Ben Norton
It is now so widely accepted that the US is losing the war that even neoconservative hardliners admit it. They lament that Iran’s victory reflects the decline of US hegemony and the rise of multipolarity.
It is now generally accepted that the United States is losing the war against Iran, which Washington itself started.
Even some neoconservative hawks – the architects of the wars against Iraq, Libya and Syria, who for years advocated an attack on Iran – have now reluctantly admitted that Tehran is winning this war and that Washington’s defeat will have massive geopolitical repercussions.
“There will be no return to the status quo ante, no final American triumph that could undo or overcome the damage done,” wrote prominent neoconservative Robert Kagan in The Atlantic magazine. “With control of the Strait of Hormuz, Iran is rising to become a key player in the region and one of the key players worldwide. The role of China and Russia as Iran’s allies is strengthened; the role of the United States, on the other hand, is considerably weakened.”
Western media are reporting that the US is losing the war against Iran.
Just a few weeks after the United States and Israel launched this war of aggression on February 28, the British newspaper The Independent admitted: “Iran is the clear winner, because Trump’s desperate peace offer shows that he wants to get out of the war.”
Shortly afterwards, the US corporate media also began to admit this.
In mid-April, the Wall Street Journal published an opinion piece stating that “the Iran war appears to be failing.” It was written by Gerard Baker, the newspaper’s conservative former editor-in-chief and a former Trump supporter.
Meanwhile, US intelligence agencies have passed on information to US media indicating that the war is going very badly.
The New York Times reported in May, citing US intelligence sources, that Iran still had access to the majority of its missile capabilities.
Tehran can still use 30 of its 33 missile sites on the Strait of Hormuz, the most important bottleneck for oil transit worldwide, through which about 20% of the world’s traded crude oil was transported daily before the war.
Trump imposed a US naval blockade on the Strait of Hormuz to stop Iranian oil exports.
However, US intelligence officials admitted in a Washington Post article that Iran was capable of withstanding this US military blockade for many months.
Furthermore, US intelligence officials told numerous media outlets – including CNN, NBC News, the New York Times and the Washington Post – that Iran had succeeded in destroying or at least severely damaging the majority of US military bases and other facilities in West Asia.
At the same time, Fortune magazine reported that the US military had quickly exhausted its missile stockpile.
Fortune quoted Linda Bilmes, a lecturer at the Harvard Kennedy School, who estimated that the US war against Iran is expected to cost more than one trillion dollars.
Trump publicly denied all of this and instead vehemently claimed victory for himself.
“They are militarily defeated. Perhaps they themselves are not aware of it,” Trump said about Iran.
However, the constant leaks from US intelligence officials to a wide range of media outlets paint a very different picture. They show that this war is going very badly.
Neoconservative hawks admit that Iran is winning the war
In fact, the war is going so badly that some of the most prominent neoconservative ideologues in the United States have publicly admitted that Iran is winning.
This was the conclusion of an article published in the pro-Atlantic mouthpiece “The Atlantic.” The article was titled “Checkmate in Iran” and subtitled “Washington can neither undo nor control the consequences of defeat in this war.”
The author of this essay was none other than Robert Kagan, perhaps the most influential neoconservative intellectual.
Kagan was one of the first supporters of the US invasion of Iraq and long advocated for a similar war against Iran.
Kagan was a co-founder of the influential think tank Project for the New American Century (PNAC), which came closest to being described as the “church of neoconservatism”.
The PNAC pursued a hyper-aggressive foreign policy. Its neoconservative supporters were proud that the United States ruled a global empire. They believed the US military should wage war everywhere to overthrow independent governments that opposed Washington’s hegemony.
The founding members of the PNAC included several high-ranking officials from the George W. Bush administration, such as Dick Cheney (Vice President) and Paul Wolfowitz (Deputy Secretary of Defense and former President of the World Bank).
Another founding signatory of the PNAC Declaration of Principles was John Bolton, a hardliner who had worked in the Bush administration and was brought back by Donald Trump as national security advisor during his first term (and was supposed to oversee Washington’s attempted coup in Venezuela).
The original alliance of neoconservative members of the PNAC split during the 2016 elections. Roughly half supported Trump, the rest Hillary Clinton.
Kagan was among the prominent neoconservatives who evolved into “Never Trump” Republicans.
Kagan is also married to another influential neoconservative, Victoria Nuland, who served as US ambassador to NATO during the George W. Bush administration and later held top positions in the State Department under Barack Obama and Joe Biden.
Nuland played a key role in the 2014 coup in Ukraine, which triggered a proxy war that has lasted for more than a decade.
Against this backdrop, Kagan’s article in The Atlantic, in which she admits that Iran will defeat the United States, seems almost unbelievable. It’s nearly as if the Pope were to publicly admit he was wrong and convert to Islam.
Kagan is among the most ardent proponents of the war in US politics. Therefore, the following passage he authored is particularly significant (emphasis added):
The defeat in the current confrontation with Iran will be entirely different [compared to the US defeats in the wars in Vietnam and Afghanistan]. It can neither be undone nor ignored. There will be no return to the status quo ante, no final American triumph that could undo or overcome the damage done. The Strait of Hormuz will no longer be “open” as it once was. With control of the strait, Iran rises to become a key player in the region and one of the key players in the world. The role of China and Russia as Iran’s allies is strengthened; the role of the United States, on the other hand, is considerably weakened. Far from demonstrating American strength, as the war’s proponents have repeatedly claimed, the conflict has revealed an America unreliable and incapable of completing projects it has begun. This will set off a chain reaction worldwide as friends and foes alike prepare for America’s failure.
Furthermore, Kagan is not the only prominent neoconservative to have come to this conclusion.
The other co-founder of the Project for a New American Century, Bill Kristol, reluctantly confirmed this.
Kristol is an editor of the neoconservative website The Bulwark, where he lamented that the United States had been “humiliated” by Trump’s failed war against Iran.
The US war against Iran is extremely unpopular among Americans.
How can we explain the sudden resistance of these notorious neoconservative hawks, who have fought for decades for a war against Iran?
They have apparently recognized the signs of the times. The war has been a catastrophic failure and is extremely unpopular at home.
According to a poll published in May by NPR, PBS News and Marist Poll, 60% of Americans disapprove of Trump’s actions in the Iran war, while only 33% support them.
A YouGov poll in May found that only 13% of Americans believe the US will win the war against Iran, while 39% believe it will not and will not win.
Prominent neoconservatives are simply abandoning the sinking ship. They realize that Trump and the Republican Party are extremely unpopular and that this war will have serious consequences for them.
