The United States’ military and diplomatic power has significantly influenced the recent escalation of conflict with Iran, raising questions about responsibility and the choices made by Washington.
With unmatched military and diplomatic leverage, the United States has held the greatest capacity to restrain escalation in international conflicts. Now, it bears the heaviest share of the consequences stemming from its choices.
War rarely erupts from pure inevitability; rather, it emerges from decisions made by those involved. In deeply asymmetric conflicts, the choices of the stronger party weigh most heavily. The joint U.S.-Israeli strikes that began on February 28, 2026, have propelled the long-simmering confrontation with Iran into open warfare. Missiles have crossed borders in both directions, and reports indicate that Tehran’s supreme leader is dead. As markets convulse, regional powers brace for wider disruption.
The urgent question in Washington is whether these military actions were justified. A more profound inquiry is whether they were unavoidable, and if not, who bore the greatest capacity to avert them.
Iran remains a formidable regional actor, yet it is constrained by decades of sanctions, a strained economy, and limited power projection beyond its proxies and missiles. In contrast, the United States commands unmatched global military reach, naval superiority, financial dominance, intelligence networks, and alliance structures.
In such asymmetries, escalation is seldom symmetrical. The side with the greater ability to widen the theater—militarily, economically, or geographically—holds the reins of control. Washington possessed that control.
Israel’s military capabilities are formidable, particularly in precision strikes and intelligence. However, operations of the scale now underway—deep penetration into Iranian territory targeting leadership and strategic assets—depend critically on American support. This includes refueling assistance, real-time intelligence sharing, munitions resupply, integrated missile defense, and diplomatic cover at the United Nations and beyond.
Absent active U.S. involvement or at least tacit approval, the operation’s ambition and sustainability would have been sharply constrained. While Israel exercised agency, American participation transformed a high-risk campaign into a full-scale interstate conflict.
The 2015 nuclear agreement, though imperfect, imposed verifiable caps on Iran’s enrichment and included intrusive monitoring. The unilateral American withdrawal from the agreement in 2018 dismantled these guardrails. Maximalist sanctions followed, alongside the implicit message that even compliance might not yield security or relief.
Iran’s response unfolded in calibrated steps, including incremental advances in enrichment, centrifuge deployment, and proxy pressure. Each move tested boundaries but remained below the threshold of direct, all-out war. Diplomacy had not collapsed irretrievably; channels persisted, including indirect talks mediated through Oman and others right up to the eve of the strikes.
The resort to force was not a desperate last option; it reflected a preference—one made possible, and arguably decisive, by the actor best positioned to pursue alternatives.
The U.S.-Israel alignment is profound and enduring. Yet this alignment does not absolve the need for independent strategic judgment. Israel views Iranian nuclear latency—especially after setbacks in 2025 and perceived reconstitution efforts—as an existential red line. The United States, however, faces no comparable immediate territorial threat. Its core interests lie in regional stability, nonproliferation credibility, alliance reliability, and the uninterrupted flow of global energy markets.
When Washington largely adopts Jerusalem’s threat assessment as its own, it narrows diplomatic maneuvering room and lowers the threshold for military action. This is also a choice—one that elevated deterrence into open confrontation.
Under international law, the use of force is generally permissible only in self-defense against an imminent armed attack or with Security Council approval. Preemptive or preventive strikes, based on future capability rather than clear and present danger, strain these norms. When the world’s preeminent power interprets “imminence” expansively, it risks eroding the very legal architecture it has long championed. Such elasticity by the strong reverberates systemically.
Iran’s strategy has long favored calibrated escalation through proxies, maritime harassment, and asymmetric tools, avoiding direct, full-spectrum war with the United States. Washington has understood this pattern for decades. It also recognized that large-scale strikes on sovereign Iranian soil would almost certainly trigger retaliation: missile barrages, cyber operations, militia activations across the region, and disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz.
These outcomes were foreseeable—modeled extensively, one presumes, by the same intelligence apparatus that enabled the strikes. When consequences are predictable, responsibility accrues more heavily to the party that crosses the decisive threshold.
The global economy remains exquisitely sensitive to energy flows from the Persian Gulf. Even brief interruptions ripple through oil prices, shipping costs, inflation, and the stability of emerging markets. A regional power may weigh risks narrowly; a global hegemon must reckon with cascading systemic effects. Power confers not only capability but also obligation.
Sustained military campaigns in a democracy ideally rest on legislative buy-in and broad public consent. When executive action launches major hostilities absent such grounding, questions of legitimacy arise—not merely procedural, but also bearing on trust, alliance cohesion, and long-term sustainability.
Israel’s security anxieties are a mix of real, imagined, and deeply rooted concerns. However, the leap from managed rivalry to open war required decisive American participation. No other actor possessed comparable leverage to prolong diplomacy, constrain escalation, or shape outcomes short of force.
When the party with maximal options opts for military action over extended negotiation, it assumes primary responsibility for the consequences that unfold—however unintended those consequences may prove.
History is replete with examples of powerful states acting from a sense of looming vulnerability, prioritizing prevention over present stability. This logic can feel compelling internally while proving profoundly disruptive externally. Overwhelming power lowers immediate tactical risks yet often heightens long-term strategic exposure. Once conflict escapes its initial bounds, even superior actors lose mastery over escalation spirals.
Ultimately, agency in international politics scales with power. Weaker parties maneuver within tight constraints; stronger ones help define those constraints. Should this war widen, drawing in more actors and disrupting global energy or fracturing nonproliferation norms, future accounts will likely identify the pivotal inflection not solely in Iranian ambitions or Israeli doctrine, but in the moment Washington chose active participation over continued restraint.
When the system’s most powerful state elects war, the system itself is reshaped. This reality carries disproportionate weight—and with it, responsibility.
According to Satish Jha, a former newspaper editor with The Indian Express Group and The Times of India Group, the implications of these choices will resonate far beyond the immediate conflict.