The war on Iran was a strategic disaster for America and Israel
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Sami Al-Arian
on
Mon, 06/22/2026 - 09:58
The Islamabad agreement reads less like terms imposed on a defeated state than like a retreat from the American-Zionist project to remake the region
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian signs the memorandum of understanding to end the war with the United States and Israel, in Tehran on 18 June 2026 (Iranian Presidency Handout/AFP)
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When neoconservative writer Robert Kagan, who spent decades as a cheerleader for America's forever wars, warned that the confrontation with Iran could become one of the greatest strategic defeats in modern American history, many dismissed his assessment as alarmist and exaggerated.
After all, the conventional wisdom in the West is that Iran had suffered extensive damage. Its military infrastructure was targeted, its foremost leaders, senior commanders and scientists were assassinated, its economy was battered, and the Axis of Resistance absorbed serious blows across multiple fronts.
How could anyone speak of Iranian victory under such circumstances?
The answer depends on a question that war experts and military historians have wrestled with for centuries: how should victory be measured?
If wars are judged by the amount of destruction inflicted, then the side possessing overwhelming military superiority will almost always appear victorious. Yet history repeatedly demonstrates that destruction and victory are not the same thing.
The United States destroyed vast portions of Vietnam and still failed to achieve its objectives, while the Soviet Union inflicted enormous damage in Afghanistan and still withdrew in defeat.
The US spent two decades in Afghanistan and trillions of dollars only to watch the government it had built collapse within days of its departure. In Iraq, it carried out regime change and attempted social engineering before having to withdraw in humiliation after facing fierce resistance and spending trillions of dollars.
In each case, military power has proven it can destroy but not necessarily dictate political outcomes. This distinction is essential for understanding the recent confrontation between Iran and the US-Israel axis.
The war was never fundamentally about nuclear enrichment, nor was it simply about missiles, sanctions or Iranian support for regional allies.
At its core, it was a fight over the future balance of power in West Asia. Washington and Tel Aviv sought to consolidate a regional order built on Israeli supremacy and American dominance, while forcing Iran to abandon the policies and alliances that had made it the principal obstacle to that project.
By that measure, the war ended not with an Iranian surrender but with a profound failure of the American-Zionist project.
A new regional order
To understand Iran's victory, one must begin before the first missile was launched.
On 22 September 2023, standing before the United Nations General Assembly, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu unveiled his vision of a "New Middle East".
The map he displayed effectively erased Palestine, treating a question long considered the central issue of the region as a problem that had already been solved.
The future, according to this vision, belonged to normalisation agreements under the so-called Abraham Accords, economic corridors, technological integration and strategic partnerships linking Israel to the Persian or Arab Gulf and beyond.
The Abraham Accords were only the beginning.
Israel's integration into US Central Command, expanding relations with US-allied Gulf states, and the proposed India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC), all pointed towards a regional order in which Israel would emerge as the dominant military, economic and technological power.
The Zionist regime would provide security, Iran would be isolated, Palestine would be marginalised and resistance movements would be weakened or eliminated. The region would finally be reorganised around Israeli supremacy backed by American power.
The events of 7 October 2023 shattered that vision.
What followed was more than a war on Gaza; it was a regional struggle over the future political order of the Middle East. The subsequent campaigns against Gaza, Lebanon, Yemen, Syria, Iraq and eventually Iran, as well as the attempt to confiscate wide areas in the West Bank, were all connected to this larger objective.
The very outcome that Netanyahu and his Zionist and imperialist allies sought to prevent ultimately became the defining consequence of the war. Palestine returned to the centre of global politics, and Iran survived the assault designed to break it.
The assumptions underlying much of the American and Israeli strategy rested on the belief that sustained military pressure, economic warfare, an extensive sanctions regime, cyber operations, assassinations and internal unrest could eventually trigger political collapse or force strategic capitulation.
For years, discussions in Washington and Tel Aviv revolved around various forms of regime change or collapse, whether through maximum pressure, internal fragmentation, elite divisions, economic exhaustion or social upheaval.
None of these succeeded. The Islamic Republic suffered greatly, particularly economically, but its system remained intact. State institutions continued to function, command structures remained operational, leadership succession took place without systemic disruption, and government ministries continued their work.
The stereotypes and perceptions built through years of western propaganda and Israeli hasbara about Iran being run by an irrational theocratic "regime" proved not only overblown but also strategically costly.
Iran preserved its sovereignty. Wars of this nature are fought fundamentally for political submission rather than territory.
Yet despite the intensity of the confrontation, there was no surrender, no externally imposed settlement, no acceptance of Israeli supremacy and no abandonment of independent decision-making.
Index of defeat
The contrast between the objectives that launched the war and the realities that emerged afterwards could not be starker.
The war began with demands that effectively amounted to a strategic surrender. It ended with negotiations that accepted, in substance, many of the positions Iran had insisted upon from the beginning of the crisis.
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Throughout the confrontation, Tehran maintained a remarkably consistent position: diplomacy could proceed only after aggression ceased.
The logic of coercive diplomacy assumes that military pressure creates negotiating leverage, but Iran effectively reversed that equation, insisting that pressure itself had to stop before meaningful negotiations could occur. As the conflict evolved, Washington increasingly sought a diplomatic off-ramp rather than dictating terms.
The clearest evidence of this reversal emerged not on the battlefield but at the negotiating table.
The memorandum of understanding (MoU) reached in Islamabad revealed the scale of American retreat from its original maximalist position. Far from resembling the terms imposed upon a defeated state, the document acknowledged Iran as a sovereign actor whose cooperation was necessary for regional stability.
The primary breakthrough in the MoU reportedly commits the US, Iran and their allies to the immediate and permanent termination of military operations on all fronts, including Lebanon. This serves as a direct political recognition of the regional character of the war and, implicitly, of the Axis of Resistance as part of the strategic equation.
Washington and Tel Aviv had long attempted to treat each front separately, isolating Gaza from Lebanon, Lebanon from Iran, and Iran from the wider regional resistance network. Iran insisted on the opposite: that the war had to end across all fronts, not merely against Iran itself.
If this provision holds, it represents a major Iranian achievement because it ties the security of Lebanon and the broader regional front to the end of American-Zionist aggression. It remains to be seen how Gaza will figure into this arrangement, as Iran insists it is included while the Zionist regime continues to resist such an interpretation.
Crucially, the document also binds both sides to respect each other's sovereignty and territorial integrity and to refrain from interference in internal affairs.
Since the 1953 coup against Mohammad Mossadegh and especially since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Washington has repeatedly sought to shape Iran's internal trajectory through sanctions, sabotage, covert action, political pressure and support for destabilising forces, so a pledge of noninterference, if implemented honestly, marks a dramatic retreat from decades of regime-change policy.
It means that any effort to arm separatist groups, undermine the stability of the state, or engineer a collapse would violate the agreement itself.
In a major maritime concession, the MoU requires Washington to remove its naval blockade and end impediments against Iran while eventually withdrawing forces from proximity to the Islamic Republic.
The framework also gives Iran a central role in restoring safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz, including demining, technical arrangements and future discussions with Oman and other littoral states regarding administration and maritime services.
Major reversals
The broader economic and diplomatic provisions reveal the full extent of this retreat. Rather than further isolating Iran, the agreement reportedly envisions reconstruction assistance, economic integration, sanctions relief, renewed oil exports, access to frozen assets, banking and insurance waivers and a framework for normalisation of commercial relations.
The MoU reportedly does not require Iran to dismantle its nuclear programme or abandon enrichment.
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Iran reiterates its longstanding position that it does not seek nuclear weapons, but questions concerning enrichment and nuclear material remain subject to negotiated arrangements rather than imposed surrender. Iran was not compelled to accept the Libyan model, dismantle its infrastructure or relinquish its technological capabilities.
The agreement also reportedly prohibits new sanctions and additional military deployments during negotiations, limiting Washington's ability to escalate while talks proceed. The reported release of frozen Iranian assets and the possibility of eventual endorsement through a binding UN Security Council resolution would further constrain future efforts to restore the old framework of maximum pressure.
If implemented as written, these provisions would represent one of the most significant strategic reversals in recent American policy towards Iran.
The MoU is therefore not merely a diplomatic document. It is an index of defeat for the American-Zionist strategy.
The war began with demands for Iran's surrender, and ended with American commitments to end the war, respect sovereignty, remove blockades, withdraw forces, discuss sanctions relief, permit oil exports, release assets and negotiate nuclear issues without imposing dismemberment.
This is precisely why the Zionist regime and its supporters opposed it so fiercely.
For Netanyahu, the MoU was a strategic disaster. He has repeatedly sought to widen the conflict and use Lebanon as a mechanism to derail negotiations, but this strategy eventually collided with American interests.
As negotiations advanced, Iran showed that it was willing to suspend talks while signalling that renewed escalation in Lebanon could trigger broader retaliation, especially against northern Israel.
At that point, the Trump administration faced a difficult choice: it could continue supporting Netanyahu's efforts to expand the conflict, or it could preserve the possibility of a diplomatic settlement. It chose the latter. For perhaps the first time in decades, Israeli escalation was increasingly viewed in Washington as a strategic liability rather than an asset.
Trump did not restrain Netanyahu out of humanitarian concern. He restrained him because Netanyahu's objectives threatened American objectives and the global economic stability upon which his domestic political standing depended.
When US missile interceptors were being depleted, energy markets were destabilised, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve remained politically sensitive, and Hormuz threatened to turn a regional war into a global economic crisis, Netanyahu's appetite for endless escalation became a danger not only to Iran or Lebanon but to Washington itself.
Beyond oil
Much of the discussion surrounding Hormuz focused on oil and gas, which was understandable but incomplete. Oil and gas remain essential, and roughly one-fifth of globally traded energy products pass through the strait, but what emerged from the conflict were vulnerabilities extending far beyond energy markets.
More than one-third of the world's helium supply is exported from the Gulf region, particularly Qatar and the UAE, through routes vulnerable to a Hormuz disruption. Helium is indispensable to modern technology, used in semiconductor manufacturing, medical imaging equipment, aerospace systems, fibre-optic production and advanced scientific research.
The same was true of fertiliser markets. Gulf producers account for a major share of global ammonia and urea trade, with some estimates placing their share at roughly 23 percent of ammonia trade and 34 percent of urea trade, so any prolonged disruption through Hormuz would affect food production, agricultural prices and supply chains across multiple continents.
What Iran demonstrated went beyond the ability to threaten oil flows: it could impose costs on the broader infrastructure of the global economy. It did not need to defeat the US militarily; it merely needed to demonstrate that escalation would carry unacceptable economic and geopolitical consequences.
The war also exposed fundamental weaknesses in the concept of escalation dominance. For decades, American military doctrine has rested on the assumption that overwhelming technological superiority allows the US to dictate the pace and outcome of conflicts, yet the confrontation with Iran demonstrated that superiority does not necessarily translate into political success.
Throughout the conflict, the US and Israel relied heavily on sophisticated defensive systems, including Thaad, Arrow, David's Sling, SM-3 and SM-6 interceptors.
These systems proved effective in many instances, but at an extraordinary cost, with reports indicating that hundreds of advanced interceptors were expended during successive phases of the confrontation.
Modern missile defence creates a profound cost asymmetry, as offensive missiles are often far cheaper than the defensive systems required to intercept them, and a determined adversary can therefore impose enormous financial and logistical burdens simply by sustaining pressure.
Two pillars
The implications of this confrontation extend beyond Iran, Israel or even the Middle East. The crisis revealed two pillars upon which American global power has rested for more than half a century: the petrodollar system and the network of military bases that undergird American influence worldwide.
Since the early 1970s, the dollar's privileged position in the global economy has depended not only on the size of the American economy but also on Washington's ability to guarantee the security of energy flows and maintain political influence over the world's major oil-producing regions.
The confrontation with Iran exposed the growing fragility of this model, as the temporary disruption of shipping through Hormuz demonstrated that the US could no longer guarantee the uninterrupted flow of energy without incurring enormous political, military and economic costs.
It also accelerated discussions already underway among major powers regarding alternative payment mechanisms, local-currency trade arrangements, and efforts to reduce dependence on the dollar in international commerce. The war did not create de-dollarisation, but it reinforced the perception that a financial system tied to geopolitical coercion carries increasing risks.
For decades, Washington maintained a vast network of military bases stretching across the Gulf and the broader Middle East, but the war demonstrated that many of these had become liabilities as much as assets.
Facilities once viewed as symbols of American strength increasingly appeared as vulnerable targets exposed to missiles, drones and other forms of asymmetric warfare, and the logic of permanent military presence begins to change when every major installation becomes vulnerable to attack, and every deployment carries escalating political and financial costs.
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Ultimately, Iran's greatest achievement may not have been what it destroyed but what it revealed: that the financial and military foundations of American predominance are becoming increasingly costly to sustain and increasingly difficult to defend.
The same principle applies to the Axis of Resistance. The network undoubtedly suffered serious losses: Hamas paid a devastating price, Hezbollah absorbed significant damage, and resistance movements throughout the region faced unprecedented pressure.
Yet the objective was not degradation but dismantlement, and that objective failed. Hamas survived, Hezbollah endured, Yemeni resistance continued operating, Iraqi resistance groups remained active, and, most importantly, Iran remained the central pillar of the entire network.
Perhaps the greatest irony of the entire confrontation is that the project designed to marginalise Palestine ultimately restored it to the centre of international politics. Before 7 October, normalisation was supposed to replace liberation, and the Abraham Accords, IMEC and the broader vision of a "New Middle East" all rested on the assumption that Palestine could be bypassed.
The war shattered that assumption, demonstrating once again that no durable regional order can be built upon occupation, apartheid and the permanent dispossession of an indigenous people.
The vision of a New Middle East built upon Israeli supremacy has suffered a profound setback. The United States and Israel sought to change Iran. Iran sought only to prevent them from doing so. The former failed. The latter succeeded.
The American-Zionist coalition possessed overwhelming military superiority. Yet after months of confrontation, the US found itself negotiating with the very state it had hoped to weaken, restraining the very ally whose ambitions it had long supported, and confronting a regional landscape less favourable to its objectives than before the war began.
In the end, Iran accomplished something far more significant than a direct military victory: it denied Washington and Tel Aviv the political objectives for which the war had been launched - the ultimate metric of success in asymmetric conflict.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
War on Iran
How the war on Iran exposed the weakness of US regional power
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