America Is Winning and Iran Is Losing — Badly

By Morgan Ortagus

Thursday, June 04, 2026

 

If you pay attention only to the comments of certain world leaders or read the opinion sections in certain national papers, you might be led to believe that the last three months in the Middle East saw the downfall of the American economy, the destruction of the U.S. military, and the rise of the Islamic Republic of Iran as a power that can rival the United States.

 

But had any of that been the case, perhaps the Iranian regime would have immediately let its people back onto the internet, after months of digital darkness, to revel in its strength and glory. Instead, the regime is increasingly paranoid as Iranians return to the web and broadcast the authentic, devastated state of conditions in Tehran and across the country. Indeed, Iran’s manicured façade of strength and resilience crumbles once you listen to its people.

 

Here’s the reality: The regime’s economy is in free fall, its military has been obliterated, and its attacks against international shipping and energy in the Gulf, far from a show of strength, are the desperate gasps of a drowning regime. As CENTCOM commander Admiral Brad Cooper testified to Congress in May, the U.S. military managed to dismantle 47 years of Iranian military investment in just 38 days.

 

Many Americans question why this war was necessary in the first place. There is the technically correct answer: Through its missile and drone production, Iran was rapidly approaching a dangerous conventional deterrence that could have protected the regime in reconstituting its nuclear program had it been left untouched.

 

But the broader truth is that this war has been ongoing for 47 years. While the Islamic Republic and its terror proxies killed thousands of Americans, U.S. presidents of both parties responded with a policy of appeasement, weakness, and fear of Tehran.

 

America stood back while our enemies killed scores of our soldiers. We let the Iranian regime and its “Axis of Resistance” build up massive arsenals of advanced weapons. Republican and Democratic presidents alike took little action as Iran took our diplomats hostage, bombed our Marines in Beirut, encircled Israel, blew up our soldiers in Iraq, and plotted assassinations against American officials on American soil. Barack Obama and Joe Biden even rewarded Iran’s hostage-taking with billion-dollar ransom payments and responded to their nuclear extortion with toothless deals that merely kicked the can down the road to future leaders.

 

By contrast, President Trump’s approach to the Middle East is not a policy of appeasement or fear. It is a policy of courage.

 

After last year’s decisive strikes, it would have been incredibly easy for the president to declare victory and leave the remainder of Iran’s threats to his successors. The conventionally smart choice politically ahead of the midterms would have been to do nothing: to ignore Iran’s drones and ballistic missiles that could have built a deterrent shield for their nuclear program, and to ignore their support for terrorists.

 

Some point to Iran’s defiant posture at the negotiating table as evidence that Tehran retains leverage. But don’t be fooled: Iran’s hardline stance in negotiations is mostly a smokescreen, a well-worn regime tactic deployed precisely when they’re at their weakest. They know that appearing submissive invites more pressure, so they display a veneer of strength that they no longer possess. We’ve seen this playbook before: For years, Iran stalled nuclear talks and issued maximalist demands not from a position of power but to buy time and obscure the depth of their vulnerability. Today, with their military shattered, their economy hemorrhaging hundreds of millions of dollars per day in lost oil revenue, and their terrorist fproxy network starved of weapons and cash, the bravado at the table is a tell, not a threat.

 

I’m well aware that fighting back against the Iranian threat is not easy — it has real human costs. We must always honor the memory of the 13 brave U.S. servicemembers who have given their lives in this war. Yet their sacrifice has the potential to end Iran’s decades of war against the United States, our troops and citizens, and our way of life.

 

Courage alone can bring us to a place of strength and security, and a step closer to a future where the brave people of Iran and the good people of the Middle East and the world will be free from the scourge of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

 

However, this future will never happen if America is guided by a policy of fear. Such a mindset leads to weakness, which inevitably leads to war — but on our enemies’ terms, not ours.

 

Through the bravery of our incredible armed forces, and enormous assistance from Israel, Iran’s top nuclear scientists are dead. The country’s nuclear facilities lie in ruin. We have damaged or destroyed 85 percent of Iran’s ballistic missile, drone, and naval industrial base. Iran’s air force and air defenses are practically nonexistent. More than 150 Iranian vessels lie at the bottom of the Persian Gulf — virtually their entire navy.

 

The Islamic Republic’s forces cannot win on the battlefield, so they are pouring resources into the field of battle they know best: propaganda. That is why their propaganda budget is six times larger than their diplomatic budget.

 

Still, what the regime doesn’t admit in their Lego videos is that desperation is setting in. An Iranian official admitted that 2 million jobs have been lost since the war began. Their currency’s value has crumbled. The governor of Iran’s central bank warned that it could take twelve years for Iran to rebuild its economy and that inflation could reach 180 percent.

 

Each day that President Trump’s oil embargo on Iran continues, Iran loses $435 million in revenue. Those funds were the financial lifeblood of the Islamic Republic’s terror and military budget, flowing straight to the IRGC, Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis. Now their cash cow has been put on hold.

 

The regime can no longer arm or resupply Hezbollah, the Houthis, Hamas, or their Iraqi militias with advanced weapons — an unprecedented development. The regime’s soldiers aren’t getting paid. Desertions have started in the regime’s ranks. All of these hamstrings on the Iranian war effort will get worse as American pressure continues. As we saw in Syria, the loyalty of goons lasts only as long as the paychecks keep coming in.

 

Today, we fight the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism. We fight to ensure that they never have the means to obtain a nuclear weapon and that they can never deter our efforts to obstruct their nuclear aims. We fight them on our terms. We have slaughtered their legions of terror and destroyed the weapons they use to wage war and oppression. Thanks to President Trump and our abandonment of a fear-based approach toward Iran, we are winning.