How Half a Year of War with Iran Weakened the United States

The war launched six months ago by the US and Israel against Iran was supposed to be lightning fast. With the aim of quickly eliminating the Iranian regime and its nuclear program. The removal of leader Ali Khamenei and other top officials of the Islamist country at the beginning of the conflict was the first step. On March 11, US President Donald Trump declared that America had won the war. It was not true. Even five weeks of intense bombing did not lead to victory.

Washington did not expect Iran to block the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of global oil and gas exports pass. Nor that it would attack US bases in the Gulf countries with missiles and drones, along with their energy infrastructure. It was a strategic shock with the risk of the collapse of the world economy. Rising gasoline prices in the US have become the biggest political problem of the war for Trump.

That is why the first ceasefire was declared on April 8. Since then, the state of "neither war nor peace" has lasted, with occasional armed clashes. The stalemate was not broken by the June memorandum between Iran. The agreement envisaged a sixty-day ceasefire within which a peace agreement was to be negotiated. But diplomatic negotiations have frozen and peace is not in sight.

Tehran considers control of the Strait of Hormuz a "nuclear weapon." By blocking the narrow sea route, it has caused economic problems for much of the world. Controlling the strait is a key part of Iran's geopolitical and strategic power.

The Americans did not move anything about it. The wealthy monarchies of the Gulf realized that the American patron was not able to fully defend them and began to look for their own security alternatives. This is shown by the emergence of a trilateral military alliance of Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan.

And perhaps the Gulf states will look for ways to get along with Iran, even at the cost of recognizing its right to control the strait with the collection of fees for its passage. Iran is already negotiating with Oman about the new regime around the Strait. Without the Americans.

In addition, they are running out of stocks of sophisticated missiles, despite the fact that the war was short. The US Army command is already cautiously indicating that it would be good to find a "way out".

Military strikes are now being replaced by "unprecedented" anti-Iranian economic sanctions. They are supposed to affect not only Iran, but also the countries that trade with it. But there is a problem - China is one of them. Beijing could really flood Washington, which Trump does not need before Chinese leader Xi Jinping's visit to the US in September. Sanctions are unlikely to bring Iran to its knees, even though its economic situation is not good.

In an article for The Atlantic on Tuesday, American conservative political scientist Robert Kagan states that Iran has forced the world's dominant power in the conflict to back down and is likely to emerge stronger, at least temporarily.

Trump, on the other hand, is dramatically losing support from the American public because of the war. The decision to go to war became his strategic mistake.

Miloš Balabán, Právo Daily