Iran's Military Is 90% Degraded. Now Would Be a Strange Time to Quit.

"Netanyahu pledged Israel will help the U.S. reopen the Strait... announced halt to attacks on Iranian energy facilities."

— Euronews, March 16, 2026

The Economic Pain Is Real — and Temporary

Some of our colleagues seem to believe that the proper response to a short-term energy price spike is to abandon a military campaign that's 90% effective. The logic escapes me. Gas prices are, at this writing, at $3.79 per gallon — elevated, genuinely burdensome for working families, and a legitimate political concern [2]. They are also, in historical perspective, not the highest they've ever been, not unprecedented in wartime, and entirely subject to correction the moment the Strait reopens under conditions that don't require the U.S. to revisit this in 2031. Pain now, or far greater pain later. That has always been the calculus of deterrence, and conservatives used to understand it.

Iran's Last 10% Is the Only Number That Matters

Here is what the headline coverage routinely misses: an adversary at 10% of its pre-conflict missile capacity is still dangerous. Not as dangerous as before — but dangerous enough, and certainly capable of reconstituting if given the chance. Iran's regime has done this repeatedly. Sanctions lift, inspectors leave, centrifuges spin. The pattern is well-established. What is different now is that we have, for the first time in a generation, created the material conditions under which Iran's offensive military capability is genuinely compromised — not just theoretically constrained by treaty language that its government will cheerfully violate [3]. The administration's strategic logic, to the extent it has been articulated publicly, is sound: Iran weakened is not Iran neutralized. The time to negotiate is not when your opponent senses they can run out the clock.

Europe's Refusal and the Burden-Sharing Reckoning

Meanwhile, the NATO episode is worth examining at some length, because it illustrates something important about what "American leadership" actually costs. When President Trump called on NATO allies and China to help reopen the Strait, the response from European capitals was swift and unanimous: no [4]. Greek Prime Minister Mitsotakis put it plainly: "Europe must not be drawn into the Iran war militarily." British Prime Minister Starmer offered something about "restoring freedom of navigation" that managed to say everything and commit to nothing. The result was predictable to anyone who has followed transatlantic burden-sharing debates since the 1990s. America secures the global shipping lanes, pays the diplomatic costs, absorbs the economic disruption, and then gets lectured by partners who benefit from those lanes but decline to help defend them.

Trump's critics have long accused him of being reckless with alliances. But what this moment reveals is something his critics are loath to acknowledge: the NATO criticism isn't invented. The alliance has a free-rider problem that pre-dates Trump by decades and that polite diplomacy has never solved. Publicly calling out allies during an active conflict may be unorthodox. It is not unfounded. And the willingness to name the problem plainly, rather than tiptoe around it in communiqués, is arguably the only approach that has ever moved the needle — however incrementally [4].

The China and India Problem

There is one genuinely worrying development underneath all the military progress that deserves more attention than it's getting: China and India are quietly negotiating separate transit arrangements through the Strait of Hormuz. This is not a surprise — both are major importers of Persian Gulf oil and have their own relationships with Tehran that predate and will outlast the current conflict. But it represents a structural challenge to the leverage the United States is attempting to apply. If China and India can access Hormuz energy supplies independent of the U.S.-led naval posture, Iran retains economic breathing room even as its military infrastructure is degraded [3]. That is a problem. It is also an argument for moving faster, not slower — for completing the strategic objective before those alternative arrangements harden into permanent workarounds.

What Finishing the Job Actually Means

To be clear about what this argument is not: it is not a call for open-ended occupation, nation-building, or the latest iteration of Middle Eastern democracy promotion. The conservative case for maximum pressure on Iran is precisely a conservative case — one grounded in realism, strategic interest, and the recognition that strength deters future conflict while weakness invites it. Iran's regime, weakened and humiliated, may eventually seek a genuine accommodation. An Iran that has successfully waited out American resolve, as it has before, will draw exactly the opposite lesson.

The administration and Israel have created a strategic opportunity that didn't exist three weeks ago. Squandering it because domestic opinion polls are uncomfortable, because gas prices are elevated, because European allies would prefer not to be involved — these are the kinds of considerations that have historically led to outcomes nobody actually wanted. The Strait will reopen. The question is whether it reopens on terms that change Iranian behavior, or on terms that simply reset the clock for the next confrontation. Conservatives know which answer they prefer. Now is the time to say it clearly.