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National Security & Defense
Whatever This Is in Iran, It Isn’t Victory
President Donald Trump, flanked by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, speaks during a press conference in the White House briefing room in Washington, D.C., April 6, 2026.(Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)
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By Jeffrey Blehar
April 9, 2026 4:02 PM
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Color me skeptical.
The Iran war has been called to a temporary halt — or so we are officially told to believe — at least for now. After escalating from threatening “bridge and tunnel” day against Iran on Easter Sunday (in other words, a devastation of their infrastructure) to threatening civilizational apocalypse on Tuesday morning, President Trump immediately turned around and declared a cease-fire on Tuesday afternoon.
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He did this — in a Truth Social post — even though the “negotiating terms” he said the U.S. was working from were entirely different from Iran’s and wholly incompatible with them. And even though the Iranian regime said almost immediately that it recognized no such cease-fire. Who cares? JD Vance will “lead talks” this weekend anyway, whoever they’re with and whatever they’re worth.
In fact, as I write this, the Iranian regime continues to lob missiles at its neighbors and keep the Strait of Hormuz shut. Only Donald Trump and his administration are proceeding as if business has been suddenly returned to usual — which it assuredly hasn’t. The United States may wield immense military power, but the members of the Iranian regime hold the decisive (and permanently asymmetrical) leverage so long as they live in Iran, simply by living in Iran. And when regime survival is the sole imperative, successfully persisting as an ideological continuity against the worst America could throw at them is the important victory metric. Who blinked first? Donald Trump did.
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So Donald Trump, panicked about roiled oil and commodities markets and with nobody in NATO coming to sweep up his mess for him, has fallen back on a cheap diplomatic PR maneuver to back himself out of the geopolitical and rhetorical corner he walked himself into. As a result, the war goes on for all — except Donald Trump, who looks like he’s hiding a seven-deuce offsuit behind the hand of cards he dealt himself. We now have a “one-sided cease-fire.”
Never let it be said that Donald Trump and men like Pete Hegseth aren’t willing to sell you another story: They claim that regime change has already occurred. On March 31, Hegseth sternly warned that “this new regime, because regime change has occurred, should be wiser than the last.” A day later, Trump addressed the American people with the same message: Regime change was both “not our goal” and “had already occurred.” Needless to say, this sleight of hand seeks to confuse its audience about the difference between a regime’s leaders (dead, and replaced with unknowns drawn from the same ideological cadre) and the regime itself (very much intact).
A week later? The facts speak for themselves: Trump made one last apocalyptic threat, then backed down. Sure, Trump says he’s keeping U.S. forces in position to resume attacks should the Iranians fail to bend the knee — and nobody doubts that Trump will launch as many rockets as he feels necessary to “save face” — but even if he fully recommits, how well did this strategy work out last time? Think about it: Who called a halt here, after all? It wasn’t the Iranians. They’re still there, unapologetic as ever. It was Trump, and not out of the kindness of his heart. He was outmaneuvered.
Trump doesn’t want to admit to America why he suddenly decided to give Iran breathing room, but everybody with eyes to see understands that the pressure from Iran’s Hormuz blockade on domestic and international markets became too great. Setting aside Trump’s endless rhetorical churn and looking only at his deeds, the world has learned a clear lesson from this: Trump buckled, and he could well buckle again, because the Iranians will always be there at the Strait of Hormuz. (Certainly the Iranians believe this to be the case.)
So now we are being fed intolerable hogswill from our president, who suddenly avers that he favors turning the previously open international waters of the Strait of Hormuz into a permanent Iranian tollbooth: which, if it occurs, would be an unmistakable defeat not only for U.S. geopolitical interests but the entire world. “We’re thinking of doing it as a joint venture. It’s a way of securing it.” Elsewhere he boasted about a new “Golden Age of the Middle East” where “big money will be made.” It is easy enough to say, as some have, that this language is bloviatory nonsense, and that none of the U.S. Arab partners in the Middle East would ever permit Iran to gain a permanent stranglehold over their economies.
But this is where Iran has now been allowed to set its negotiating position, thanks to Trump’s foolhardy blundering and maximalist rhetoric: If and when they decide they want to meter the flow of one-fifth of the world’s oil, they now have precedent and demonstrated capacity on their side to do it. Some insist that Iran doesn’t have the physical ability to permanently menace shipping in the strait, which is extreme wishcasting absent any sort of permanent regional enforcement. (Hence Trump’s increasingly desperate cries to Europe to “open your own strait.”) Any “open” strait recloses the second Iran decides to lob another missile at an oil tanker: Businesses will not risk it, and insurance will not underwrite it. So the toll now will be paid — and most likely in yuan.
What then for America, after it has moved its sea power back to the United States? How will you dislodge the Iranian regime then? The U.S. already tried and — as of today — failed. Wait for an internal revolt? We waited for those for 47 years. The Iranian regime just slaughtered a large swath of its most active protest class prior to the war itself; if they survive this war, they will have no trouble reestablishing control throughout the nation. (What is that you say — their economy is destroyed? Their economy was destroyed. That didn’t move the meter enough to do anything except provide more cannon fodder on the streets for the IRGC to mow down.) There is a price to be paid for striking first — and missing.
There are those will insist that I am reacting “too soon.” And yes, nobody can be sure where the exact course of the war will head next — we could be back to launching wild bombing raids by the time this piece is published, for all anyone knows. But this is a piece I could have written on March 1. The same strategic considerations that applied then apply now. Nothing I have seen since then has dissuaded me from my position in the slightest, merely fortified it. A war where the Iranian regime survives was the wrong war to fight. War is a strange game like that; sometimes the only winning move is not to play.
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