Lessons From Donald Trump’s Iran War (Part 2)

It has now been exactly 100 days since the Trump–Netanyahu duo unilaterally attacked the tyrannical regime of the Islamic Republic of Iran. What was supposed to be a lightning war quickly turned into a swamp-like fiasco from which Donald Trump no longer knows how to escape. More than 60 days into the ceasefire, the deadlock persists.

In the first article on this topic, I argued that it would be almost impossible for the Israeli-American coalition to win. That prediction is now being confirmed through the suspension of hostilities and Trump’s growing frustration. But by revisiting Dr. Olivier Hamant’s theory, it becomes easier to understand why this is the case.

Iran: Robustness as the Product of Adverse Selection — or the Only Possible Path

Unlike what we described in the case of the global power that is the United States and its ally (the regional power) Israel, Iran cannot confront these two hyperpowers as an equal, whether militarily or technologically. Yet this should not lead us to believe that we are dealing with an asymmetric conflict, such as the war in Afghanistan. This new conflict differs in many respects. Iran is a country with a millennia-old cultural history and one of the cradles of civilization; it is also a country with considerable geography. Its territory is vast and mountainous, making any ground invasion extremely difficult. Finally, Iran possesses the largest and one of the most educated populations in the region.

For this reason, it is more accurate to speak of a dissymmetrical conflict because, in the first case, there can only be resistance, and the wearing down of the adversary occurs solely through time; generally, one then finds oneself in a low-intensity conflict. In the present case, things are different because Iran can — and has — inflicted significant blows upon its adversary.

We are no longer dealing merely with a logic of resisting the enemy, but rather with a strategy aimed at destabilizing it. Since its founding as the Islamic Republic of Iran, the country has been ostracized by the so-called respectable nations and constantly fought against. First through eight years of war against its neighbor — and then-US ally — Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, and later through countless embargoes and economic sanctions. As a result of these circumstances, this young state was forced to develop itself as a robust system in Hamant’s sense of the term: suboptimal, permanently constrained to function in a war economy and to fend for itself. Unable to rely on anyone but itself and a few allies from the so-called “Axis of Evil,” Iran transformed this constraint into an advantage.

Hamant explains in his theory on the predominance of robustness over performance that a robust system can adapt to uncertainty. There is an acceptance of stochasticity — randomness itself. Having lived under embargo, the Iranian economy and military industry do not seek global efficiency but local viability: survival. Their technologies, such as the Shahed drones, are “clumsy” by Western standards, yet they are redundant, inexpensive, and mass-produced. It is the triumph of the “good enough” over the “perfect.” The objective is to inflict damage over the long term rather than pursue a decisive victory like its adversary, whose unattainable ambitions are now endangering the entire hyper-sophisticated war logic of the alliance.

The Trump administration had a clear objective: overthrow the regime of the mullahs and provoke a popular uprising. To achieve this, it deployed a cutting-edge military armed with extremely sophisticated and costly weaponry. Yet by failing to achieve its objective, its superiority became a handicap. Unlike Iran, escalation and perpetual forward flight are not sustainable for such a system. As we already analyzed previously, sophisticated weaponry of this kind requires enormous amounts of money and time to produce. The pursuit is therefore doomed to failure. That is why today the war has reached a deadlock for Donald Trump: he cannot win it.

Another major strength of Iranian resilience lies in its functional redundancy — the “Axis of Resistance.” Because Iran has always lived under the threat of war and destruction, it prepared itself not only for conflict but also for the possible decapitation of its leadership. To achieve this, it fragmented its chains of command, granting autonomous decision-making capacities accompanied by predefined retaliation protocols. Iran’s broader strategy also relies on independent proxy forces spread throughout the region — Hezbollah, the Houthis, and Iraqi militias. For Hamant, this resembles a decentralized biological system. If one branch is cut off, the others continue functioning. There is no single “center of gravity” whose destruction would collapse the entire system. It is anti-performance par excellence: slow, blurry, but resilient.

This is why the collapse of the Iranian system will not occur. On the contrary, tragically, the multiplication of these decentralized structures allows Iran to resist more effectively. This extreme situation has strengthened the grip of the Revolutionary Guards, while the emancipation of the Iranian people is no longer on the agenda. What we are witnessing is a transition from a religious regime toward a more authoritarian military-dominated order.

Another asset of the Iranian regime is its incorporation of shock. Unlike the United States, the shock of war saved the regime from possible collapse. It strengthened it, while also allowing it to suppress dissenting voices. Meanwhile, in the United States, the prolonged shock of this conflict is beginning to destabilize the Trump administration itself. Public frustration over the stalemate may generate unbearable political pressure and could ultimately lead to the loss of the midterm elections and, by extension, an impeachment process capable of bringing down Donald Trump.

Robustness means maintaining functionality despite fluctuations. Iran has learned to operate within a degraded environment. Whereas a mere 2% decline in GDP can provoke a political crisis in the United States — as illustrated by soaring gasoline prices — the Iranian system is structurally designed to absorb far more violent shocks without breaking its command structures or succumbing to social pressure.

The Conflict: When Optimization Meets Saturation

The current conflict perfectly illustrates Hamant’s paradox: performance reaches saturation in the face of robustness. One can sense Donald Trump’s desperation to escape this quagmire, and every additional day of deadlock represents yet another political calamity for him. Not only does it affect his administration and political party, but also many of America’s economic partners — and even international trade as a whole.

Conversely, for Iran, every passing day signifies survival, the strengthening of its regime, and more importantly, its transformation from a pariah state into a genuine actor within international relations.

The Asymmetry of Costs

On this level, the high-performance system (Israel/United States) exhausts itself trying to maintain perfection. Every intercepted missile may represent a tactical victory, but strategically it becomes a long-term defeat through stock depletion and financial exhaustion. This is precisely why they halted the war: stockpiles were running dry and the war budget had exploded. As for the American military, a ground intervention remains out of the question.

For Iran, however, functioning under a war economy means that stimulating the economy requires increasing production and rebuilding infrastructure damaged by bombings. That is all they have left. Thus, paradoxically, the prolongation of the war serves to strengthen them.

Resistance Through 'Detour'

The United States seeks a definitive technological solution — performance itself: Iran’s unconditional surrender, regime collapse, the dismantling of its nuclear program, and ultimately the reduction of Chinese access to Iranian hydrocarbons. Although desirable from Washington’s perspective, this objective appears increasingly distant, and as time passes it only deepens the American failure.

Iran, meanwhile, embraces the detour — robustness. It fully understands that it cannot confront its adversary directly on equal terms. This is why it targeted Gulf allies of the United States, key actors within globalization itself. The damage inflicted upon them generates negative repercussions across the entire global economy, thereby rendering the opposing system profoundly unstable.

The Illusion of Control

Finally, the last important aspect of Hamant’s theory is the shattering of the illusion of control. The performance sought by Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu consists in dominating and “managing” the Middle East as though it were a predictable system. Iranian robustness, by contrast, bets on chaos.

As Hamant emphasizes, in a world that is trembling and unstable, the actor willing to function imperfectly ultimately prevails over the one demanding perfectly stable ground beneath its feet.

Conclusion

If we follow this logic, the West (United States/Israel) now finds itself in the position of a species hyper-adapted to an environment that no longer exists: a stable world governed by clear rules and absolute technological superiority. Iran, through its accepted suboptimality, has developed a form of “martial sobriety” that renders it less vulnerable to the unpredictability of the political Anthropocene.

American stagnation is not the result of insufficient means, but rather of excessive optimization: they are too efficient for a world that has become too unstable.

“Performance is a trajectory toward fragility; robustness is insurance against uncertainty.” — This maxim by Hamant now appears to define the true balance of power in the Middle East.