Both sides are selling control and precision while betting on brittle assumptions about the other side’s red lines. The public story is deterrence: Israel and the United States frame the campaign as removing an existential threat; Iran frames its retaliation as restoring deterrence. The private story is miscalculation: each side assumed the other would back down or crack, and neither did. As CBS News has reported, Iran has lashed out with missiles and the war is intensifying. Behind the rhetoric, the gap between what leaders claimed and what has happened is wide.
The official narrative was control and a quick end
Benjamin Netanyahu claimed in March 2026 that Israel and the United States had “nearly achieved total control over Iranian airspace,” and that ballistic missile launches from Iran had fallen by over 90% from the first day of the campaign. President Trump declared that “in the first hour, it was over” and the war was “very complete”—yet bombing continued. Officials stated that Iran was “one week away” from military-grade enriched uranium to justify the strikes as necessary and swift. The narrative was precision, dominance, and a short campaign. According to Foreign Policy and Israeli reporting, the U.S. and Israel achieved local air superiority over western Iran and Tehran without confirmed loss of combat aircraft and were flying non-stealth bombers over Iranian airspace. The public story was deterrence restored and danger removed.
The private story is that both sides miscalculated
Analysts and reporting have since described the war as founded on major miscalculations. Middle East Eye reported that Netanyahu and the Trump administration launched the campaign on two core assumptions: that regime change in Iran would be achievable and that the Iranian people would rise up after decapitation strikes, and that Hezbollah’s response could be managed. Neither held. The regime did not collapse; Iran’s retaliation has continued for weeks. As geopolitical analyst John Mearsheimer noted, Trump and Netanyahu believed they could get a “quick and decisive victory” by killing Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and decapitating the leadership; the conflict instead became a prolonged war of attrition. On the Iranian side, the Guardian reported that the U.S. and Israel have been “waging war on an Iran they think they know”—oscillating between viewing Iran as a messianic theocracy impervious to cost or a brittle dictatorship one shove from collapse, when in reality Iran has historically balanced ideology with pragmatic regime-survival calculations. Both sides bet on brittle assumptions about the other’s red lines and breaking points.
Attrition and depleted interceptors expose the gap
Haaretz reported that Iran’s arsenal exposed “the gap between Netanyahu’s bravado and reality”: Iran retained roughly 2,500 ballistic missiles at the war’s start, and Israel’s air defence interceptor stocks have been depleting. During the June 2025 conflict, Iran launched 631 missiles with around 500 reaching Israeli airspace; Israel’s interception rate was 86%. Foreign Policy noted that the U.S. and Israel are “racing the clock”—they need quick results before exhausting advanced interceptors, while Iran is trying to drag out the conflict. Israeli defence officials have begun to ask how the war ends; there is no clear political exit. The Middle East Monitor framed the drivers as “relentless rhetoric, catastrophic miscalculation, and two clocks ticking to entirely different rhythms.” The public story is control; the private story is that both sides are running on assumptions that have already failed.
What This Actually Means
The conflict’s public story is deterrence: removing threat, restoring order, teaching the other side a lesson. The private story is miscalculation: each side assumed the other would fold or that the campaign would be short and decisive. Neither side had a reliable read on the other’s red lines. The result is a war that was supposed to last days and has stretched into weeks, with no clear off-ramp and both sides still betting on brittle assumptions. Until one side’s assumptions are proven right or both accept that the narrative of control was oversold, the gap between the public story and the private one will keep driving escalation.
What is deterrence in this conflict?
Deterrence here means each side trying to signal that it can impose costs and that the other should back down. Israel and the U.S. framed the February 28, 2026, strikes as removing an immediate threat and degrading Iran’s ability to strike back. Iran framed its retaliation as “active and unprecedented deterrence” after abandoning decades of “strategic patience.” In practice, both sides have found that the other did not behave as assumed: the regime did not collapse, and the campaign did not end quickly. So “deterrence” in the public story is the claim that one’s actions will force the other to stop; the private story is that those claims were based on miscalculations about the other’s breaking point.
Who is driving the miscalculation?
On the Israeli and American side, Netanyahu and Trump authorised the campaign believing decapitation would trigger regime change or rapid capitulation; intelligence had reportedly warned that a long war would not achieve that. On the Iranian side, the leadership bet that sustained retaliation and pressure on the Strait of Hormuz would force the U.S. and Israel to halt or negotiate. Both leaderships are now locked in a conflict that has outlasted their initial assumptions. Israeli defence officials, as reported by Foreign Policy, are now openly asking how the war ends—a sign that the private story has caught up with the public one.
Sources
CBS News, Middle East Eye, The Guardian, Foreign Policy, Foreign Policy, Middle East Monitor, Haaretz