That may be the central problem facing Washington in Iran, according to Prof. Glenn Diesen.
Diesen argues that Iran has effectively defeated the United States, but Tehran's demands for sanctions relief, unfrozen assets, reconstruction payments and an end to the wider regional wars create a dilemma for Washington: accepting those terms could be politically impossible, while refusing them risks trapping the U.S. in a war it has no obvious way to win.
Trump may therefore try to declare victory and walk away, pointing to Iran's supposedly destroyed nuclear capabilities and arguing that the Strait of Hormuz is no longer strategically important.
But Iran has leverage. Tehran can make an American withdrawal politically painful while maintaining enough pressure to prevent Washington from simply resetting the conflict and returning later.
And this is where Diesen's warning matters.
A great power pushed between humiliation and escalation may choose escalation. Iran therefore has to be careful not to push Trump so far that he concludes there is nothing left to lose.
Meanwhile, the war is becoming harder to contain.
Fighting is spreading through Yemen, with the Houthis striking Saudi-backed targets and reportedly hitting Saudi-linked shipping and infrastructure. Diesen argues that treating these groups simply as Iranian proxies misses the bigger problem: many have their own interests and conflicts that could continue even if Tehran wanted the war to end.
The same applies to the emerging Middle Eastern security order.
As confidence in permanent American protection declines, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Pakistan and potentially Egypt are moving toward a new regional security architecture.
Diesen sees two possible futures: competing blocs, where states seek security against one another, or an inclusive system that eventually brings Iran, and perhaps even Israel, into the same framework.
The first creates another cycle of escalation. The second attempts to make security indivisible, so one country's security does not require another country's permanent insecurity.
And then there is Ukraine.
Diesen argues that the battlefield is increasingly becoming a war of attrition that Russia is slowly winning. Ukraine faces worsening manpower and ammunition problems, while a shortage of interceptor missiles is allowing Russia to use more air power and increasingly devastating glide bombs.
Russia is also expanding attacks against Ukrainian logistics, ports, bridges, warehouses and energy infrastructure, while Ukraine continues striking deeper inside Russia to create pressure for negotiations.
But if Moscow sees NATO expansion and Ukraine's role as a Western frontline as an existential threat, hurting Russia may not convince it to compromise. It may convince Russia that it has even more reason to continue fighting.
Diesen's conclusion is bleak: both sides want the war to end, but they fundamentally disagree over what ending it means.
For Russia, that means Ukrainian neutrality, territorial concessions and a political settlement.
For Ukraine and its European backers, an unconditional ceasefire risks freezing the battlefield and giving Kyiv time to rebuild.
So the wars in Iran and Ukraine are beginning to reveal the same dangerous pattern.
The longer a conflict continues, the harder it becomes to separate victory from survival, and the harder it becomes for either side to back down without believing it is surrendering something existential.
When the off-ramp disappears, escalation starts looking less like a choice and more like the only road left.
Diesen's final warning was almost an afterthought: let's hope the conflict doesn't spread to Japan.
He may have been joking. But these are not particularly reassuring times.
@Glenn_Diesen
