By Noah Rothman
Wednesday, March 25, 2026
If you’re following the coverage of the U.S.-Israeli war
against the Islamic Republic of Iran, you’re liable to be disappointed by what
you’re seeing.
America is “hapless,” battered, and bruised. Iran may not be “winning,”
but it’s certainly not losing. And not losing is all that the regime must do
to claim victory. The architects of this war, like Secretary Marco Rubio,
should be hanging their heads in shame. “So why is his political star on the
rise?” Politico columnist Nahal
Toosi asked. After all, everyone with half a brain knows this war is
a disaster for the United States.
Donald Trump’s comments about the war are all over the
map. To his detractors, that looks like flailing inconstancy. Among his
supporters, it’s brilliant strategic ambiguity. But most acknowledge that Trump
appears to be suing for peace even as Iran continues to throttle maritime
traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, increasing global commodities prices and
putting immense pressure on the U.S. and Israel to wrap this up soon — even,
perhaps, short of their objectives.
The verdict from some quarters is in: The war is “quickly becoming a disaster.” The sooner Washington
acknowledges its defeat, the better.
It seems now that rendering a pessimistic assessment of
U.S. and Israeli progress in this war is the price of admission into
sophisticated circles. If you’re not hopelessly melancholy, you’re not a
serious person. At least, you’re not availing yourself of the news from the
front.
That dour outlook seems wholly divorced from an objective
appraisal of the war in its fourth week.
Start from the Start
To take the full measure of the war so far, we should
start at the beginning.
The merciless slaughter of tens of thousands of Iranian
protesters in December and January was not an anticipated result of the
Twelve-Day War in June of last year, which culminated in Operation Midnight
Hammer. The U.S.-Israeli decision to take advantage of the Iranian regime’s
manifest weakness was an exigency that necessitated an emergency force buildup.
Unlike the Iraq War, there was no long prelude to this war. But like the
Iraq War, this conflict began with an attempted decapitation strike. This time,
it succeeded.
U.S.-Israeli forces neutralized roughly 40 senior Iranian
leadership figures in the opening salvos of the war. As the conflict progressed,
Iran’s armed forces and intelligence leaders, national security figureheads,
senior Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Basij paramilitary commanders, and
the brainpower behind Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs met the same fate. Israeli forces lure Iranian military targets into kill boxes of their
choosing, make direct phone calls to individual Basij commanders to intimidate
them into surrendering, and hunt down individual IRGC targets in the wooded
hills to which they’ve fled.
Iran’s command-and-control is famously decentralized, but
these operations have contributed to Iran’s inability to coordinate
strategically coherent attacks on U.S., Israeli, or Gulf region targets.
Meanwhile, the U.S.-Israeli campaign has enjoyed spectacular tactical successes
on the battlefield.
Within the first two weeks of the war, U.S. and Israeli forces
unleashed a blistering wave of strikes on Iranian air defenses, radar systems,
missile launch and storage facilities, drone capabilities, naval mines, air
bases, and the pillars of regime stability. The Iranian air force is gone. Most
of Iran’s air and missile bases have been rendered inoperable. Its naval
installations along the Persian Gulf coast were incapacitated, and about 120
Iranian ships were disabled or sunk. And what remains of Iran’s once formidable
network of terrorist proxies across the Middle East was decimated, their leadership ranks decapitated, and their local support networks disrupted or
entirely cut off.
As the U.S.-Israeli war against the Islamic Republic
entered its fourth week, their joint force embarked on what their military
brass called “phase two” of the war: taking out Iran’s military
infrastructure. The U.S. and Israel hit Iran’s nuclear facilities, including
those that were struck in June 2025, as well as new targets, including undeclared nuclear sites. U.S.-Israeli strikes also began
targeting Iran’s defense industrial base. Its missile-production facilities,
drone manufacturers, explosives-production plants, and sensitive electronics
developers came under sustained bombardment.
Before the end of the third week of fighting, the United
States had achieved command of the skies in southern Iran sufficient to deploy vulnerable air assets like A-10 Thunderbolt IIs
and Apache attack helicopters over the Strait of Hormuz to strafe small
fast-attack boats and disable drones in flight. Similar air superiority had already been achieved over Iran’s
northwest, including the capital city of Tehran, allowing non-stealth aircraft
to execute sorties using precision-guided gravity munitions and allowing the
U.S. to relieve the strain on its arsenal of “exquisite” missiles and
interceptors.
The U.S. and Israel continue to degrade Iran’s ability to
launch the ballistic missiles with which Tehran has terrorized its neighbors
from the outset of the war. Their air forces have struck Iran’s buried
missile-storage facilities and above-ground arsenals. They loiter above the entrances to intact bunkers, hitting
them only when they spot activity. As of March 23, the Israel Defense Forces estimate that
about 330 of Iran’s 470 ballistic missile launchers have been rendered
inoperable or inaccessible. The roughly 4,700 strikes on Iran’s missile program alone are estimated
to have eliminated 70 percent of Iran’s launcher array, contributing to a 90
percent decrease in Iran’s missile launch capability.
Some Iranian drones and missiles continue to evade the
region’s layered air defense systems, striking civilian infrastructure and
non-combatant targets like urban and suburban neighborhoods with devastating
effect. Indeed, to evade Israel’s anti-missile defenses, Iran has deployed
cluster munitions against Israeli civilian targets — a tactic with no objective
other than to maximize civilian casualties. But unlike Iran’s coordinated drone
strike on Saudi Arabian oil processing facilities at Abqaiq and Khurais in 2019, for example, Iran’s missile
attacks on its neighbors lack the coordination to achieve a strategic effect.
They have not sapped any of Iran’s regional targets of their will to support and prosecute the war against this regime.
And for all the visible signs of stress in the political
class in Washington that this war has exposed, Iran is reeling, too. The
statements issued by the remnants of its leadership are frequently contradicted by the actions of its field commanders,
suggesting a breakdown of communications. The degree to which Iran’s
omnidirectional attacks on soft targets across the Middle East have emboldened
its neighbors to back the U.S.-Israeli campaign, or even to actively
participate in it, chastened Iranian leadership and compelled them to issue conciliatory pronouncements (which, again, were also
betrayed as hollow by continued Iranian attacks on its neighbors). “IDF
Military Intelligence has identified ‘low morale, absenteeism, and burnout’
among IRGC ballistic missile units within the past week,” the Institute for the Study of War reported Tuesday night. “The
IDF said that ballistic missile unit soldiers have refused to go to launch
sites due to fear of IDF strikes.”
U.S. assets are still pouring into the region. Marine
Expeditionary Units and thousands of U.S. Army paratroopers with the 82nd
Airborne Division are reportedly en route to the Gulf as the U.S.-Israeli air
campaign methodically neutralizes Iran’s power-projection capabilities.
Meanwhile, Iranian representatives insist that the Strait of Hormuz
is, in fact, open, despite reports that Iran laid about one dozen naval mines in its waterways. Those vessels that
“neither participate in nor support acts of aggression against Iran” can pass
safely, so long as they pay an extortion fee.
Opening the strait to maritime traffic — which U.S.
commanders repeatedly assured anyone willing to listen would happen
sequentially, following the significant degradation of Iran’s military
capabilities — will follow the clearing of the strait’s mines and the
elimination of the Iranian road-mobile anti-ship missile threat (possibly with the deployment of Marine Amphibious Ready Groups on
the ground). That would be a dangerous operation. If successful, though,
demonstrating that the strait is clear
to merchant and naval traffic would be to duplicate the operations in the
Gulf in which the U.S. Navy engaged in 1987 and 1988.
If such an operation succeeded, it would deprive Iran of
one of its last points of leverage against the West.
Compared to What?
There is a temptation abroad — in the press, at least —
to yadda-yadda away these spectacular tactical successes in combat against a
nation that, as recently as 2022, commanded one of the most formidable
militaries on earth. Iranian hubris and that of the terrorists in its orbit set
into motion a sequence of events that would culminate in its destruction. But
it was by no means foreseeable at the outset of this decade that the Iranian
threat could suffer such a lopsided series of defeats.
The U.S. and its allies have been war-gaming scenarios
involving an existential conflict with Iran for decades. Those simulations
provided Western war planners with little confidence that such a mission would succeed.
Rather, it was likely to stoke a global conflict typified by terrorist attacks
throughout the West and unacceptable losses on the Middle East’s battlefields.
And following a sustained and bloody war, it was by no means assured that the
United States would achieve its objectives.
“Compared to what?” is a crucial question. Answering it
grounds observers’ conclusions in a set of empirically verifiable conditions
and tests them against conceivable counterfactuals. Compared to those
scenarios, this war has so far been a spectacular tactical success. What’s
more, it would be a mistake to conclude that the alternative to this war was a
durable and peaceful regional status quo.
Pick any day that followed the October 7 massacre, and
you’re likely to encounter a new and wholly unstable status quo in the region.
Go back as far as you like, in fact. You aren’t going to find a period in which
Iran was placidly committed to the preservation of the prevailing regional
dynamic. Iran is a revisionist power. It is and has been doctrinally committed
to revising the status quo in its favor. That’s what its proxy terrorist
network, its nuclear-weapons program, and its crash-course ballistic-missile development enterprise were
for, after all.
Where critics of this war — indeed, arguably every
American war since 1945 — have a point is in the degree to which they are
inclined to dismiss U.S.-Israeli tactical victories because, they conclude,
those achievements do not beget strategic successes. We don’t fight to win,
they accurately note. We lose our resolve. We meddle heedlessly in inscrutable
tribal subtleties. We back the wrong horse. In short, we don’t lose the war; we
lose the postwar.
Fair enough. Given our track record, cynicism may be
warranted. But cynicism obscures a comprehensive appraisal of how much Iran has
lost in this war, and how much it stands to lose going forward.
“Both China and Russia are showing that any partnerships
they have are highly conditional,” RAND analyst Howard Shatz recently observed. The war has demonstrated
that the “trilateral strategic pact” Moscow and Beijing signed with
Tehran in January — the culmination of decades of strategic coordination —
wasn’t worth the ink. So much for that “cornerstone for a new multipolar
order.” And every revisionist power on the planet that was once willing to
purchase Russian and Chinese radar and anti-air defense batteries now has ample
evidence to conclude that they are no match for the West’s offensive air power.
The war has also clarified the thinking in the Persian
Gulf. If Iran’s strategic calculus in executing attacks on the Gulf states’
civilians and critical infrastructure was aimed at forcing Washington’s nominal
allies in the region to sue for peace, Iran’s approach had the opposite effect.
The Gulf states have not engaged in hostile operations against Iran — not yet,
at least, though the Saudis are flirting with the prospect — but those nations have
gravitated closer to Washington’s orbit. They are
supporting the U.S.-Israeli campaign materially, cracking down on Iranian
assets, disrupting Iran’s operations, and exiling their envoys.
The United States alone has proven it has both the
capability and willingness to contribute to the Gulf’s defense against the
preeminent threat to that neighborhood. That will be a lasting consequence of
this war. And Iran is sensitive to its own isolation, as the laughable appeal by one IRGC official to the Gulf states to
join with Tehran in a postwar regional security architecture suggests.
The Forest for the Trees
Given all this, it is by no means credible to contend
that Trump’s surprise statement on Monday, revealing his ongoing (and possibly
successful) efforts to open a back-channel dialogue with Iranian
representatives, suggests that the United States is on the back foot.
Many speculated that Trump’s announcement was an
expression of his desire to find an off-ramp to this trying war. Some assumed
that Trump was merely trying to manipulate global oil markets. Still others
supposed that Trump was attempting to sow discord within what remains of the
Iranian regime’s ranks, instilling in them the paranoid fear that their
brothers-in-arms were preparing to sell them out. Any or all of these could be
true at the same time.
Whether Trump has a plan or not, the president’s
inconstancy is not reflected in the statements of his subordinates, Defense Department officials, or CENTCOM commanders. They have been clear from the outset
about what this war would look like, and they’ve not deviated from what they initially outlined. And if the war
proceeds as advertised, combat operations will conclude with a negotiated
settlement with someone who has the authority to speak for the Iranian
government. At that point, it progresses to the next phase: undermining the
regime from within.
That phase was always going to look like failure to those
who are impatient for something that approximates a definitive conclusion to
this conflict. Both U.S. and Israeli officials have emphasized that fomenting
internal dissent that flowers into an insurrection will take time, if it
happens at all — and “the time has not yet come,” as Admiral Brad Cooper said this week. “There will be a clear
signal at some point, as the president has indicated, for you to be able to
come out,” he
added.
No credible Western official has suggested that such an
outcome would materialize overnight. It is, however, hardly a gamble to
conclude that a regime that has put down popular insurrectionary revolts with
near-metronomic regularity in this century will face another soon enough. When
their citizens come for them this time, the regime will confront them without
the apparatus of a terror state.
Only internal fragmentation will bring this regime down —
intra-elite disagreements over the best course to ensure their own survival.
Those disagreements won’t materialize in wartime. Patronage networks will have
to break down first. Iran’s isolation on the world stage will have to bite.
Institutions will have to cease to function. Nothing is guaranteed.
But the tactics the U.S. and Israel have deployed in
pursuit of that strategic outcome have been immeasurably effective.
The End Game
This overlong article has not comprehensively detailed
the degree to which Iran is imposing real costs on the U.S. and Israel, its
Gulf neighbors, and the world. Such analyses are not hard to find. And there is
a real risk that Donald Trump repeats the mistakes of the past, declares
victory prematurely, and leaves the region in an ambiguous condition in which
the Iranian regime can reconstitute itself and once again terrorize the world.
That’s a fearsome prospect, but it’s also still a theoretical one.
As one unnamed Iranian citizen who spoke by phone with
the New York Post’s reporters last week insisted, “More
than 90 percent of the people are grateful to Trump and thankful to the USA.”
The sentiment is, indeed, widespread. “The only time people become worried is
when the number of missiles [decreases], when the noise stops,” another Iranian
civilian concurred, “then for several hours everyone gets stressed thinking [a
cease-fire] is going to happen again.”
The fall of the Islamic Republic would be an epochal
development. The United States and Israel are methodically paving the way for
such an event. If they succeed, a better world awaits all of us. Whatever
setbacks American and Israeli forces experienced in the pursuit of that outcome
will be seen through posterity’s lens as a small price to have paid. But even
if the regime does not collapse, its offensive capabilities have been degraded
and its value to the anti-American axis is far more limited than it was on
February 27.
Whichever way you look at it, the U.S. and Israel are
advancing their interests and strengthening international security.
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