The war on Iran has failed – and the West knows it

Added: 2026-06-01

[00:00:00]Hello and welcome. So just under a year ago in June 2025, the US and Israel launched a war in Iran. It was sold to the world as a sort of short, sharp, surgical operation that would end Iran's nuclear program, decapitate its leadership, and ideally bring about the collapse of the Islamic Republic altogether.

[00:00:21]When that didn't work, they escalated.

[00:00:24]At the end of February this year, as you know, the US and Israel launched a much larger onslaught. They assassinated Iran's Supreme Leader Sad Ali Kame. They bombed energy infrastructure alongside schools, hospitals, bridges, and roads.

[00:00:38]In April, they imposed a naval blockade on Iran's ports intended to bring about econ economic collapse within weeks. And yet, here we are at the end of May 2026.

[00:00:49]Iran is still standing. The ceasefire, now around 7 weeks old, is holding just about. And the US is pushing hard for a deal that would end the war with talks taking place in Qatar this week. So I want to use this video to make a fairly simple argument which is this. The USIsraeli war on Iran has failed. Iran has emerged from it stronger not weaker.

[00:01:12]And you don't have to take it from me or indeed from the Iranians. You can hear it from the Western foreign policy establishment itself. So a couple of days ago, the Financial Times ran a column by Gideon Rakman under the headline, Iran is beating Trump at the art of the deal. And Rakman's argument is that in these negotiations, it's Tehran that has held all of the leverage. Iran's ability to close the Strait of Hormuz, through which around a fifth of the world's oil and gas flows, put enormous pressure on the global economy. Gas prices have risen massively in the US and Trump's poll ratings have fallen in the same measure. And so Rakman writes that Trump is now negotiating an agreement that looks in many respects worse than the nuclear deal that Obama signed back in 2015. The very deal the JCPOA that Trump tore up.

[00:02:02]And it's not just Gideon Rakman. Dan Shapiro former US ambassador to Israel has said that Iran has gained significant leverage for the future.

[00:02:11]quote by demonstrating it can control the strait by attacking its neighbors and US bases in the region and causing significant damage and by taking the US and Israel's best punch and surviving.

[00:02:22]End quote. So taking the best punch of the US and Israel and surviving. Uh this is you know these are these are big words uh bold statements and very significant. And from the Israeli side, Eli Grona, a former director general of Netanyahu's own office, looked at the deal that's on the table from the US and summed it up in a single word, disaster.

[00:02:45]And perhaps most striking of all is the verdict of Robert Kagan. Kagan, as people will know, is no dove of any kind. He's one of the most influential neocon intellectuals in the US. a co-founder of the project for the new American century, a guy who championed the invasion of Iraq and spent years agitating for war in Iran. And now he's published a piece in the Atlantic with the rather telling title checkmate in Iran. And what he says is as follows.

[00:03:14]There will be no return to the status quo ante. No ultimate American triumph that will undo or overcome the harm done. With control of the strait, Iran emerges as the key player in the region and one of the key players in the world.

[00:03:28]The roles of China and Russia as Iran's allies are strengthened. The role of the United States is substantially diminished. And again, you know, we're talking about one of the original architects of the whole project. When Robert Kagan is telling you that this war has strengthened China and Russia and diminished the US, well, you should probably take it seriously. And the economist also had a very revealing piece on this question. It described how at every stage of this war, Washington thought it has found a silver bullet, right? Like they thought that assassinating Iran's leaders would force the regime to surrender. It did not.

[00:04:05]Then they gambled on a blockade of Iran's ports, which was supposed to cause economic collapse in a matter of weeks. It did not. Then they madly and magically pinned their hopes on Trump's visit to Beijing, imagining that Siinping might somehow crack the whip and forced the Iranians to accept American terms. Obviously, that didn't happen either. So, at every turn, as the economist puts it, the administration thought it could find a way to end the war on favorable terms, and at every turn, it has been disappointed. So, what does the deal on the table actually look like? In essence, it's this. Iran agrees to reopen the Straight of Hormuz to commercial shipping. In return, it gets phased relief from sanctions, including the unfreezing of billions of dollars of Iranian assets that are held abroad. And the nuclear question, which is supposedly the entire justification for the war, gets discussed in a future round of talks over a 30 to 60-day period with no firm commitments, which is an incredible climb down from the US if you think about it. The straight was only closed because of the war in the first place, you know. So Iran is being asked to do something that it only started doing in self-defense and in exchange it gets sanctions relief and it gets its assets unfrozen with probably no meaningful impact on its long-term enrichment capacity realistically speaking. And that's why Trump's own side is in open revolt at the moment.

[00:05:29]You've got Republican hawks like Lindsey Graeme, Ted Cruz, Mike Pompeo that have been lining up to denounce this deal.

[00:05:36]Cruz says he's deeply concerned. Pompeo said that the whole thing is not remotely America first and told Trump to just open the damn straight. Ironically, uh only a few weeks after Trump himself on his social media platform, Truth Social called on the Iranians to open the effing straight, you crazy bastards.

[00:05:57]Lindsey Graham warned that letting the Iranian government survive and become more powerful would be pouring gasoline onto the region. These people are furious precisely because they can see that this is nothing other than a defeat. Meanwhile, the Israelis of course don't want anything to do with this deal. Um Netanyahu and his people have been very clear about that and Trump's offering this ridiculous soap that part of the deal going forward should be that other countries in the region that haven't already signed up to the Abraham Accords, i.e. um established bilateral relations with Israel should do so, which is crazy. You know, uh first he's he includes um countries like Iran, which would never do something of that nature. And um he's including countries where the overwhelming lit, you know, pretty close to 100% of the population would be completely opposed to that, especially after what's happened in the last two and a half years in Gaza.

[00:06:59]Meanwhile, on the ground, the situation remains extremely tense, extremely fragile. Even in the middle of these talks that have been going on over the last week, the US Central Command has launched fresh strikes on southern Iran this week on missile sites and on boats, killing several members of the Revolutionary Guards. And then they have the audacity to describe these attacks during a ceasefire as being defensive.

[00:07:19]The Revolutionary Guards, in turn, have shot down a US Reaper drone over the Persian Gulf. So, I don't want to paint a rosy picture. you know, what we've got currently is not peace. Uh the blockade and the bombing have inflicted real suffering on the Iranian people. Um not to mention the Lebanese people, and the danger of a return to full-scale war is very real. But if the war does resume, Iran will not be fighting from a position of weakness. Iranian military commanders say their capacity is greater now than it was back in February.

[00:07:50]They've announced a renewed target bank and warned that any new round of fighting would be in their word in their words much more intense, heavier, and stronger than the previous two wars, reaching beyond the region with the option of shutting down all oil exports, all natural gas exports from the Gulf if Iran's own exports are stopped. So, in the language of military analysts, Iran has escalation dominance. It's Iran, it's not the US that can credibly threaten to make the cost of this war unbearable. And and those cost costs are global. The status quo hurts Iran economically without a doubt. Um people are suffering. Um but Iran is also battering or or the the situation is battering the world economy. It's driving up energy prices. It's disrupting the fertilizer trade. It's raising the real spectra of of a global food crisis. That's why Trump is in such a hurry to find a way out. His own allies around the world are telling him, including his allies in the global south, such as in India, in India, are telling him that they can't support this madness. Iran can absorb this as an existential struggle. The US is discovering that it can't indefinitely impose costs on the entire planet in the service of a war. It is not winning. It is not going to win. So, what's the global significance of all of this? The war in Iran was never really just about Iran. It was about whether the US can still impose its will on the world or whether the unipolar moment is finally coming to an end. It was about whether a country in the global south can withstand the military might of the US and its allies. And the answer in Iran's case has been a very clear no. And that has wide-ranging repercussions. Iran is part of the global south. It's part of a global emerging multipolar project.

[00:09:35]Iran's a member of the bricks. is a member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization of the Bel and Road. It has a 25-ear strategic partnership with China, a deepening relationship with Russia. And when President Xi and Putin met in Beijing last week, their joint statement explicitly condemned, and I quote, treacherous military strikes against other countries and the assassination of leaders of sovereign states. That was a unmistakable reference to the war in Iran. China and Russia have made clear diplomatically and economically that Iran is not going to be isolated. Iran's not going to be picked off. So the empire set out to make an example of Iran. Instead, Iran has become an example of something else.

[00:10:16]That the US can no longer simply impose its will and that the center of gravity in the world is shifting. So, thank you very much for watching. See you next time. If you've got uh any response to the video, please leave a message in the comments. Thank you.