is on the drone.
History is littered with great powers who thought they could outsource the dying. It never ends with a tidy win. It ends with the proxies becoming principals, the principals getting dragged in, and the “war nobody wants” becoming the war everybody gets.
Stop pretending this is clever strategy. It is gambling with other people’s blood and everyone’s fuel. The only real deal is that once you start the proxy game, you don’t control the finish.
Caught in a trap of his own making, Trump is looking increasingly deranged, entirely consumed with revenge and anger and lacking any strategy or ability to listen to anyone with any sense. I don’t think there can be a ground invasion before September at the earliest; it’s 50C or more with limited water. May as well train in Death Valley for that. So the current tit-for-tat exchanges may linger on until the weather cools, and maybe then the so called Secretary of War will do something on the ground.
Meanwhile, the war keeps expanding through the region.
Jeffrey K. Silverman is a freelance journalist and international development specialist, BSc, MSc, based for 30 years in Georgia and the former Soviet Union
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