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America’s Greatest Military Achievement Since Vietnam: Giving Iran Everything It Wanted
Let’s be absolutely clear about what just happened, because the White House press team will spend the next several months making sure you aren’t.
The United States of America, master of eleven aircraft carrier groups, and proud inventor of the phrase “shock and awe,” has just concluded a 38-day war against a country with a GDP roughly the size of Romania’s. And it lost.
Not lost badly, mind you. Lost spectacularly. Lost in the specific way that only a very confident man can lose, which is by announcing victory so loudly and so early that everyone notices when it doesn’t arrive.
Donald Trump told us this would be over in four to six weeks. He was right, in the same way that a man who says he’ll be home by seven is technically correct when he staggers in at half past three in the morning wearing someone else’s jacket. Ahead of schedule.
Now, let’s look at what Iran walks away with. Before this little adventure, Iran had a nuclear program under significant international pressure, a regional influence that was widely contested, and a military establishment that was, shall we say, unfashionably equipped. Today? The pressure is gone, the program is intact, and the entire Middle East just watched the U.S. blink first. Iran didn’t just survive. Iran graduated.
And America? America got the Strait of Hormuz reopened. The same strait that was open before Trump decided to have a war. Congratulations, gentlemen. You have successfully restored the situation to what it was before you destroyed it. This is the geopolitical equivalent of smashing your own television.
What the world has now seen, with uncomfortable clarity, is an America that is surprisingly weak without its allies. Militarily, diplomatically, at the negotiating table. On every level that matters, the United States needed partners it didn’t have. And the reason it didn’t have them is sitting in the Oval Office, furious at the very countries that have kept American power relevant for eighty years. Rumours are already circulating that Trump is considering pulling the United States out of NATO entirely. If that happens, we will know the precise date when America’s tenure as a superpower officially began its closing chapter.
It is worth remembering, as it always is when America charges enthusiastically toward a military conflict, that the last war the United States won entirely on its own was against itself. Every significant military victory since 1945 has come attached to allies, coalitions, and partners willing to share both the burden and the blame. Here, they had none. Turns out allies aren’t just decorative.
The Strait is open. Iran is stronger. America is exactly where it started, minus the credibility.
Ahead of schedule. Tremendous.
Gandalv / @Microinteracti1
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