When U.S. forces launched strikes against Iranian military targets in June, critics warned it could ignite a regional inferno — even the start of World War III. Four months later, the Middle East is quieter than at any point in years. Iranian proxies have scaled back attacks, Gulf tensions have cooled, and Washington has shifted attention toward the Western Hemisphere.
The unexpected calm is raising a new question: Did decisive U.S. action restore deterrence — or has Washington simply been lucky?
Those who favor a more forceful U.S. foreign policy counted Iran’s lack of a response as a win for their frame of mind — and a loss for restrainers. They now credit the strikes with bringing about a period of relative peace that culminated in a fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hamas this week.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., publicly broke from her longtime support of President Donald Trump after the strikes.
‘Six months in and here we are turning back on the campaign promises, and we bombed Iran on behalf of Israel,’ she said on Newsmax at the time.
‘We’re entering a nuclear war, World War Three, because the entire world is going to erupt. And you know what, the people that are cheering it on right now, their tune is going to drastically change the minute we start seeing flag-draped coffins on the nightly news.’
On Monday, she praised Trump for brokering the peace deal between Israel and Hamas. ‘Blessed are the peacemakers! May healing begin for all.’
‘You’ve put every U.S. troop and embassy in the region at risk and squandered America’s diplomatic leverage — though you’ll likely think you’ve strengthened it,’ said Adam Weinstein, deputy director of the Middle East Program at the Quincy Institute, at the time.
Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., claimed the strike ‘put the United States on a path to a war in the Middle East that the country does not want, the law does not allow, and our security does not demand.’
Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., was even more blunt. ‘It was a good week for the neocons in the military-industrial complex who want war all the time,’ he said on CBS’ Face the Nation.
Four months later, those who once warned of a spiral toward World War III are facing an uncomfortable reality: the region is largely quiet.
‘Those who warned of World War III before the U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran fundamentally misunderstood both the nature of deterrence and the regime in Tehran,’ said Mark Dubowitz, CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
‘Strength and resolve don’t invite escalation — they prevent it. What we’ve seen in recent months is a return to deterrence through escalation dominance: Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, and other American enemies are recalibrating precisely because the United States finally imposed real costs on the Islamic Republic.’
Dubowitz said years of Western restraint emboldened Iran. ‘For years, Western policymakers indulged in a fantasy that restraint would produce stability,’ he said. ‘It did the opposite. Tehran read our de-escalation as weakness and kept pushing.’
‘Everybody who said that a strike on Iran would be a disaster was wrong,’ said Matthew Kroenig, vice president of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center and a former Pentagon strategist. ‘These fears about Iranian retaliation and region-wide war were exaggerated. Iran doesn’t want a major war with the United States, the greatest superpower on earth that could end its regime. Instead, Iran engaged in some kind of token retaliation, and the whole thing died down.’
Trump’s authorization of the strikes was not a departure from his ‘America First’ principles, as Greene suggested, but a continuation of them.
‘When it comes to hitting an adversary hard, Trump has always been open to that kind of short, sharp, decisive use of force to achieve a clear objective,’ Kroenig said.
Those in the restraint camp say they don’t count Trump’s decision as a total loss for their viewpoint. They argue that predictions of a wider war were based on a different scenario — one that Trump ultimately avoided.
‘The prediction that this could lead to a wider war was for the scenario in which the U.S. would join Israel in a larger military campaign against Iran with the intent of regime change,’ said Trita Parsi, co-founder of the Quincy Institute. ‘This is not what Trump opted for. He clearly signaled to Tehran before the strikes where he would strike to ensure that the locations would be vacated and that there would be no casualties. He also signaled his intent to only strike these sites and be done with it. This significantly reduced the risk of a larger escalation.’
Rosemary Kelanic of Defense Priorities acknowledged that the strikes were ‘not a win for restraint’ in principle, and though the U.S. felt few repercussions, it was still a gamble.
‘I think it’s really easy to learn the wrong lesson from this, which is, all we have to do is go in and bomb for 45 minutes and then everyone will back down,’ she said. ‘Most of the time, U.S. military force doesn’t actually produce the outcomes that we want.’
Adam Weinstein said the operation came at the cost of diplomacy, noting that the strikes took place in the midst of ongoing negotiations with Tehran over its nuclear program.
‘The strikes were a setback on diplomacy with Iran,’ he said. ‘They negatively affected the world’s ability to ensure that Iran doesn’t develop a nuclear capability. It essentially destroyed trust between Iran and the international community.’