US-Israel war on Iran: A brief history of mission creep and false promises

The history of modern wars shows how easily leaders meet the rhetorical burden of justification while avoiding the strategic burden of ending a war on terms that do not create the next one.

Wars rarely begin as “forever wars”.

Leaders sell a short, controlled operation with a defined target. But mission creep turns that pitch into a pattern – retaliation cycles, credibility politics, alliance pressures and market shocks – that pull those governments deeper into a crisis and make stopping the assaults harder.

Governments start with narrow goals (“degrade”, “disrupt”), then drift towards open-ended aims (“restore deterrence”, “force compliance”) – objectives their airpower cannot conclusively deliver.

When the rationale for war becomes abstract, the endpoint becomes negotiable.

The bombs falling on Iran follow a long history of interventions by the United States abroad. President Donald Trump, reportedly encouraged by a military operation in January that abducted Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, boasted of helping to rebuild Venezuela.