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Iran does not know how to cash in on its victories at the right time
From the closure of the Strait of Hormuz to the aborted talks in Islamabad, the 2026 crisis reproduces a forty-year-old pattern: that of a regime structurally incapable of converting real leverage into a political outcome, prisoner of an ideological logic that transforms every tactical advantage into a dead end.

“During the Iran-Iraq war in May 1982, after the liberation of Khorramshahr, Khomeini also refused to concede a victory that had already been won. He chooses ideology over strategic interest. The conflict lasted six more years. »

In May 1982, after the liberation of Khorramshahr, Iran was in a position of strength. Iraq is proposing an immediate ceasefire with withdrawal to international borders. Saddam offers reparations. Khamenei and Mousavi are arguing for a deal. Khomeini refused. He launched the slogan: “The road to Jerusalem passes through Karbala” and transformed a victorious defensive war into an offensive ideological crusade with no real military horizon. The result: six more years, a million dead and wounded, and a capitulation wrested in 1988 that Khomeini himself described as a “cup of poison”.

The lesson has not been learned. Or rather: it could not be, because the inability to accept victory at the right time is not a miscalculation, it is a characteristic of the ideological system. The Islamic Republic operates according to a logic where confrontation is an end in itself, where “not giving in” is worth more than a measurable political gain, and where the rhetoric of permanent resistance systematically neutralizes the value of the successes achieved.

In addition to this structural pathology, in 2026, there is an unprecedented factor: the physical elimination of the Supreme Leader has decapitated the only arbitration function capable of deciding between rival factions. His presumed successor, Mojtaba Khamenei, has neither the legitimacy nor the authority to impose a costly de-escalation. The result is predictable: each opening is followed by a closure, each agreement by a questioning.

The US naval blockade of Iranian ports, in force since 13 April, is accelerating an economic suffocation that has already begun. The superimposition of the American blockade on the Iranian closure of the strait creates a devastating scissor effect: oil exports are blocked, stocks are accumulating on the island of Kharg to the point of saturating storage capacities, and the regime could soon be forced to interrupt crude production itself, a decision with technically disastrous consequences on the production fields. Each day of the status quo represents an estimated loss of more than $400 million for the Iranian economy, of which the Revolutionary Guards, the main beneficiaries of oil rents, are on the front line. For the Iranian population, it is a real-time asphyxiation.

The pragmatic voices within the regime, those who would have the lucidity to capitalize on the show of force in Hormuz to negotiate a way out of the crisis on the nuclear and sanctions issues, seem to have definitively lost their grip to the ideological bloc of the Revolutionary Guards. It is this internal defeat, more than external pressure, that condemns the regime to strategic immobility.

In 1988, Khomeini drank his cup of poison because he had no other way out. The question may no longer be whether the Islamic Republic can take its victories. But how many more deferred defeats it can afford, before her own strategic choices catch up with it for good.

https://atlantico.fr/article/decryptage/l-iran-ne-sait-pas-encaisser-ses-victoires-au-bon-moment

This report on the inability of Iran’s current leaders to develop a winning strategy or peace negotiations is special. Understanding this internal fight is the exact reason why we must never allow these leaders to continue in their will to have a nuclear bomb capability. In addition, true conservative thinkers must realize the importance of spreading this realization beyond its current ideological borders. Pennsylvania’s representative in Congress has apparently realized some of this.

We must now do our best to communicate with Democrats the importance of this struggle for a truly peaceful outcome in Iran. Leaving Iran, unmolested, in the hands of these fanatical ideologues can ultimately be our own downfall. We must not let this kind of absolutist thinking keep us from finding allies where they can do all of us some good. The risk of change as the result of November’s elections is real. How many non conservatives elected will have the clear understanding of this very real danger to our future. We must do all we can to educate others as to the true danger of an unchanged Iran situation. This comment #2,013 must be condensed accurately and then widely circulated in letters to the editor, op eds, popular internet sites, etc. Few now realized the true nature of the danger we all face.