Iran has already won

As long as Iran keeps control of Hormuz, the US Empire’s Last War will go from “shock and awe” to “shocking and awful”

It is a spectacle to witness the complete mental meltdown of the “leader” of the “free world” and the world’s “sole” superpower.

Barely three weeks after his breathless claim of victory, Trump has gone total bananas beyond his usual incoherent self.

One wonders whether it is the fog of war that’s corroding his brain or Trump simply never has any idea what he is talking about -

- A week ago, Trump claimed the war is “very complete, pretty much”. At the same time, he is sending Marine expeditionary forces from Japan and California to the Gulf, ostensibly for ground invasion.

- On Friday he said that he wasn’t sending ground troops to Iran, but added: “If I were, I certainly wouldn’t tell you”.

- Trump announced Iranian air defense is “100% obliterated” in the first week of the war, but a F-35 – the crown jewel of US air power – was shot down 2 days ago.

- He claimed repeatedly the Iranian military is “gone” and “completely wiped out”, but drones and missiles are still striking targets in Israel and the Gulf region.
As of yesterday, targets have extended as far as the joint US-UK base in Diego Garcia in the Indian ocean.

- Trump also said opening the Strait of Hormuz is a “simple manoeuvre”, but refuses to send US warships to ensure safe passage.

He asked for others to help but vassals such as UK, France, Germany, Australia, and Japan all said no. Interestingly, Trump never asked Israel to send ships to open Hormuz. I guess he knows who is boss in that relationship.

The most shocking and idiotic Trump request has to be asking Beijing to send its navy to keep the Strait of Hormuz open.

For the Fox “News” commentators celebrating Trump’s brilliant chess move to chokehold China’s energy supply with the Iran invasion at the start of the war, his desperate call to Beijing for help is a slap on the face.

The absurdity is hilarious.

In my last essay, I predicted Trump will beg President Xi to intervene to end the war. He went further with the call for rescue with Hormuz.

Trump has lost any attachment with reality and rationality – Chinese ships can transit safely through Hormuz; Iranian oil continues to flow to China; and Iran announced it will permit Yuan-denominated trade safe passage.

Why on earth would China step in to pull US’s chestnuts out of the fire when it is not affected by Iran’s blockade and it is also the indirect target of the illegal war to start with?

Has Trump lost all his marbles or he never knows how to tell his head from his ass?

The reality is Iran has already won the war.

Bombs will continue to drop. Both sides will continue to shoot missiles and drones at each other. The US Marine may even launch a suicidal beach landing on Kharg Island.

But for all intents and purposes, the US has already lost the war.

Because the purpose of wars is the achievement of political objectives.

The US war objective is regime change – in Trump’s hyperbolic language, “unconditional surrender” and “I will name the next leader”.

There is zero chance that will happen. In fact, when the war ends, Tehran will be run by an even more anti-US government and led by a supreme leader with visceral hatred for the US and Israel who wiped out his family.

Even if USrael can kill more Iranian leaders, they won’t kill their way to a puppet regime.

Now that a regime change is off the table, the US war objective has changed to keep Strait of Hormuz open.

This change alone tells you the US has already lost the war since the Strait of Hormuz was open before the war. Essentially, the US is prosecuting the war to merely return to the pre-war status quo.

And even this modest goal is unlikely to be achieved without costing thousands of US lives since it has no choice but to send in ground troops.

And if the US engages in ground invasion, we will be looking at Vietnam 2.0 since Iran’s plan is to turn the conflict into a war of attrition that will grind down US personnel and materiel.

When a long war of attrition becomes reality, expect China and Russia to step up their support to Iran against the US, just like during the Vietnam War.

Success in war is not measured by who dropped the most bombs or killed the most people. If that were the case, the US would have won the Vietnam war and Germany would have won the war against Soviet Union.

The US dropped more bombs on Vietnam than all the bombs dropped in WW2. It killed 3 million military and civilian population. In the end, it lost the war.

The litmus test of the Iran war comes down to who can control the Strait of Hormuz. All indicators point to Iran’s continued jurisdiction over the patch of water.

The Pentagon is now asking for $200 billion emergency war funding, from a congress which Trump didn’t bother to inform about the war plans.

We don’t know how long the Pentagon expects the $200 billion to last.

But put the number in context – this is 25 times Iran’s annual defense budget, 125% Russia’s 2025 budget (during a full-scale war), and 80% China’s annual spending.

Iran GDP in 2025 is $341 billion.

According to CSIS, the war cost the US about $2 billion a day in the first week of the war. https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2026/mar/19/us-iran-war-cost

But throwing money at the problem won’t solve it. You can print money but cannot print surge capacity and ammunitions. As expected, the Iran war is yet another taxpayer handout to the underprivileged northern Virginia defense contractors to buy second homes and luxury yachts.

It will also be a nice tidy addition to the $38.8 trillion national debt at the center of the financial Ponzi scheme called the US dollar.

Gas price, the default barometer of US voters’ ability to absorb pain, has gone from $2.9 per gallon to $3.9.

Amazingly, that society’s focal point about foreign wars is always the impact on gas prices, and never the legality or morality of the atrocities. Or the cost to the nation as a whole.

In a twist of supreme irony, the Trump regime is now un-sanctioning Iranian and Russian oil in an attempt to lower gas prices.

Rather than crippling Iran’s finances, Trump is helping Iran’s finances in the middle of an unprovoked war against it.

When body bags start to return to the US en masse from a disastrous ground invasion, public appetite for war will evaporate.

In war, one’s ability to withstand pain is even more important than one’s ability to inflict pain.

The American public is known to have very limited capacities for pain. So, time is on Iran’s side.

What happens next?

While it is clear Iran has already won from a strategic standpoint, the war continues and probably will escalate. We have yet to fully appreciate the ripple effects.

Questions remain about what the belligerents will do next –

- Iran – how much munitions in the form of missiles and drones does it have to sustain a long war? Will the bombing of its energy and food infrastructure affect regime stability? How far is it willing to go after Israeli nuclear arsenal and critical infrastructures such as desalination plants to maximize pain on Israel?

- The US – when will it run out of air defense interceptors? How many casualties will it take before yielding and pulling out? What is the domestic pain threshold with gas prices, inflation, and stock market collapse? How can it pull out with some fig leaf of appearing “victorious”?

- Israel – when will it run out of air defense and be left at the mercy of Iran’s missile and drone attacks? What is the Israeli public’s pain threshold with casualty and property destruction? Will it resort to nuclear weapons as laid out in the Samson Option doctrine?

Israel’s war objective is different from the US. Its primary goal is to wreck Iran as much as possible to weaken and ideally to fragment and dismember the country.

Israel doesn’t want a strong Iran, regardless of who rules the country.

It is also killing off all potential Iranian negotiators like Larijani, ensuring the US has no one to talk to who has the authority to effect a truce.

Since this is likely its last chance to get the US to fight Iran on its behalf, Israel’s interest is to prolong the war as much as possible and keep the US in the fight.

As Trump proves himself a complete jew vassal (Shabbos goy), Israel will be the party to decide whether and when the US can pull out.

- GCC sheikdoms – I don’t expect the Gulf countries to join the war as their military power is negligible and the sheiks cannot afford to have a permanent enemy with Iran.

As de facto US colonies, the GCC will take as much pain as Iran dishes out. The cold reality is the strong take what they can and the weak suffer what they must.

There is an old Arab proverb: Kiss the hand you cannot bite. So, I assume they will learn to live with a dominant Iran in the region post war.

Questions for GCC are: will they expel US military bases after the war and seek other security partners? Will they ever recover the pre-war bubble of security and prosperity?

- Other countries – what does the war teach them about US treachery and limits of US power? What alternative security arrangements do they have to pursue in the waning days of US hegemony? How to secure alternative energy supplies and weed out Gulf oil/gas dependency? What does the inevitable end of the petrodollar system mean to their financial and economic models?

It is safe to bet that Iran will emerge as the strongest power in West Asia at the end of the war. It will have a de facto control of Middle Eastern energy supply as it dictates who can or cannot pass through the Strait of Hormuz.

The US will end up shooting itself in the foot and lose all credibility as the global hegemon. The world will know the emperor has no clothes.