Summary and Key Points: It was intended as a demonstration of American power. Instead, argues national-security editor Brandon Weichert, it’s becoming a lesson in its limits. Months after the U.S. set out to topple Iran’s regime, strip its nuclear program, and obliterate its navy, the ayatollah still rules, the missiles still fly, and the Strait of Hormuz stays in Tehran’s grip. The ceasefire the president insists is holding has already shattered — and the longer the war grinds on, Weichert contends, the more it resembles the one war no American wants it compared to: Vietnam.
The Iran Ceasefire Is Done–and America Is Losing the War
A U.S. Air Force Maj. B-2 pilot marshals a B-2 Spirit bomber, deployed from Whiteman Air Force Base, Missouri, at Andersen Air Force Base, Guam in support of Valiant Shield 24, June 13, 2024. The speed, flexibility, and readiness of our strategic bombers plays a critical role in our ability to deter potential adversaries and signal our unwavering support to our allies and partners. Counter-maritime missions provide valuable training opportunities to improve our interoperability and demonstrate that our forces are capable of operating anywhere, anytime, to meet any challenge decisively. (U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Kristen Heller)
B-2 Spirit stealth bombers assigned to Whiteman Air Force Base taxi and take-off during exercise Spirit Vigilance on Whiteman Air Force Base on November 7th, 2022. Routine exercises like Spirit Vigilance assure our allies and partners that Whiteman Air Force Base is ready to execute nuclear operations and global strike anytime, anywhere. (U.S. Air Force photo by Airman 1st Class Bryson Britt)
The Islamic Republic of Iran launched multiple missile fusillades at an assortment of Gulf Arab states. Tehran raged as the United States primary strategic ally in the Middle East, Israel, escalated its attacks against Iran’s ally in Lebanon, Hezbollah. Tehran insisted that no ceasefire could endure if the Americans did not restrain their Israeli partners in Lebanon.
Israeli leaders argued the ceasefire did not bind them and that they would not desist in their attacks against Hezbollah, given that the Lebanese Shiite militia continues to threaten northern Israel with missile attacks.
Before the Iranian missile strikes, though, Tehran had warned Israel to move its citizens from northern Israel, as Tehran intended to launch a volley of long-range missiles at Israeli military targets in northern Israel that were supporting the IDF’s operations in southern Lebanon.
As the Mideast burns, the American president, Donald J. Trump, contemplates the possibility of meeting the ayatollah of Iran (whose predecessor Trump assassinated) and waxes eloquent about the coming dawn of peace in the region.
To be clear: there will be no peace in the Middle East. That is off the table. President Trump is either delusional or simply in denial about how badly the war that he and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu started is going.
B-2A, serial #88-0331, ‘Spirit of South Carolina’ of the 509th Bomb Wing, Air Force Global Strike Command, on the parking ramp at Tinker Air Force Base, Oklahoma, during a visit April 11, 2017. The B-2A ‘stealth bomber’ visited the base to allow hundreds of personnel who work in direct support of the aircraft program through continuous software upgrades to see it in person and better understand the aircrafts’ role in the nation’s defense. (U.S. Air Force photo/Greg L. Davis)
At the strategic level, it’s going badly.
The reason it’s going badly is simple.
Washington entered the war with expansive objectives ranging from regime change to denuclearization to the destruction of Iran’s missile forces. Months later, the US failed to achieve those objectives, while Iran’s regime remains in power and continues projecting military force across the region at will.
The US attacks damaged the Iranian regime, but it remains in control of Iran, and its forces continue to enjoy combat effectiveness. American forces keep getting stretched to their breaking point. The war depleted America’s arsenal of key long-range precision-guided munitions and air defense interceptors.
It is now obvious that there will be no peace deal, and the tenuous ceasefire will not last much longer. It has already broken, but the American president keeps arguing it’s in place and going well. Neither Tel Aviv nor Tehran is paying attention to the American president’s wishes and Pollyanna-ish remarks.
They’re steadfastly pursuing what they perceive as their own national interests. Meanwhile, the region’s other powers–the Gulf Arab states–are being made to pay both metaphorically and, in many cases, literally.
Iran F-14 Tomcat Fighter. Image Credit: Creative Commons.
Israel’s Lebanon Gambit Risks a Wider Regional War
Israel’s leadership has determined that the current situation in Southern Lebanon is untenable. For Tel Aviv, that area represents a severe security threat. Per Israeli intelligence officials, Hezbollah’s presence in Southern Lebanon was complicating the safety and stability of northern Israel.
With their rocket launchers in that region, Hezbollah threatened to destroy the core infrastructure of Israel (including the Port of Haifa, the beating heart of Israel’s economy).
Iran’s Strategy Is Working
Iran’s grand strategy is simple enough to understand. First, the regime must survive the fury of American and Israeli military power.
Second, the Islamic Republic wants to diminish or, more preferably, remove US military power projection from the region entirely.
Third, Tehran desires to establish itself as a major, massive regional military and economic power that serves as a counterweight to nuclear-armed Israel.
Currently, Iran is much closer to achieving these strategic aims than Israel is to achieving their aims in Lebanon.
America’s Objectives Have Become Impossible
Let’s look at the American strategy. That’s a bit more amorphous, partly because the man leading the United States is utterly indisposed to planning and sticking to a plan.
The war began with an obvious objective of conducting sweeping, sharp, short-term decapitation strikes against the Islamic Republic with the hope of overthrowing the regime and having the people of Iran create a new system that would be more amenable to the US and Israeli positions.
Then, Washington wanted to denuclearize Iran. After that, they wanted to destroy the country’s significant advanced ballistic missile, drone, and hypersonic weapons threat. But that wasn’t all. The Trump administration deemed it necessary to “obliterate” the Iranian Navy and Air Force.
Oh, and now because of this war of choice, the Americans must also secure the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, which the Iranians blockaded early in the war–prompting the Americans also to blockade the Strait, thereby setting the conditions for a slow-rolling but now unavoidable global economic catastrophe.
As of this writing, the Americans have failed to achieve any of these objectives.
Washington Has Created a More Dangerous Iran
In fact, one must argue that the US side has created a nastier foe in Iran than what existed before. The mullahs and their Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) partners are stronger than before the US strikes began.
The new ayatollah is harder-line than his predecessor (his father). Meanwhile, Iran’s ballistic missile and drone production capacities are in full swing and essentially untouched by American airstrikes, according to many experts. What’s more, their ability to launch these systems at will from hidden bunkers remains a serious problem that the US military cannot apparently overcome.
The Iranian nuclear weapons program will surely advance, and its leadership is more committed to developing these systems than they were before the war began. Iran’s Navy and Air Force, contrary to early claims by the Trump administration, are not obliterated. They remain combat-effective.
The Strait of Hormuz Will Not Return to the Status Quo
More to the point, the Strait of Hormuz is unlikely ever to be opened so long as Washington insists that the ex ante status quo be respected. Tehran will never allow the Strait to reopen as it was before February 28.
So long as that regime remains in power in Tehran, the Islamic Republic will exercise operational control over the waterway in perpetuity.
And the economic fallout, while it will also harm Iran, will be felt disproportionately by America and its allies, all of which are far more exposed to global trade and therefore more damaged by any disruptions to that trade than Iran is.
The Limits of American Power
So, as the ceasefire collapses, the three warring parties will be unable to stop the slide back to war. The war will resume soon, regardless of whatever the forty-seventh American president says to the US corporate press. The conflict, under current conditions, will be far more damaging to the US and Israel than it will be to Iran.
Great powers are not defeated only when their armies lose battles (which, technically, the North Vietnamese did not defeat the Americans in battle; they’ve been defeated at political and strategic levels, just as America was by Hanoi during the Vietnam War). Great powers are defeated when they expend vast resources pursuing objectives they cannot achieve.
If current trends continue, the Iran War will be remembered not as a triumph of American power, but as the painful moment when Washington–at least momentarily–discovered the true limits of American power.
About the Author: Brandon J. Weichert
Brandon J. Weichert is Senior National Security Editor. He also manages The Weichert Brief on Substack. Weichert hosts “National Security Talk” on Rumble, too. He is the author of four bestselling national security books, the most recent of which is A Disaster of Our Own Making: How the West Lost Ukraine (Encounter Books). Follow him via Twitter/X @WeTheBrandon.
