Outside the Beltway

Iran War Roundup: Day 16

Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?

James Joyner · Sunday, March 15, 2026 · 5 comments

WaPo (“Trump is eager to declare victory, but a battered Iran still has cards to play“):

After two weeks of war against Iran, President Donald Trump may soon be ready to declare victory. But he confronts a challenge: Tehran also gets a vote.

With most of Iran’s navy eliminated, much of its missile stockpile destroyed and top leaders killed, Trump is nearing the goals his military leaders set at the outset of the war.

But two weeks of conflict have not achieved the broader aims Trump has sometimes declared. A hardened regime in Tehran remains in power, and it is roiling global oil markets by choking off the vital shipping lane that allows oil and gas out of the Persian Gulf.

The country’s leaders may be more eager than ever to race toward a nuclear weapon, diplomats and analysts say. Iran retains control of what the United States and allied nations believe is 440 kilograms of highly enriched uranium, giving it another chip as the regime battles to defend itself and endure the U.S. and Israeli onslaught.

The paradox poses a challenge to Trump’s ability to end the war as he faces increasing pressure from his own party to refocus attention on the economy ahead of the midterm elections.

Gasoline prices have spiked 25 percent since the United States and Israel began bombarding Iran, farmers are facing rising fertilizer costs, and the death toll of U.S. troops is rising. Tehran has proved resilient in its ability to attack ships that try to brave the Strait of Hormuz, making it unclear whether a unilateral halt to the war by the U.S. side would be enough to ease energy prices.

Iranian bombardment has also posed huge challenges to Persian Gulf nations that have traditionally been U.S. allies and host American military bases.

Trump continues to assert that he, alone, controls the pace of the fighting.

The war will end “when I feel it, feel it in my bones,” Trump told Fox News Radio on Friday, saying that he didn’t think it “would be long.”

He added: “We’re way ahead of schedule. Way ahead.”

WSJ (“Iran Tests U.S. Military Might With a Guerrilla Assault on the Global Economy“):

Two weeks in, the war in the Persian Gulf has become an asymmetric contest, pitting the unrivaled conventional military might of the U.S. and Israel against an Iranian government waging a guerrilla fight to block oil shipments and upend the global economy.

The Americans and Israelis quickly took control of Iran’s skies and have used thousands of airstrikes to pummel the country’s leadership and its armed forces—destroying much of the navy and its ability to launch long-range missiles.

But the past century has shown that even the world’s largest and most modern militaries can be humbled when attacking tenacious adversaries willing to endure more pain to defend their territory despite overwhelming odds.

Tehran has taken control of the Strait of Hormuz using far less sophisticated weaponry than the U.S. has unleashed and can now choke energy supplies and commercial shipping through the vital waterway. The goal: to drag the U.S. into a war of economic attrition, inflicting pain on America and its allies around the world.

[…]

For Iran, long fearful of an American attack, the struggle is an existential one that it has spent decades preparing for. It shows no sign of relenting despite Trump’s recent comments that strikes are progressing well and the U.S. is on course to prevail.

“Simply because one side declares a war is over does not eliminate the inconvenient truth that the enemy always gets a vote in when a war ends,” said retired U.S. Navy Admiral James Stavridis. Americans “might be losing interest in the war, but the war may continue to be interested in us.”

U.S. and Israeli air power has reshaped politics in the Middle East and far beyond during the war. Iran’s fledgling nuclear-weapons program, already bludgeoned by U.S. and Israeli strikes last year, is now even further from producing a viable bomb. Tehran’s arsenal of missiles and rockets able to hit distant targets is in tatters. Iran’s air defenses lie in ruin.

“Stopping the Iranians from getting a nuclear weapon is a more important goal than maintaining oil prices at the previous level,” said Michael O’Hanlon, a foreign-policy and defense specialist at the Brookings Institution.

But it was “somewhere between extremely optimistic and delusional” of Trump and Israel to think air attacks alone would cause the regime to collapse, he said.

[…]

The ability of Iran’s proxy in Lebanon, Hezbollah, to fire some 200 rockets into Israel this week—less than two years after Israel claimed victory in crushing the militant organization—also offers a reminder of Tehran’s ability to keep fighting despite relentless pressure. Built on a glorification of martyrdom and loathed by many of its own citizens, the regime’s appetite for risk has skyrocketed.

WSJ (“They Were Promised Regime Change. Now Many Iranians Feel Betrayed.“):

At the start of the war on Iran, Israel and the U.S. said they were paving the way for Iranians to rise up and topple their government. Many Iranians cheered on the offensive as a last resort to overthrow rulers who killed thousands of protesters in January.

Now, they are grappling with the possibility that the war will end with them living under the same authoritarian rule and crushing international sanctions, but in devastated cities with an aggrieved government that has vowed to take an even harder line against dissent.

One Tehran-based civil-society activist and former political prisoner said Iranians were truly hopeful two weeks ago as the war began. Now, the person said, they feel betrayed. An English-language teacher living in Tehran who is opposed to the government but also the war was more blunt. “We were f—ed over,” the teacher said, saying they were turned into an excuse to launch a devastating war. “It’s like we have gone back a hundred years in time.”

The disappointment was triggered by a U-turn by Israeli and U.S. officials, who now are suggesting the time isn’t ripe for regime change.

President Trump has hinted the war could end soon, saying American forces have already struck all the targets that could be hit. On Friday, he told Fox News Radio that he thinks it is unlikely that Iranians will rise up soon against a regime that remains dangerous.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has taken on a similar tone, saying in a speech Thursday that Iranians might not be able to bring down the regime, just days after he exhorted them to be ready for the coming moment to strike.

“The penny has dropped for a lot of people that this may be much more about state collapse than regime change,” said Ellie Geranmayeh, an Iran expert at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

WSJ (“For Xi, Iran War Reinforces View of U.S. as Dangerous Superpower“):

President Trump’s use of military force in Venezuela and Iran reinforces a view long held in Beijing: The U.S. will use all means necessary to assert American dominance around the world—a posture that threatens China’s core interests.

Trump’s extraordinary military gamble in the Middle East, following fast on the heels of his decapitation of the Maduro government in Venezuela, reinforces Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s longstanding view that the U.S. must be approached with toughness.

But underlying China’s hard-nosed stance is a belief that the U.S. could ultimately weaken itself with such interventions.

[…]

Meanwhile, the Iran war could create some immediate advantages for China in a potential conflict over Taiwan. The Trump administration has relocated key military resources to the Middle East and is burning through large stocks of key weapons.

Still, the extent and longevity of those gains are unclear. Analysts say Xi is unlikely to try to launch an attack on Taiwan just because of the U.S. war on Iran.

“Xi has not in the last 13 years demonstrated a tendency towards recklessness,” said Steve Tsang, director of the SOAS China Institute. “Calculated risk-taking, yes. But recklessness? He’s not once demonstrated it. To go to war potentially with the U.S. over Taiwan, on the assumption that Americans will run out of ammunition in a relatively short period, would be pretty reckless.”

More broadly, the U.S. actions and the spiraling conflict likely confirm Xi’s deeply held belief that to project strength, China must insulate itself from risks at home and abroad, a posture that makes concessions more difficult.

Xi’s success in reducing China’s economic vulnerabilities—and squeezing those chokepoints it controls—has strengthened his hand in negotiations with Trump.

AP (“Two weeks into war with Iran, Trump has been knocked back on his political heels“):

In the two weeks since the U.S. and Israel launched strikes on Iran, President Donald Trump increasingly has been knocked on his political heels.

He’s grown more agitated with news coverage and has failed to find a way to explain why he started the war — or how he will end it — that resonates with a public concerned by American deaths in the conflict, surging oil prices and dropping financial markets. Even some of his supporters are questioning his plan and his overall poll numbers are declining.

[…]

Iran also has even divided Trump’s “Make America Great Again” base, between those who support the action and others who say that Trump expressly campaigned on ending wars.

Leading figures on the right, including Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly, have sharply criticized Trump. Trump, though, has continued to insist that he created the MAGA movement and that it will follow him anywhere, on any issue.

So, to recap, the war has

• Cost tens of billions of dollars
• Cost the lives of 14 American service members and counting
• Sent the global economy into crisis
• Killed hundreds, injured thousands, and displaced millions of innocent civilians
• Created havoc for American allies and partners in the region
• Bolstered the position of our great power adversaries
• Weakened the President’s party in the upcoming elections

but has not

• Achieved its ostensible political objective, which has now been all but abandoned

Do I have that right?