The war with Iran is entering its fifth week, and the political problem is beginning to look more difficult than the military one. The United States and Israel have inflicted enormous damage on Iranian missile sites, air defences, military infrastructure and senior leadership, while Iran continues retaliating through missiles, drones and pressure on shipping around the Gulf. President Donald Trump is now signalling greater interest in negotiations, even while maintaining that military operations can continue if Tehran refuses American terms. Iran’s new leadership under Mojtaba Khamenei faces the same dilemma from the opposite direction: accepting negotiations could limit further destruction, but appearing to concede immediately after the killing of Ali Khamenei and weeks of foreign bombardment could weaken the regime domestically. The conflict has therefore reached a stage familiar from many wars in which both governments may prefer an eventual settlement but neither wants to appear to need one more urgently than the other. The central obstacle to peace is no longer simply disagreement over Iran’s nuclear and missile programmes; it is the political cost each side associates with being seen to retreat after publicly defining resolve as a measure of national strength.
This is the problem of audience costs. Governments do not negotiate only with foreign adversaries; they negotiate simultaneously with their own citizens, military establishments and political coalitions. Trump has repeatedly described American military operations as overwhelmingly successful, making it politically difficult to accept an agreement that resembles the compromises available before the war. If the final settlement simply restricts Iranian enrichment in exchange for sanctions relief, critics can reasonably ask why similar terms could not have been reached through the negotiations occurring before 28 February. Iran faces an even sharper version. Its leadership has portrayed resistance as a defence of sovereignty and national dignity. A settlement perceived domestically as surrender could damage a regime already confronting serious questions about legitimacy. Both sides therefore need an agreement that allows them to tell different domestic stories about the same outcome.
This is why face-saving is not superficial diplomacy. It can be structurally necessary for peace. Political leaders often reject materially beneficial compromises because accepting them publicly would threaten their authority. A successful agreement therefore does not need Washington and Tehran to agree about who won. It may actually work better if both can claim victory. America can say Iranian nuclear capabilities have been constrained and regional threats reduced. Iran can say it resisted vastly stronger powers, preserved sovereignty and obtained sanctions relief without abandoning civilian nuclear rights. The factual narratives may contradict one another partially, but peace does not require identical historical interpretation. It requires compatible future behaviour.
The difficulty is determining what America now actually requires from Iran. If the objective remains preventing an Iranian nuclear weapon, a verifiable settlement is conceptually possible. Iran accepts strict enrichment limits, intrusive International Atomic Energy Agency inspections and controls over nuclear material; sanctions are reduced progressively as compliance is verified. If Washington additionally requires severe limits on Iranian ballistic missiles, regional armed groups and domestic political structures, the bargaining space becomes much smaller. Each additional objective may be desirable independently, but combining all of them creates a maximalist settlement Iran has little incentive to accept unless the alternative is complete destruction. Strategy therefore requires distinguishing between conditions necessary for security and outcomes merely preferable to the stronger state.
This distinction is philosophically important because overwhelming power can obscure the boundary between defence and domination. A state has a legitimate interest in preventing an adversary from acquiring capabilities presenting a serious threat. It does not follow that the stronger state acquires a general right to redesign the weaker state’s political and military order until every future danger disappears. Security can never be absolute in international politics because other sovereign states retain agency. The pursuit of perfect security therefore risks becoming expansionary: every independent capability possessed by another state appears as a potential threat requiring control. A stable international order depends partly on states accepting some insecurity as the price of other states remaining genuinely sovereign.
Iran must confront the same principle. Sovereignty does not provide an unlimited right to develop capabilities that create reasonable fears of catastrophic harm in neighbouring states. Iran’s history of highly enriched uranium, incomplete transparency and support for armed regional organisations gave Israel and other governments genuine security concerns. Tehran cannot demand complete freedom of action while expecting other states to ignore the consequences. Sovereignty is reciprocal: Iran’s independence deserves respect, but so does the security of neighbouring political communities. The strongest settlement would therefore establish mutual restraint rather than unilateral submission.
The economic pressure increasingly creates incentives for such a settlement. Energy disruption has imposed costs across the global economy, while Iran itself is experiencing severe damage to infrastructure and trade. Gulf states want normal shipping restored, Asian importers want lower energy prices and European governments fear another prolonged regional conflict. These countries therefore possess a shared interest in diplomacy even when their political sympathies differ. The war demonstrates why international order cannot be reduced to the preferences of belligerents alone: states fighting over their own security can generate externalities paid by billions of people who had no role in choosing the conflict.
India should therefore become more diplomatically active rather than interpreting strategic autonomy as simply refusing alignment. India has relationships across nearly every relevant side and an enormous economic interest in stable Gulf energy flows. That position creates potential value as a communicator even if India cannot mediate the entire conflict. Strategic autonomy reaches its highest form when independence produces diplomatic utility, not merely distance from other countries’ positions. A country maintaining channels with adversaries should use those channels when their conflict begins imposing costs on the wider system.
The question of regime change should also become clearer after a month of war. The Islamic Republic has survived the death of Ali Khamenei and produced a successor. That does not prove long-term stability, but it demonstrates that Iranian political institutions cannot simply be decapitated into liberal democracy. If Washington’s practical objective remains regime change, the war lacks a predictable endpoint because America cannot determine when Iranian society will produce an acceptable successor government. If the objective returns towards measurable security conditions, termination becomes possible. Wars become easier to end when success can be verified externally rather than requiring transformation inside another society.
The same logic should shape sanctions. Sanctions are most useful when governments can explain what behaviour causes them to disappear. Permanent sanctions independent of behaviour become punishment rather than leverage because the targeted state receives no economic reward for compliance. A new agreement should therefore use staged sanctions relief tied to verifiable nuclear and regional commitments, with automatic reimposition if violations occur. This makes peace materially valuable while preserving consequences for defection.
The hardest part will be creating a settlement durable beyond Trump and Mojtaba Khamenei. The 2015 nuclear agreement demonstrated the weakness of arrangements vulnerable to changes in American administration. Iran accepted restrictions, Trump withdrew the United States in 2018 and Tehran subsequently expanded its programme. Whatever judgement one makes about the JCPOA itself, the episode damaged the credibility of future promises. Iran can reasonably ask why it should make expensive concessions if another American president can reverse the bargain. International agreements become credible when violating them carries institutional and political costs even after the leaders who negotiated them leave office.
That may require congressional involvement in Washington, international verification and commitments from European and regional states rather than another agreement resting primarily on executive discretion. Iran would need equivalent mechanisms ensuring that commitments survive internal leadership changes. Durable peace is ultimately less about trusting individuals than about making compliance sufficiently embedded that future leaders find continuation easier than reversal.
After five weeks, the war has demonstrated American and Israeli military superiority repeatedly. What it has not demonstrated is that further destruction automatically produces a better political settlement. That is now the critical distinction. Military power can change the bargaining range by making resistance more expensive; diplomacy determines whether the new bargaining range becomes an agreement or merely another reason to continue fighting.
The measure of success should therefore no longer be the number of Iranian facilities destroyed. It should be whether the conflict ends with Iran further from a nuclear weapon, Gulf shipping restored, regional retaliation reduced and enough reciprocal restraint that another preventive war becomes less likely. If those conditions can be achieved through negotiation, continuing military operations simply to demonstrate that they can continue would confuse strength with strategy.
The strongest state is not necessarily the one that fights longest. Sometimes power is demonstrated most clearly by recognising the moment when additional force has stopped purchasing enough additional security to justify its cost.
