Editors at National Review Online assess the latest developments in the Iran war.
Amid presidential threats to destroy Iranian civilization, Trump and Iran signed on to a two-week cease-fire mediated by Pakistan, a client of China.
The U.S. and Iran have two sets of negotiating demands that are worlds apart. The difference is between Iran being completely defanged as a regional power and verifiably giving up its nuclear aspirations on the one hand, and Iran and its proxies getting formally recognized as regional players, with a significant source of new revenue via the Strait of Hormuz, on the other. This is the kind of gap in worldviews and strategic ends that is the predicate for a shooting war — which, indeed, it was a month ago and may well be again sooner rather than later. …
… On the positive side of the ledger, on February 27, Iran had air defenses, a navy, an air force, and a rapidly increasing missile and drone force; it has none of those today. The upper echelons of its political and IRGC leadership have been wiped out. Its defense-industrial capacity, nuclear infrastructure, petrochemical industry, and repressive apparatus have all taken hammer blows. Its economy, in a shambles prior to the war, is now in even worse shape.
From the perspective of October 6, 2023, the Iranian regime and its proxies around the region have suffered catastrophic setbacks.
For all that, though, the Islamic Republic is still standing, despite Trump’s insistence it has already effectively fallen. Not only that, Tehran has chips to play during the negotiations and post-combat phase more generally — namely, de facto control of the Strait of Hormuz and the demonstrated ability to punish the Gulf states even while under sustained military pressure.
There were several problems in the strategic conception of the U.S.-Israel campaign.
One was that regime change, the only event that would have brought a decisive end to the war, was unlikely to be achieved from the air.
