The U.S. will emerge from the war with Iran as a lesser power
Andrew Coyne ([url]https://www.theglobeandmail.com/authors/andrew-coyne/[/url])
Published Yesterday
"Thus the embarrassing spectacle of the Trump administration declaring that Iran cannot continue to fight because “it has been defeated,” even as Iran, notwithstanding its supposed defeat, continues to fight – conduct Mr. Trump plainly feels is dirty pool (“a little unfair” was the exact quote), as if this were a game of cops and robbers and a playmate had failed to acknowledge they were “dead.”
The specific object of Mr. Trump’s complaint was Iran’s effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz, an event “nobody predicted” that in fact everyone predicted. Here again the war has been entirely counterproductive, allowing Iran to exercise control of the strait in a way it would never have dared before the war.
U.S. Army’s chief of staff asked to step down by Hegseth ([url]https://www.theglobeandmail.com/world/article-us-army-chief-staff-hegseth-iran-war/[/url])
This is a direct consequence of the failure to dislodge the regime. The strait was always vulnerable to Iranian attack. It just wasn’t worth it to the Iranians, given the massive counterattack that would surely follow. The war has fundamentally changed that calculus. The U.S. and Israel have thrown everything they had at them, and they have survived. So why not take out the strait? What do they have to lose?
So now the U.S. war aim has shifted: to reopening the strait. That is, to returning the strait to the state of affairs before the war the U.S. started. At least, that was the aim for a couple of days, as described in anonymous press briefings. But this left the U.S. in a quandary. It could hardly “declare victory and get out,” as many were advising, if that meant leaving Iran with a stranglehold on much of the world oil supply.
But that fleeting conventional wisdom did not reckon with Mr. Trump’s brazenness. Lately he has taken to demanding that other world powers should move to reopen the strait themselves – to clean up the mess that he made. With a massive recession looming, talks are now under way ([url]https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/dozens-countries-discuss-coalition-secure-passage-through-strait-hormuz-2026-04-02/[/url]) among 40 nations, including Canada, to do just that, though whether this would involve military action is unclear. Which is at least preferable to Mr. Trump’s proposed remedy, that China should patrol the strait.
What, last, are the prospects of preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, which Mr. Trump has lately resurrected as a casus belli? We are at this moment no closer than we were at the start of the war, which is to say after Mr. Trump had “completely and totally obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program in last year’s mini-war. Perhaps a U.S. commando raid may yet successfully extract Iran’s supplies of enriched uranium, buried as they are under a mountain (or probably several) and protected by half the Iranian army.
But it can hardly have escaped notice that the demands for Iranian compliance contained in the administration’s list of 15 conditions for a ceasefire bear a striking resemblance to the conditions Iran had already agreed to under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the Obama-era agreement between Iran, the U.S., and a host of other world powers – the agreement Mr. Trump tore up in his first term.
Iran now rejects those conditions – again, what does it have to lose? If anything, it has even greater incentive to dash for nuclear weapons than it did before. The calculation, probably well grounded, is that Mr. Trump will at some point tire of the exercise. Whereas the mullahs are more determined than ever. After all, if they had nukes the U.S. would never have attacked.
To sum up, then, the result of the Iran war has been to expose U.S. security guarantees, such as those it gave to its Gulf state allies, as worthless; to divide the U.S. even further from the other NATO countries, already on edge after Mr. Trump’s threats to invade Greenland, but now facing the near certainty that Mr. Trump will not live up to his treaty obligations in the event of a Russian attack; to greatly enrich Russia, not only in the form of higher oil prices but the relaxation of sanctions; and to leave Iran, whose subjugation was the point of the exercise, intact, angrier than ever, and in control of the Strait of Hormuz, and the tolls accruing thereto.
Its reputation diminished, its credibility shattered, even its military force dented, at least in perception – for if it cannot bend a non-nuclear middle power like Iran to its will, who can it? – the U.S. will emerge from this war a lesser power. No one trusts it. No one will work with it. Worst of all, after this, fewer will even be afraid of it."
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Andrew Coyne ([url]https://www.theglobeandmail.com/authors/andrew-coyne/[/url])
Published Yesterday
"Thus the embarrassing spectacle of the Trump administration declaring that Iran cannot continue to fight because “it has been defeated,” even as Iran, notwithstanding its supposed defeat, continues to fight – conduct Mr. Trump plainly feels is dirty pool (“a little unfair” was the exact quote), as if this were a game of cops and robbers and a playmate had failed to acknowledge they were “dead.”
The specific object of Mr. Trump’s complaint was Iran’s effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz, an event “nobody predicted” that in fact everyone predicted. Here again the war has been entirely counterproductive, allowing Iran to exercise control of the strait in a way it would never have dared before the war.
U.S. Army’s chief of staff asked to step down by Hegseth ([url]https://www.theglobeandmail.com/world/article-us-army-chief-staff-hegseth-iran-war/[/url])
This is a direct consequence of the failure to dislodge the regime. The strait was always vulnerable to Iranian attack. It just wasn’t worth it to the Iranians, given the massive counterattack that would surely follow. The war has fundamentally changed that calculus. The U.S. and Israel have thrown everything they had at them, and they have survived. So why not take out the strait? What do they have to lose?
So now the U.S. war aim has shifted: to reopening the strait. That is, to returning the strait to the state of affairs before the war the U.S. started. At least, that was the aim for a couple of days, as described in anonymous press briefings. But this left the U.S. in a quandary. It could hardly “declare victory and get out,” as many were advising, if that meant leaving Iran with a stranglehold on much of the world oil supply.
But that fleeting conventional wisdom did not reckon with Mr. Trump’s brazenness. Lately he has taken to demanding that other world powers should move to reopen the strait themselves – to clean up the mess that he made. With a massive recession looming, talks are now under way ([url]https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/dozens-countries-discuss-coalition-secure-passage-through-strait-hormuz-2026-04-02/[/url]) among 40 nations, including Canada, to do just that, though whether this would involve military action is unclear. Which is at least preferable to Mr. Trump’s proposed remedy, that China should patrol the strait.
What, last, are the prospects of preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, which Mr. Trump has lately resurrected as a casus belli? We are at this moment no closer than we were at the start of the war, which is to say after Mr. Trump had “completely and totally obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program in last year’s mini-war. Perhaps a U.S. commando raid may yet successfully extract Iran’s supplies of enriched uranium, buried as they are under a mountain (or probably several) and protected by half the Iranian army.
But it can hardly have escaped notice that the demands for Iranian compliance contained in the administration’s list of 15 conditions for a ceasefire bear a striking resemblance to the conditions Iran had already agreed to under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the Obama-era agreement between Iran, the U.S., and a host of other world powers – the agreement Mr. Trump tore up in his first term.
Iran now rejects those conditions – again, what does it have to lose? If anything, it has even greater incentive to dash for nuclear weapons than it did before. The calculation, probably well grounded, is that Mr. Trump will at some point tire of the exercise. Whereas the mullahs are more determined than ever. After all, if they had nukes the U.S. would never have attacked.
To sum up, then, the result of the Iran war has been to expose U.S. security guarantees, such as those it gave to its Gulf state allies, as worthless; to divide the U.S. even further from the other NATO countries, already on edge after Mr. Trump’s threats to invade Greenland, but now facing the near certainty that Mr. Trump will not live up to his treaty obligations in the event of a Russian attack; to greatly enrich Russia, not only in the form of higher oil prices but the relaxation of sanctions; and to leave Iran, whose subjugation was the point of the exercise, intact, angrier than ever, and in control of the Strait of Hormuz, and the tolls accruing thereto.
Its reputation diminished, its credibility shattered, even its military force dented, at least in perception – for if it cannot bend a non-nuclear middle power like Iran to its will, who can it? – the U.S. will emerge from this war a lesser power. No one trusts it. No one will work with it. Worst of all, after this, fewer will even be afraid of it."
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