The War on Iran: Through the Lenses of Pragmatism and Realpolitik

Two Doctrines, One Conflict When the United States and Israel launched coordinated strikes against Iran in June 2025, the world’s strategic analysts reached instinctively for two of history’s most enduring frameworks to make sense of what had unfolded: Pragmatism, the distinctly American philosophical tradition that judges actions by their consequences, and Realpolitik, the European doctrine that strips policy of moral pretence and reduces statecraft to power, interest, and calculation. Examining the war on Iran through both lenses does not produce a single verdict — it produces two competing narratives that expose the fault lines at the heart of American foreign policy. Lens One: Pragmatism — The War as a Test of Consequences Pragmatism, as a doctrine of statecraft, holds that […]