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Dennis McMillin

Male. Lives in United States.

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A good man is a violent man who can stay good until he is forced to become violent.

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Dennis McMillin

March 30, 2026 10:56 pm

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐈𝐫𝐚𝐧 𝐖𝐚𝐫 𝐎𝐛𝐣𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐬 𝐌𝐚𝐲 𝐍𝐨𝐭 𝐁𝐞 𝐂𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐫, 𝐁𝐮𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐂𝐨𝐬𝐭-𝐁𝐞𝐧𝐞𝐟𝐢𝐭 𝐒𝐜𝐞𝐧𝐚𝐫𝐢𝐨 𝐈𝐬 The final outcome is not yet determined. Wars rarely resolve cleanly in real time. But war is judged not only by the final ... View More𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐈𝐫𝐚𝐧 𝐖𝐚𝐫 𝐎𝐛𝐣𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐬 𝐌𝐚𝐲 𝐍𝐨𝐭 𝐁𝐞 𝐂𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐫, 𝐁𝐮𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐂𝐨𝐬𝐭-𝐁𝐞𝐧𝐞𝐟𝐢𝐭 𝐒𝐜𝐞𝐧𝐚𝐫𝐢𝐨 𝐈𝐬 The final outcome is not yet determined. Wars rarely resolve cleanly in real time. But war is judged not only by the final outcome. It is judged by whether it improves your strategic position relative to its alternatives. The question is not whether everything is settled, but whether the United States and its allies are in a better position than they would have been had Iran's coercive tools continued maturing under a nuclear shadow. That is the only honest standard for evaluating preemption — not whether it produced a clean ending, but whether it changed the trajectory. The debate was never about whether short-term disruption would be noticeable — higher gas prices, tighter shipping lanes, some degree of regional uncertainty. The real question was whether allowing Iran to continue building a more durable coercive position would have been worse. Iran did not need a blue-water navy to impose serious costs in the Strait of Hormuz. It needed mines, drones, fast boats, maritime harassment, and enough missile capacity to keep shipping, insurers, and regional infrastructure under pressure. That is a low-cost, effective model: cheap to impose, expensive to reverse. The war exposed that infrastructure more clearly, partially degraded it, and disrupted the process by which those capabilities were becoming harder and costlier to reverse. The war also revealed the regime’s ballistic missile reach beyond what Tehran had publicly claimed, underscoring how far its offensive posture had already evolved. Iran still has missiles, so regional escalation remains possible. The war has not yet produced a final settlement. But none of that refutes the argument. It just means that the conflict is unfinished. The relevant question now is whether Iran is more constrained than it would have been had its offensive capabilities continued maturing without interruption. The alternative was not peace or stability. Iran made sure of that through continued enrichment, missile development, proxy wars, deeper maritime coercive capacity, and the growing possibility that these tools would harden under a nuclear umbrella. The strategic danger was never simply that Iran could cause disruption in the present. It was that Iran could turn Hormuz into a recurring instrument of statecraft in the future. Once that coercive position sits beneath a nuclear umbrella, the deterrence math changes dramatically. A nuclear weapon would make stopping Iran costlier for everyone else. Every American or Israeli effort to reverse maritime coercion would carry a greater escalation risk. Gulf states would hedge more. Europe would face higher and more recurrent energy pressure. Coalition cohesion would weaken as the price of resistance rose. The cost of future action would increase precisely because the coercive position was allowed to be reached. That is how nuclear-backed leverage works. It does not eliminate costs, but it makes resistance more expensive and less certain. The gain, then, is not a final victory but the preservation of leverage. Iran's offensive architecture was interrupted before it fully matured, and the costs of confronting it later are likely lower today than they would have been under a more hardened missile, maritime, and nuclear posture. The implications do not stop with Iran. China and Russia benefit from a world in which American deterrence becomes more costly, less flexible, and more constrained. A hardened Iranian coercive posture would not simply strengthen Tehran. It would also shift leverage away from the United States and its allies and toward revisionist powers that prosper when deterrence becomes costlier to sustain. The choice was never between peace and war but between disruption now and a more dangerous equilibrium later. Critics treat the present disorder as proof that preemption was reckless. Implicit in that assumption is that the delay was neutral. It was not. Delay would have allowed Iran's coercive position to mature further: greater missile range, greater maritime leverage, more hardened infrastructure, and greater confidence that the costs of stopping it would keep rising. The point is not that the problem has been solved. The point is that a worse version of the problem should be interrupted before the costs flip, and inaction becomes the more expensive choice. That is a strategic gain, even if it is incomplete. This does not require overclaiming or pretending that uncertainty has vanished. As I’ve written before, if the campaign drifts into open-ended war without further strategic gain, if disruption proves prolonged without corresponding constraint on Iran, if the costs begin to outweigh the leverage gained, then the calculus changes. Serious analysis has to allow for that. But uncertainty is not an argument for passivity. If you insist on a final outcome before making a strategic judgment, you are making a category mistake. The future is never finished in real time. If perfect resolution becomes the standard for action, inaction will always win by default. And paralysis disguised as prudence is the opposite of realism. By the relevant standard, the case for preemption remains strong.

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