No panacea but acknowledging Iran’s power, respecting its legal rights

TEHRAN – CENTCOM’s appeal to military analysts to put forward new proposals to get the U.S. rid of the crisis it has created with its war against Iran clearly shows that the Pentagon has run out of options on how to deal with the issue.

The appeal also acknowledges that the U.S. has badly failed to force Iran to agree to its illegal demands for a deal and that all options are unpleasant.

“We are looking for new creative and unconventional ways to pressure and punish Iran,” an officer in U.S. Central Command’s intelligence branch wrote in a message sent Wednesday to a broad group of military analysts, according to a source familiar with the message, CNN reported on Monday.

Military officials said the crowdsourcing-style query was unusual. Hoping to find an alternative, an official at CENTCOM kicked off the brainstorming session via email to see if anyone had a better idea. The second source said CENTCOM is looking at everything, acknowledging it needs to reevaluate the strategy.

The options are getting extremely limited for the United States. One option may be deploying boots on the ground. However, that would be something that would cost the U.S. greatly in terms of human casualties and a prolongation of the war, something that Trump himself is too wary of.

Gen. Dan Caine, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Trump’s senior military adviser, has acknowledged publicly that bombing alone is unlikely to accomplish all Trump’s previously stated objectives for the war. “Air power has its limits,” Caine told lawmakers last month.

It may cross to mind that some military experts may suggest that the only remaining option is to use unconventional weapons against Iran. That option would be a huge and unforgivable mistake that would change the course of history and seriously affect international relations. It would also be in serious contrast to what the U.S., particularly President Donald Trump himself, has been warning other countries about.

The U.S. must feel assured that any unconventional war against Iran will make the U.S. lose more face.

Top American military officials and analysts must have realized during their current war of aggression that Iran is a master of unconventional and asymmetrical wars. Iran has been practicing asymmetrical warfare for many years.

Iran has experience of eight years of war with Iraq in the 1980s, when Saddam Hussein was ruling the country. Since that imposed war, like the June 2025 and the current wars, Iran has been crafting military strategies on how to make invaders repentant.

However, Trump was duped by Benjamin Netanyahu and American lobbyists working for Israel into the war against Iran in the midst of negotiations.

Actually, there is no panacea for the crisis, except to acknowledge Iran’s military power, respect its legal rights, and compensate the country for the war damages.

The U.S. will auction off its military standing more and more if it doesn’t treat Iran as an equal partner with legal rights, including the right to nuclear technology for civilian purposes.

Washington’s allies in the Middle East are now mulling ways to extricate themselves from military alliance with the U.S. They are seeing that military partnership with the U.S. is a liability rather than an asset. Serious doubt about reliance on a military alliance with Washington will surely make other nations in other parts of the world reassess their policies.