Iran War and Washington’s strategic losses

Josh Marshall has a good summary of how he’s framing the Iran War situation in his reporting:

You can see the reality of the power balance in the visible fact that Trump wants negotiations and an end to the conflict more than Iran does. He keeps asking for them or demanding them. Iran holds back. They have the upper hand, notwithstanding all the vast damage to infrastructure, civilian and military, Iran has suffered.

It all comes back to the foundational fact that Trump lost control of the situation and lost the conflict itself in the first days. Everything since has simply been an effort to ignore or bluster through or deny that fact. [my emphasis] (1)

He blundered into a nasty war with Iran alongside Benjamin Netanyahu’s rogue government. Now he’s genuinely floundering.

Juan Cole, citing NBC News, writes that “during the 39-day war this spring, Iran did much more extensive damage to US bases than Washington had admitted, and did it with a relatively primitive old F-5 fighter jet.” (2)

Cole also mentions that Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi on a diplomatic mission to Pakistan and Oman “did not meet, and had not been planning to meet, with US negotiators Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, whom Tehran does not trust because it had been talking to them in Oman when Trump suddenly started bombing Iran.”

It’s sobering to think that resolving a very complicated situation like this is being handled by a US administration that can’t be bothered to follow any kind of normal, organized diplomatic procedure. Here Trump’s Mafiosi tendencies are serving him poorly, at least if getting a sound peace with Iran is any part of his intention. As Imran Khalid observes, “With diplomatic trust between major powers at a historic low, the international community is witnessing a period of profound geopolitical unpredictability.” (3)

And having a fanatical, arrogant prick Christian Nationalist zealot and all-rou9nd prick like Pete Hegseth in charge of the military certain doesn’t help to produce sound policies, either.

As Jon Alterman and Alie Vaez point out, Trump and Netanyahu’s Iran War has accelerated the relative decline of US power in comparison to Russia and China:

In Iran, Russia and China see the possibility of turning the tables on the United States. Both countries believe that a U.S. government enmeshed in endless Middle Eastern wars is one that would make much less trouble for them. Indeed, China’s international position improved remarkably in the 20 years after the September 11 attacks, when the United States was preoccupied with wars in the Middle East. As Indian Minister of External Affairs S. Jaishankar memorably noted: “For two decades, China had been winning but not fighting [in the Middle East], while the U.S. was fighting without winning.” [my emphasis] (4)

And, as Khalid observes, China “is not rushing to fill the military vacuum [created by Trump’s policies] with its own naval flotillas. It is instead positioning itself as the reliable, continuous alternative to a volatile Washington.”

It’s also important to keep in mind that the Iran War has also involved the US in renewed conflict in Iraq. When the US and Israel began the current war, Israel struck targets in Iraq against pro-Iranian militia groups.

The Cheney-Bush Administration and their own Pete Hegseth in the person of Don Rumsfeld had fantasized that they would decapitate Saddam Hussein’s regime and Iraq would quickly be transformed into a kinda-sorta democracy that would be staunchly pro-US and pro-Israel. Instead they got an Iran-friendly regime, in no small part because of the large Shia population in Iraq. As Lahib Higel explains:

[T]he U.S. invasion [of Iraq] had put hundreds of thousands of troops answering to Washington, which had been Tehran’s chief foreign adversary since the Islamic Revolution in 1979, on Iran’s western land border. On the other hand, it had removed another mortal foe in Saddam Hussein, eventually replacing him with a government backed partly by Shiite Islamists who had spent years in exile in Iran. Still feeling the trauma of the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, the Islamic Republic saw a chance to bring a more politically adjacent Iraq onto its side while hamstringing any scheme the U.S. might hatch to effect regime change in Tehran as well as in Baghdad. To counter the U.S. presence, it began cultivating Iraqi political parties and arming paramilitary groups. [my emphasis] (5)

Iran has also been attacking anti-Iran Kurdish forces in Iraq’s Kurdish area. Higel comments that remaining US forces in Iraq, which are in Kurdistan, are scheduled to be fully withdrawn in September. Meanwhile, of course, they are an obvious target for Iran to strike. And she notes, “The Iran-aligned groups [in Iraq] view the conflict as an existential matter both for their sponsor Iran and themselves. They seek to accelerate the exit of all U.S. troops from Iraq, as per their longstanding demand, while driving a durable wedge between Washington and Baghdad.”

The Iraqi government has been following a balancing strategy between the US Iran prior to the current war. But now that approach of “balancing the U.S. against Iran to insulate the country from external shocks, pursued by successive Iraqi governments, no longer seems workable.” As Higel observes, increased destabilization inside Iraq could delay the final withdrawal of American troops. There are lots of things that can still go wrong, and that makes the catastrophic state of US diplomacy under this administration even more of a problem. As has often before been the case, the Kurds being supported by the US could be damaged even more by the course of this war.

Robert Pape, who has been running war games simulations of an Iran War for years, has been eager to share his observations about the current situation: (6)

Notes:

(1) Marshall, Josh (2026): Making Sense of the Iran War. TPM 04/25/2026. <https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/making-sense-of-the-iran-war> (Accessed: 2026-26-04).

(2) Cole, Juan (2026): Iran: IRGC Insists on Control of Hormuz as Araghchi Seeks Mediation. Informed Comment 04/26/2026. <https://www.juancole.com/2026/04/insists-araghchi-mediation.html> (Accessed: 2026-26-04).

(3) Khalid, Imran (2026): Beijing’s Calculated Patience in the Middle East. Foreign Policy in Focus 04/24/2026. <https://fpif.org/beijings-calculated-patience-in-the-middle-east/> (Accessed: 2026-26-04).

(4) Alterman, Jon & Vaez, Alie (2026): How China and Russia Can Exploit the Iran War. Foreign Affairs 04/23/2026. <https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/how-china-and-russia-can-exploit-iran-war> (Accessed: 2026-26-04).

(5) Higel, Lahib (2026): Iraq in the Vise. International Crisis Group 04/20/2026. <https://www.crisisgroup.org/qna/middle-east-north-africa/iraq-iran-united-states-israelpalestine/iraq-vice> (Accessed: 2026-26-04).

(6) Robert Pape: “Trump Has DOOMED Us!” Iran Will DESTROY Presidency. Breaking Points YouTube channel 04/22/2026. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcfvn8PvLJ0> (Accessed: 2026-26-04).