For a sobering, but I think accurate, assessment of the war in Iran, I would recommend Ezra Klein’s interview with Suzanne Maloney from the Brookings Institution: Is Iran Winning?
Spoiler: the answer is more or less “yes.”
To cut to the chase, from the end of the interview (the bolded portion is Klein, the rest is Maloney:
Just thinking through our conversation here, if you imagine a world a month from now where the war is winding down or has wound down because America couldn’t bear the disruption to global energy, helium, fertilizer, supplies, etc.; the Iranian regime remains in place, controlling the Strait of Hormuz, probably charging different ships tolls to go through or making particular deals with different countries that benefit Iran in order to have safe passage through the strait — that feels like a war we would have lost. Is that wrong?
I think that’s correct. I don’t see a victory in real terms at the end of this crisis. We may be able to extricate ourselves without even more catastrophic human losses than have already been experienced. But there is very little evidence that we’re going to be able to come out of this war with a different regime in Iran with less control over the Strait of Hormuz.
And that is a very dangerous outcome for the long term — the wider implications of the United States having undertaken this action in a way that has alienated partners and allies in the region and all around the world, having effectively ceded huge financial benefits to the Russians and potentially ceded some diplomatic opportunity to the Chinese. And it’s not clear that President Trump is prepared to sustain American leadership or that even if he were, in the aftermath of this — what appears to be a catastrophic overreach and miscalculation with the attacks on Iran — that, in fact, the United States will be trusted to do that by countries around the world. It feels like a Suez moment in some respects.
There is also a key point at the end that Iran really has no reason to trust negotiations with the US. Trump tore up the JCPOA and then bombed Iran twice, whilst in the middle of negotiations. Hegseth may think that we “negotiate with bombs” is some kind of ruthless, warrior mentality, but it is more the stuff of schoolyard strategists.
See also her new piece in Foreign Affairs: The Third Islamic Republic.
