{"id":59286,"date":"2026-05-13T06:06:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-13T14:06:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=59286"},"modified":"2026-05-13T06:06:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-13T14:06:10","slug":"robert-pape-iran-and-the-escalation-trap-avoiding-a-future-of-forever-wars-in-the-middle-east","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2026\/05\/13\/robert-pape-iran-and-the-escalation-trap-avoiding-a-future-of-forever-wars-in-the-middle-east\/","title":{"rendered":"Robert Pape: &#8216;Iran and the Escalation Trap: Avoiding a Future of Forever Wars in the Middle East&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/meFl5JEMS2w?si=v8ZAy89oy7iFb68e\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Professor Robert Pape teaches at the University of Chicago and study how force is used to achieve political objectives, how escalation unfolds, and how strategies of restraint can succeed or fail in international and American political violence.\u00a0 \u00a0He is the author of <em>Bombing to Win: Air Power and Coercion in War<\/em> and <em>Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism<\/em>.\u00a0 He writes at <a href=\"https:\/\/escalationtrap.substack.com\"><em>The Escalation Trap<\/em><\/a> substack.<\/p>\n<p>He gave this speech at the <a href=\"https:\/\/ronpaulinstitute.org\/\">Ron Paul Institute<\/a> Spring Conference in Lake Jackson, Texas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Professor Robert Pape teaches at the University of Chicago and study how force is used to achieve political objectives, how escalation unfolds, and how strategies of restraint can succeed or fail in international and American political violence.\u00a0 \u00a0He is the author of Bombing to Win: Air Power and Coercion in War and Dying to Win: [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_social_image_id":0,"_social_image_url":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[779],"class_list":["post-59286","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"0","custom_donate_message":"","_social_image_id":false,"subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59286","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59286"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59286\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59297,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59286\/revisions\/59297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59286"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=59286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}