March 04, 2026

Iran, Israel, and the U.S. Are Racing the Clock

By: Franz-Stefan Gady

This article was originally published in Foreign Policy.

At first glance, the Israeli-U.S. attack on Iran is an uneven fight. The United States and Israel have overwhelming air superiority, precision-guided munitions, integrated intelligence, and multilayered missile defense systems against Iranian retaliatory strikes. While it’s hard to see a political theory of victory over Iran in this campaign, the operational theory of success is based on precision strikes quickly taking out Iranian air defenses, command and control, and missile launchers.

Even the most technologically advanced versions of precision warfare, as practiced by the Israelis and Americans, cannot eliminate the attritional nature of modern military conflict.

The attackers do not want to find themselves trapped in an attritional slugfest, where they burn through hundreds of millions of dollars per day, exhaust their stocks of the most advanced interceptors, and face the prospect of a prolonged war—not by losing on the battlefield but by simply exhausting their anti-air weapons in the coming days and weeks.

Read the full article in Foreign Policy.

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