AZE.US
Military analyst Agil Rustamzade said the United States did not achieve a decisive outcome in its confrontation with Iran, arguing that none of the sides involved can credibly claim outright victory at this stage. He said the conflict changed the regional balance in important ways, but stopped short of producing the kind of result that would allow Washington or its allies to present it as a clear military success.
According to Rustamzade, the United States paid a political price while failing to reach its core goals. He argued that Israel also did not solve its central security problem, because Iran remained intact as a state and retained the ability to respond. In his reading, Tehran suffered serious damage to its economy and defense potential, but preserved enough capacity to stay in the fight and hold on to strategic leverage, including around the Strait of Hormuz.
Rustamzade said one of the biggest miscalculations was the assumption that air power alone could quickly break a country of roughly 90 million people. He argued that a campaign of that scale would require months of preparation, deeper logistics, and larger reserves of weapons and support systems than were available at the time. That, he said, helps explain why the operation fell short of a decisive result.
He also pointed to Iran’s structural vulnerabilities, especially in the energy sector. Rustamzade said a large share of the country’s electricity generation depends on thermal power plants, making energy infrastructure one of the most sensitive targets in any future escalation. At the same time, he warned that strikes on facilities linked to water supply and desalination could trigger a humanitarian crisis rather than a purely military effect.
On the question of a possible U.S. ground operation, Rustamzade described the scenario as highly unrealistic. He said Iran’s mountainous terrain, narrow passes, and difficult geography would make any large expeditionary campaign costly, slow, and vulnerable to attrition. In his assessment, land, sea, and airborne options all carry major operational risks and offer no quick path to a clear outcome.
Rustamzade argued that Iran’s response showed the value of decentralized command and asymmetric warfare. He said Tehran combined missile attacks with drones and used relatively cheap systems to hit radar and air defense elements, opening gaps for more damaging strikes.
That, in his view, underlined a broader shift in modern warfare: expensive and sophisticated systems are increasingly being challenged by lower-cost tools deployed in large numbers.
He said the broader lesson is that military power can no longer be measured simply by the size of an army or the price of its weapons. The decisive edge, he argued, is moving toward forces that can integrate drones, electronic warfare, intelligence, robotics, and flexible command structures.
For smaller states such as Azerbaijan, he suggested, the future lies in smart defense rather than in trying to compete through scale alone.
AZE.US