I wrote The US-Iran War: America Totally Defeated on April 12, 2026. It remains just as valid today. My articles are best read months or even years after they are published, because when they first appear they are almost always dismissed as extreme. Yet months or years later, people discover that they were simply ahead of their time.
The day before yesterday, the U.S. military halted its twelve consecutive days of airstrikes against Iran on its own accord. It did so because it could no longer find any high-value targets worth bombing, and because its stockpile of munitions had run dangerously low.
And what happened?
Last night, Iran deliberately waited for the US air raid to stop for two days, then took the initiative and launched a surprise ballistic missile strike against U.S. forces.
The message was unmistakable:
“You bombed us for twelve days and spent hundreds of billions of dollars, yet you have put no real pressure on us. Our fighting spirit remains undiminished. We will not yield an inch. You started the war, we will decide when it ends."
This is winner’s mantality.
Iran will soon receive much more advanced Chinese missiles. Worse days for America are still to come. America wants to punishments China? China can shut down its industries especially the military by cutting off rare earth supplies.
America now has only three options.
First: surrender. Accept Iran’s control over the Strait of Hormuz, accept Iran’s right to levy transit fees, and accept that Iran will develop nuclear weapons.
Second: launch a ground invasion.
Third: destroy Iran’s civilian infrastructure such as power plants, water plants and bridges, so that its social order starts to collapse.
According to the latest U.S. opinion polls, 70 percent of Americans oppose the war with Iran. Congress has already passed several bills aimed at limiting the President’s war powers. When Trump threatened that a civilization will disappear, there were wide condemnations in the US. A ground invasion or a genocidal attack on Iran’s civilian infrastructure would provoke an explosive backlash from both parties at home while costing thousands of American lives and adding another five trillion dollars to the national debt. Republicans would almost certainly suffer a crushing defeat in the November midterm elections. Moreover, a ground invasion would likely unite the Iranian people behind their government. After paying an enormous price in blood and treasure, the U.S. military could still find itself retreating in humiliation—ending, in effect, in surrender anyway.
Never since its founding has the United States found itself in such a desperate and humiliating position with no way out.
Yes, America pulled out of both the Vietnam and Korea wars without achieving an outright military victory. But in both wars it demonstrated its overwhelming firepower so thoroughly that neither North Korea nor Vietnam ever dared to export trouble, thus in a sense America actually achieved its goal—to stem the red tide in Asia. The fall of Vietnam and North Korea did little damage to America’s global strategic position, in which containing Soviet expansion in Europe was the absolute priority.
Unlike North Korea, the Viet Cong, or the Afghan Taliban, whose primary objective was to seize power in their own countries and then start to enjoy, the Iranian theocratic regime’s primary focus extends far beyond its borders. Its goal is to dominate the Middle East and destroy Israel.
Think about the strategic importance of the Strait of Hormuz, and imagine a nuclear Iran controlling it.
To America, Vietnam and Afghan were irritating sores, while a nuclear Iran controlling the Strait of Hormuz is a severed artery.
America has never been so weak and desporate.
Its prestige is finished.
Two months before Putin’s invation of Ukraine, in my article of December 19, 2021, “History Has Placed Putin on the Same Road Once Taken by Hitler," I argued that dictators possess an irresistible impulse toward military expansion. Trump’s decision to wage war against Iran springs from exactly the same mindset as Hitler’s and Putin’s.
MAGA: Make Adversaries Great Again.
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