Eleven days into Operation Epic Fury, the United States and Israel have achieved several of their stated military objectives. Iran's surface navy has been effectively destroyed. Significant portions of its ballistic missile infrastructure have been degraded. The opening strike killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, a decapitation that would have been unthinkable a month ago.

By any tactical measure, the campaign has been impressive. The question that now dominates planning discussions at the Pentagon and in allied capitals is more uncomfortable: what comes next?

Four Objectives, No Endgame

The White House has articulated four goals for the campaign: destroy Iran's naval capacity, eliminate its missile threat, prevent it from acquiring nuclear weapons, and sever its connections to regional proxy forces. These are reasonable objectives. They are also, in their current form, insufficient as a strategy.

Destroying hardware is not the same as eliminating capability. Iran's missile program is dispersed across hundreds of hardened and concealed sites. Its proxy relationships with Hezbollah, the Houthis, and various Iraqi militias are built on decades of ideological, financial, and personal ties that do not evaporate when command nodes are struck.

More fundamentally, the administration has oscillated between two incompatible visions of what this campaign is supposed to achieve. One version, articulated by Secretary of State Rubio, frames the operation as a limited degradation campaign designed to set back Iran's military capabilities by years, after which deterrence can be reestablished. The other version, implied by the president's public statements and by some officials speaking to reporters, envisions something closer to regime change, achieved through sustained military pressure and internal collapse rather than ground invasion.

These are not complementary objectives. They require different force structures, different timelines, different diplomatic frameworks, and different tolerance for civilian casualties. The fact that the administration has not clearly chosen between them is the campaign's most significant strategic vulnerability.

The Khamenei Succession

The killing of Ali Khamenei was a tactical success that has created a strategic complication: his son Mojtaba was elected supreme leader on March 8, and his first public statements ruled out negotiations with the United States.

This was predictable. A new leader installed during active hostilities has no domestic political space to negotiate, even if he wanted to. The succession has actually consolidated the regime's hardliners, the opposite of the intended effect if the goal was to create an opening for internal change.

The historical parallels are instructive. Targeted killings of senior leaders have a mixed record at best. The assassination of Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto in 1943 had no discernible effect on Japanese strategic decision-making. The killing of Qasem Soleimani in 2020 briefly disrupted Iranian operational planning but produced no lasting strategic shift. Decapitation works when the organization depends on a single leader's unique capabilities. Theocratic systems with established succession mechanisms are precisely the kind of institutions that survive leadership changes.

The Hormuz Problem

Iran's closure of the Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly 20 percent of the world's oil supply transits, has imposed costs that extend far beyond the theater of operations. Oil prices spiked to nearly $120 per barrel before settling around $90, but the disruption to liquefied natural gas shipments and fertilizer exports is only beginning to register in global markets.

The United States is better positioned than most countries to absorb an energy shock, thanks to its domestic production capacity. But American allies are not. Pakistan, India, Japan, and South Korea all depend heavily on Gulf energy supplies. The longer the strait remains contested, the more the campaign's costs are borne by the countries whose support the United States needs most.

This is the paradox of using military force against a country that controls a critical chokepoint. The target's leverage actually increases as the conflict escalates, because the economic damage radiates outward to parties who had no say in the decision to strike.

What a Realist Strategy Looks Like

The case for the strikes was strong. Iran was closer to nuclear breakout than at any point in its history. Its proxy network had destabilized multiple countries. Its missile arsenal threatened every American base and allied capital in the region. Something had to change.

But having changed it, the United States needs to be honest about what military force can and cannot accomplish. It can destroy hardware. It can eliminate specific leaders. It can impose costs that alter an adversary's calculus. What it cannot do, not from the air and not without an occupation that no one is proposing, is change a regime or permanently eliminate a country's capacity to rebuild.

The appropriate strategic framework is degradation and deterrence, not transformation. Destroy Iran's most dangerous capabilities, demonstrate the willingness and ability to strike again if they are reconstituted, negotiate from a position of strength to establish new red lines, and accept that the result will be an imperfect but manageable equilibrium rather than a permanent solution.

That is not a satisfying answer. It is not the kind of answer that wins news cycles. But it is the answer that avoids the mistakes of the last two decades, when the United States repeatedly allowed tactical success to create the illusion that strategic transformation was just one more push away.

Eleven days of impressive military operations have earned the administration the credibility to define a realistic endgame. It should do so before events define one for it.