The Iran War and U.S. Grand Strategy in the Middle East: a Discussion with Dr. Daniel Bessner

by nick tselikov

​Interview

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Dr. Daniel Bessner is an associate professor at the University of Washington. His research has explored intellectual history, U.S. grand strategy, and the international relations of the United States. A prolific author, his work has appeared in various publications such as Harper’s Magazine, The New York Times, The Nation, and numerous others. In this interview, conducted in late March 2026, Dr. Bessner discusses the U.S. grand strategic aspects of the ongoing Iran conflict. He views the current conflict as motivated by both long-term strategic aims to dominate the Mideast and President Donald Trump’s more personal motivations. He likewise examines the reasons for the Iran War as well as its implications on Chinese geostrategy. He considers the noteworthy influence of special interests and the ramifications U.S. unilateralism may have on American allies.

Tselikov: Dr. Bessner, thank you for volunteering to participate in this interview.

Bessner: Thank you for interviewing me.

Tselikov: The Iran War began on February 28 under the leadership of U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. From your perspective as a historian of U.S. grand strategy, how could this conflict most effectively be positioned within the arc of U.S. strategic thinking?

Bessner: I think it’s a conflict that is ultimately linked to the desire of the United States to exert domination and influence over other parts of the world, in particular because the Middle East is a center of strategic reserves of oil. Now, of course, this also has to do with supplying energy to our allies, and I think it’s ultimately related to that. A proximate cause is likely President Trump’s desire to settle what he considers to be the wrongs of recent American history. I think that explains his kidnapping of Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela, and it explains this war as well, as well as his policy vis-à-vis Cuba. Now, I think Trump has also joined on the high end of his own supply—as it were—when it came to the “success of the Venezuelan operation,” in which U.S. special forces were able to rapidly kidnap Maduro and install a leader that has proven more directly amenable to U.S. interests and desires (even though Maduro was himself quite amenable toward the end there). I think Trump thought something similar would happen in Iran, not understanding that it’s quite a different regime, and it’s more ensconced. At least, the ruling party and ruling elites are quite ensconced in Iranian society, in a way that it seems that Maduro, in fact, wasn’t. And so, this has gone more poorly, I believe, than he envisioned that it would.

Tselikov: Has the ongoing Iran War shifted U.S. grand strategy aims, or made them more visible from what they had already been in the past?

Bessner: I think that it has made clear that going forward—even as the world is becoming more multipolar—the United States envisions the Middle East as a key part of its sphere of influence. And you actually see this in the Trump National Security Strategy. Even though the Strategy is a bit confused and it does contradict itself on various points, on the first pages it lists two regions as crucial: the Western Hemisphere and the Middle East. I think this does suggest that U.S. leaders are going to continue to view the Middle East as within their broad ambit.

Tselikov: Does the current Iran conflict fit into longer grand strategy traditions going back to the Cold War?

Bessner: Yes, the United States has engaged in numerous regime change operations. The political scientist Lindsey O'Rourke has documented a series of covert regime change operations in addition to overt ones, as occurred, for example, during the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars, and the early Global War on Terror in the 2000s. I think it’s an extension of those previous trends, and you may even look at Maduro, which happened right before the intervention in Iran. So, I think there’s very clearly a grand strategic precedent in U.S. history here.

Tselikov: What historical parallels have policymakers in the U.S. used to describe Iran? And in your view, how accurate or misleading have these characterizations actually been?

Bessner: The classic one is, I imagine, that political leaders in the past—though I haven’t seen much of it recently—have compared Iran and its Ayatollahs to Nazi Germany and Adolf Hitler. I think one of the unique situations, or unique features, of this current moment is that the Trump Administration clearly does not feel like it has to make a strong case in favor of war, and that it can kind of just do what it wants without having broad U.S. public support in favor of it. For example, even if you look back to the Iraq War, there were a lot of justifications made to invade Iraq. Saddam Hussein was oftentimes compared to Hitler, but you see none of that here. You actually see fewer historical analogies than one might have expected in this war.

Tselikov: Has the Iran War benefited U.S. competition with China by denigrating one of its closest strategic partners, or has it bogged down U.S. capabilities?

Bessner: No; Iran relies more on China than China relies on Iran. One of the things that the war has had any real deleterious effects on China is that it is watching and being like, “Yeah, let’s continue to let the United States bog itself down in another war.” And that if anything, it shows the United States isn’t able to use its military to achieve strategic victories. So that’s my take vis-à-vis China. But China has also demonstrated that it’s not going to go hard for Iran, and that it will likely, in coming years, cede—to some degree—the Middle East to the United States. Even after it helped broker a normalization agreement between Saudi Arabia and Iran earlier in the 2020s.

Tselikov: President Trump has stated that he will not deploy boots on the ground in this conflict. Do you still see a risk of the U.S. falling into a mission creep dynamic, reminiscent of past interventions during the War on Terror?

Bessner: There’s always the risk of mission creep, and I think there’s a decent chance we might see Trump set some form of boots on the ground. Maybe not a large military force, like in the Iraq War or Vietnam, but special forces—something along those lines.

Tselikov: Do you believe the recent military build-up in the past few days is a reflection of that dynamic?

Bessner: Yeah, I think that Trump is frustrated that Iran isn’t agreeing to do what he wants; that they’ve caused serious economic harm in the Gulf, that he could declare the war over doesn’t necessarily mean that Iran is going to stop. So he has to try to coerce things with a show of force; I think it’s related to that dynamic.

Tselikov: In your view, was the war’s actual rationale based on strategic and geopolitical thinking, or pressured by special interests in the U.S., such as the Israel lobby and the military-industrial complex? And if both have been significant, do you believe that one has been more influential than the other?

Bessner: Well, there’s a foundational strategic idea here, which is that the United States needs to be predominant in the Middle East. So, that’s always there. But this is clearly a war that the Israeli government has wanted for a very long time, because Israel feels quite threatened by Iran, and no other president has been willing to do it. So I think that—however they were able to—Israel had lobbyists in the United States that argued in favor of its particular vision of geostrategy, and were influential in shaping the Trump Administration’s decision to go to war with Israel against Iran. But there are also other interests related to oil, related to Trump wanting to perhaps distract from things like the Epstein files, his belief that a Maduro-like operation could be repeated. So it’s not all Israel or lobbying groups in the United States, but I think they are a significant factor here.

Tselikov: Some analysts have claimed that Israel has been ascendant in the Middle East, through, for instance, crippling the Axis of Resistance and signing the Abraham Accords. Would you agree that Israel has been on the rise, and how do you expect this conflict might change its power projection in the region?

Bessner: I think Israel is attempting to become the regional hegemon, and I think it has made significant inroads toward that goal in recent years. The problem, though, is that it is a very tiny country whose hegemony is going to rely on essentially an outside power, in this case the United States, supporting it through military material and other forms of aid. So it will likely be an unstable regional hegemony, should it be achieved. But Israel’s position has clearly become predominant in the region in the last several years.

Tselikov: Tying the conversation back to China, how is it more specifically interpreting the Iran war in the context of its long-term competition with the United States?

Bessner: I imagine it’s interpreted as yet another U.S. blunder in the Middle East. Though it’s unclear what that means for future Chinese geostrategy.

Tselikov: Could the Iran War accelerate the formation of a more cohesive anti-U.S. bloc, or are those fears generally overstated?

Bessner: I think those fears are generally overstated, but I think it’s shown to people that the United States is a different type of actor, and that it’s not going to even rhetorically support something like the “liberal international order,” which was itself was a bit of a fantasy, but at least formed a type of limit on U.S. discourse, on what the U.S. perhaps even felt it could do in the world. But I think the U.S. is emerging as a different type of actor than it was in the 20th and early 21st centuries.

Tselikov: Could you elaborate more on why the formation of an anti-U.S. bloc is an overstated prospect? Do you not believe that there could be more cooperation among existing anti-U.S. powers, like Russia, China, and Venezuela?

Bessner: For Venezuela, it’s going to be very difficult, because it’s in the Western Hemisphere, to do something really intense. But, Russia and China are already anti-U.S., or at least trying to carve out their own independent position in the geopolitical arena, so I don’t think this is going to necessarily change that. Its most important consequence will likely be for allies, as yet another data collection point, that the U.S. has been an irrational actor that’s not really interested in listening to other people. Even though the allies have lined up pretty quickly behind the United States and its goals in the region.

Tselikov: What do you believe the specific implications of the current Administration’s actions in the Middle East will mean for U.S. allies?

Bessner: I think that the United States has shown it’s going to throw its pure power around more than it has in the past, and that this is yet another demonstration of that. And it’s not going to try to build a consensus; it is going to do what it wants to do because it has the power to do so. Now, that’s also perhaps a little bit unique to Trump. So, we’ll have to see how other U.S. leaders act upon this. But I think that the fact that Trump was elected twice suggests that there is a substrate in American politics that can no longer be ignored.

Tselikov: Thank you, Dr. Bessner. I appreciate your time and your agreeing to this interview.

Nick Tselikov is a Research Fellow at the Rainier Institute for Foreign Affairs and a former Marcellus Policy Fellow with the John Quincy Adams Society.