Ian Bremmer, president of Eurasia Group, asserts that the battlefield and the politics of the US-Iran conflict are diverging significantly, with Washington’s military campaign causing significant harm to Iran and not yielding the desired political outcome for President Donald Trump.Speaking to TOI’s in an interview, Bremmer said the United States had succeeded in degrading key Iranian capabilities, including ballistic missiles and naval assets, but had failed to trigger a collapse of the Iranian system or produce a leadership transition that Washington could shape. That gap, he argued, has created a far more dangerous and expensive conflict than the Trump administration expected.“It’s not gone the way that Trump hoped or expected,” Bremmer said.
He described a war in which the US military has achieved tactical successes while strategic costs have mounted quickly. Iran’s armed forces have taken visible damage, he said, but the broader fallout has included drone and missile attacks on Gulf states, US military deaths, and severe disruption in the Strait of Hormuz that is feeding into higher oil, gas and fertilizer prices worldwide.Bremmer said that the combination of military progress and political failure reflected a core miscalculation in Washington: the assumption that Iran’s leadership could be decapitated or pressured into producing a more pliant successor government.That assumption, he suggested, was effectively shattered by the elevation of Mojtaba Khamenei after the death of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in US-Israeli strikes. In Bremmer’s telling, the succession does not signal moderation, compromise or fragmentation inside Tehran. Instead, it signals continuity and defiance.“It shows that the Iranian leadership is in an intransigent mode,” he said.Bremmer contrasted the symbolism of Iran’s formal presidency with the harder logic of the clerical system, arguing that more conciliatory messages from elected figures were never the true center of power. The choice of Mojtaba Khamenei, he said, amounted to a declaration that the Islamic Republic intended to hold its line rather than seek an off-ramp on terms dictated by Washington.The result, he argued, is that Trump now faces a narrowing set of choices: accept a leader he does not want, back away from his earlier rhetoric, or continue a war whose costs are likely to keep rising.Bremmer was especially blunt in dismissing any comparison between Iran and cases where the United States believed it could exploit elite fractures for regime change. The problem in Iran, he said, is not simply operational difficulty. It is the absence of an internal faction willing to trade ideology for survival in the way Washington hoped.In Venezuela, he said, the US had interlocutors who could act pragmatically. In Iran, that model does not apply. The ruling order is a theocratic system run by hardliners for whom sacrifice, not bargaining, is part of the political framework.“Trump assumes that all political leaders are like him – that everyone has a price,” Bremmer said. “In the case of Iran he is negotiating with people who do not have a price.”That, he said, means any serious attempt at regime change would require tools the United States does not currently have: either American boots on the ground, a coordinated domestic opposition, or most likely both. At present, he said, neither exists in a usable form.Without those conditions, Bremmer argued, the regime is likely to survive even in a weakened state. He said Trump could still choose to declare victory and halt operations, presenting the war as a successful effort to damage Iran’s ability to project power. But by broadening the target set beyond nuclear and missile infrastructure, Bremmer said, Trump had assumed political ownership of a much wider conflict.“This war did not need to be about killing the Supreme Leader, killing all military leaders, or disrupting the Strait of Hormuz,” he said.He argued that a narrower war focused on missile and nuclear facilities might have left the US and its allies in a stronger diplomatic position. Instead, he said, the broader campaign had pushed Iran toward a more desperate and decentralized strategy in which local commanders strike a wider array of targets with fewer constraints.That change, Bremmer said, helps explain why the conflict has become harder to contain. In his account, Iran’s remaining tools are less about massed conventional retaliation and more about low-cost, dispersed violence: drones, opportunistic attacks, and potential terrorist operations abroad.He said Iran is clearly losing in conventional military terms. The regime is weaker, the population is suffering, and its missile arsenal is being steadily reduced. Hezbollah, Hamas and other members of the so-called Axis of Resistance are all diminished compared with their earlier strength, he said. Hezbollah’s early response, in his telling, was only a fraction of what it might once have launched. Hamas is battered. Bashar al-Assad is out of power in Syria. The Houthis, he added, appear to be holding back as they seek concessions from Gulf states.Still, that does not mean the danger is receding. Bremmer warned that drones represent a different kind of threat from ballistic missiles: they are cheap, decentralized and difficult to eliminate completely. Iran may be able to sustain that kind of pressure for months, he said, even as its heavier capabilities shrink.He outlined three triggers that, in his view, could transform the conflict into a much wider Middle East war: a major attack causing large-scale American casualties, an oil shock severe enough to send crude above $100-$120 a barrel and damage energy infrastructure, or a major strike on a Gulf state that convinces a country such as the UAE that its economic model is under direct threat.Among those risks, Bremmer placed particular emphasis on the global economic consequences of prolonged instability in the Gulf. The disruption in Hormuz, he said, is already historic, and any deeper shock would not remain a regional problem. It would hit energy markets, trade flows and domestic politics in countries far from the battlefield, including the US and India.Even absent a dramatic escalation, Bremmer said he already sees the war as likely to become the defining foreign-policy error of Trump’s presidencies. He said the conflict is unpopular in the US and could grow more so as costs rise, especially at a moment when Trump is already facing domestic pressure over immigration and affordability.The best-case scenario now, Bremmer argued, is not decisive victory but a quick declaration of one. A limited ceasefire, or a unilateral US effort to stop after inflicting damage, could still reduce casualties and create room for renewed negotiations from a position of strength.The alternative, he suggested, is a war that deepens because Trump finds it politically difficult to acknowledge limits.“Trump will never admit failure,” Bremmer said. “But when he feels constrained he also tends to double down.”That, Bremmer suggested, is the danger now hanging over the conflict: a war in which the military picture looks manageable, but the political logic keeps pulling the United States toward a larger and more punishing fight.
