Aaron David miller’s Warning

Former U.S. State Department negotiator Aaron David Miller has repeatedly argued that Trump has boxed himself in over Hormuz.

In an interview published by NPR on April 14, 2026, Miller described Trump’s approach as a self-inflicted strategic trap and warned that an American attack on Iran could provoke retaliation against Gulf infrastructure, including oil facilities and electricity networks.

And on July 21, Miller told ABC News that the war had entered a dangerous, potentially prolonged phase, with Hormuz largely closed and the conflict expanding into the Red Sea.

So the question Washington should be asking is not:

“Can America bomb Iran?”

Of course it can.

The question is:

“Can America bomb Iran without turning the entire Gulf into the battlefield?”

That is a very different problem.

iran’s Real Leverage

Iran does not need to defeat the United States conventionally.

It needs to make the cost of continued war exceed the political, economic and strategic benefits Washington expected to obtain.

That means:

forcing the U.S. to defend an enormous regional military footprint;

increasing the vulnerability of exposed bases;

keeping Hormuz strategically contested;

raising the insurance and energy costs of the conflict;

forcing Gulf governments to choose between Washington’s military agenda and their own economic survival.

And this is precisely why the Gulf states should be asking themselves a brutally simple question:

If hosting American bases makes you safer, why has the war made those same bases magnets for retaliation?

washington’s Problem is Not iran’s Missiles Alone.

It is the architecture Washington built around them.

The United States wanted the Gulf to function as its strategic backyard.

Iran is demonstrating that it can turn that backyard into a strategic liability.

And if Washington continues treating the Persian Gulf as an American military lake, Tehran may continue reminding everyone that it is, first and foremost, Iran’s neighborhood.

The real battle is no longer simply over Iran.

It is over who gets to define the security architecture of the Persian Gulf after the war.

And that is a battle Washington may discover it cannot win with airpower alone.