WASHINGTON -- As Washington debates whether the recent cease-fire with Iran reflects strategic restraint or strategic drift, retired US Colonel David Des Roches says the broader trajectory of the conflict tells a different story.
Des Roches, former director of Arabian Peninsula Policy at the Pentagon and now a professor at the Near East South Asia Center for Strategic Studies in Washington, D.C., argues that Iran is losing the long game and that its decline as a regional power began long before the latest war.
In an interview with RFE/RL, Des Roches said that despite Tehran's efforts to portray the war as a success, the Islamic republic has emerged weaker militarily, more isolated diplomatically, and increasingly vulnerable economically.
RFE/RL: Let's start with the Iran talks. Mediators in Doha described the latest round as "positive," but there was no breakthrough on the bigger strategic issues. Negotiators focused on shipping and financial issues rather than the nuclear file or regional power. Does that suggest both sides have less leverage than many expected?
David Des Roches: Yes, you can make that case. We don't really know what's going on, but there are a couple of problems here for both sides.
First off, both sides are desperate to portray this as a win. Both sides are saying, we won, the other side didn't. That obviously makes it hard to come to an agreement when both are trying to impose conditions the other says it can't accept.
The second problem is we're not really sure who's in charge in Iran. Negotiators will say one thing, and then different IRGC [Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps] officers or members of parliament will say, no, we can't accept this, we can't accept that.
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That was apparent from the start of this process. After the Islamabad talks -- and remember, we sent the vice president to Islamabad, which is a long flight -- almost as soon as the talks were over, Tasnim, the Iranian press agency, said the foreign minister had exceeded his brief and what he said was not Iranian policy. And we see this over and over again.
It's quite possible some of the ship attacks we're seeing may be individual IRGC officers acting without overall command. It's hard to make an agreement when you're really not sure what's going on, when Iranian negotiators have to satisfy hard-liners back home while also trying to make a deal with the Americans. It's just a mess, and I think that's something we should expect for a while.
RFE/RL: The next round of diplomacy has now been delayed until after the funeral ceremony for the late ayatollah. How much uncertainty does this leadership transition create?
Des Roches: We don't even know if the current ayatollah is alive. There's no evidence. We haven't heard his voice. We haven't seen a picture of him. This could be a hard-line faction ginning up its own message and saying, this is what the supreme leader says. There's a lot of uncertainty here, and frankly, the position we're in right now is where we're going to be for a while.
David Des Roches
Both sides are at risk of overplaying their hand. It's clear to me the thing motivating [US] President [Donald] Trump is the price of oil, because that has domestic impacts in the United States and affects the midterm elections.
Right now, oil prices have dropped, and there has been so much destruction of the Iranian Navy that their ability to disrupt neutral civilian shipping has diminished. And it's important to note: Iran has not projected power against the US Navy. It has projected power against Indian cargo ships. Oil is still getting through. If the talks drag on past the elections, it's quite possible Trump says, "We gave this a shot," and returns to combat operations.
It's in both sides' interest to get an agreement. But Iran's position is far more tenuous than people think.
The Strait Of Hormuz And The 'Insurance War'
RFE/RL: Iran's joint military command has warned that all oil tankers transiting the Strait of Hormuz must follow Iranian-approved routes. Is that a sign of naval dominance or defensive posturing from a weakened regime?
Des Roches: It's important to note Iran's target audience here is not military -- it's the commercial insurance market in London. Basically, they're trying to create uncertainty so maritime insurance underwriters charge prohibitively high rates. That discourages neutral commercial shipping from transiting the strait.
Right now, maritime insurance is around 8 percent of insured value. That's too high for most businesses. That's what they're trying to do.
Meanwhile, state-owned tankers and US warships are still transiting. They're operating in Omani territorial waters. And whenever an Iranian attack is directed against one of these ships, there's an immediate response against the point of launch and associated command-and-control systems. So, militarily, it's not really a threat.
What Iran is doing here is commercial extortion. It's like someone telling a pharmaceutical company with 4 million bottles of paracetamol on the market: We're going to poison two of them somewhere. That's the equivalent.
RFE/RL: Iranian officials keep warning of immediate retaliation if threatened. Does Tehran still have the conventional capacity for sustained military escalation?
Des Roches: No. Iran's capability is not militarily significant, and it hasn't been throughout this war. If Iran had wanted to fight this as a real war and inflict serious damage on the United States, then on day one it would have launched hundreds of missiles at US air bases in the Levant.
If they had 600 missiles and launched 400 effectively, maybe some would get through. Maybe you'd see satellite imagery showing Joint Strike Fighters destroyed on the ground.
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They haven't sunk a US Navy ship. They're attacking neutral civilian cargo ships. None of that is permissible under the law of land warfare. This is the behavior of a dying regime trying to make its own crisis into a global crisis by attacking people who can't fight back.
Wake-Up Call In The Gulf
RFE/RL: You've argued that Gulf states have had a strategic wake-up call. Has Iran's attempt to pressure them away from Washington actually backfired?
Des Roches: Absolutely. Before these attacks, there was a new generation in the Gulf that looked at Iran the way some West German politicians in the 1960s and 1970s looked at East Germany: It's a problem, we don't like it, but it's our neighbor. We have to find a way to live with it.
There was a belief commercial ties and cultural links would provide insulation. That illusion is gone. The Gulf states denied the US and Israel access and overflight rights for these operations. They stayed out of it. And they still got attacked. That changes everything.
It's going to take regime change and probably a generation for Iran to be viewed as anything other than a permanent threat. Future Gulf-Iran relations will be understood through coercion -- almost extortion -- not engagement.
RFE/RL: Is Iran still holding its regional proxy network together or are we seeing the axis of resistance start to fracture?
Des Roches: Iran still retains influence, but it's obvious they've betrayed Lebanese Hezbollah. The whole negotiation process has been about Iran getting money.
And when this started, if there were an honest conversation, they'd admit they couldn't take any more economic suffering for Hezbollah's sake. Only after the Axios report -- where President Trump was quoted saying he would make maximalist demands -- did Iranian leaders try to push Lebanon to the front of negotiations. That was for appearances. They couldn't admit publicly they were abandoning Hezbollah. But they've done almost nothing to help. And they knew full well when they ordered Hezbollah into action that Israel would welcome that as an opportunity to eliminate them.
What we're seeing is Iranian leadership prioritizing Iranian interests. That's economic. The so-called axis of resistance isn't an alliance of equals. It's a wheel.
Iran is the hub. Hezbollah, Iraqi militias, Assad -- they're the spokes. And spokes are expendable. You can ride a bicycle with two missing.
Iran's Strategic Decline
RFE/RL: Looking beyond the battlefield, what should policymakers watch to judge whether this war has truly changed the strategic balance?
Des Roches: The key point is the relationship between politics and the military. What you see in Iran is a military branch, the IRGC, that has become the center of political power.
Since 2009, it has been mounting a slow-motion coup. Its goal is to keep Iran focused narrowly on dominating its near neighbors. That has consumed immense wealth. Iran is a country of untapped commercial potential and intellectual genius, and all of that has been flushed away.
If conflict resumes, what has been most effective has been targeted assassinations of Revolutionary Guardsmen and increasing the isolation of the Guards and their families. That's what really pressures the system. They will not give up power voluntarily. That's the reality.
RFE/RL: Based on everything you've said -- limited diplomacy, constrained military options, and economic pressure -- is Iran entering a period of long-term strategic decline?
Des Roches: Iran has been in strategic decline since the fall of [former Syrian President] Bashar al-Assad. When the archives open, we'll discover the Syrian war drained Iran of enormous resources -- manpower and money. They tried to sustain it by importing fighters from Iraqi militias, Pakistani militias, and Afghan militias.
But the core cadre -- the IRGC officers -- suffered major losses. And the money spent was insane. That was the inflection point. Then when Assad fled to Moscow, Hezbollah's logistical pipeline was disrupted in a way that made Hezbollah vulnerable. That's where the decline really accelerated.
But if you go back even further, to 2009, when the IRGC decided to dominate Iranian politics during the Green Movement, that may prove to be the deeper turning point. When a security state starts running a country, the individuals inside it start making decisions that benefit themselves rather than the nation. And that's when national decline begins. In Iran's case, that process started a long time ago.