Trump Freezes Iran Air Campaign After 13-Night Blitz, Tehran Reciprocates

Great-power wars often stall when logistics bite harder than politics: in 1918 the German Spring Offensive fizzled as artillery shells ran short, and in 1951 the Korean front froze once both sides’ supply lines were stretched. The 2026 pause echoes those moments—firepower dominance meeting the hard ceiling of ammunition production and the soft floor of public patience. Strategically it underlines two longer arcs: 1) modern wars centred on chokepoints (from Suez 1956 to Hormuz today) tend to swing on economic, not territorial, leverage; 2) high-velocity missile combat is outrunning even U.S. stockpiles, exposing supply-chain fragility that rivals can exploit. Whether this lull becomes an armistice or merely a reload break will shape energy security and U.S. credibility in the Gulf for decades; on a century timeline it foreshadows a shift from unlimited expeditionary campaigns toward attrition-by-inventory, where industrial capacity, not battlefield manoeuvre, dictates when guns fall silent.