Posted on 04/23/2026 5:25:15 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Food for thought.
Iran Is Not Winning. It Is Unraveling.
The prevailing narrative on Iran has it almost perfectly reversed. We are told that Tehran is winning a war of wills in the Gulf and that Donald Trump is gambling recklessly with the world’s most sensitive chokepoint. In reality, Iran is not consolidating strength; it is managing decline. And Trump’s play on the Strait of Hormuz has quietly forced energy markets to reprice security—tilting the balance decisively toward the Americas, and away from Europe, Asia and China. The Islamic Republic no longer resembles a confident revolutionary project.
With the old clerical core leadership shattered, power has splintered between a camp that recognises a deal with the outside world as the only path to survival and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a class of military dictators with guns, patronage networks and a rational fear that any genuine settlement will ultimately throw them overboard. This is not a unified strategy at work; it’s infighting, paranoia, a fragmented system in late-stage decay, crumbling under pressure.
Into this fragmentation, the White House has introduced a form of calibrated coercion too often caricatured as impulsive.
Around the Strait of Hormuz, Washington has threatened disruption without fully triggering it, forcing shipowners, insurers and policymakers to absorb a hard truth: dependence on vulnerable, seaborne Middle Eastern barrels is not a passing inconvenience but a structural risk. Iran can harass tankers and jolt day-to-day sentiment; it cannot rebuild a broken economy on sporadic shocks to global shipping. And the world must deal with the end of Pax Americana!
The underlying playbook is anything but novel. Sun Tzu’s insistence that “all warfare is based on deception”, Machiavelli’s counsel that a ruler must manipulate appearances and exploit factionalism, and Alfred Thayer Mahan’s argument that sea power and control of chokepoints shape the fate of nations are not museum pieces. They are, in this case, the operating code. Trump’s opaque signalling, deliberate use of disinformation and visible but limited naval posture in and around Hormuz amount to a modern, Mahanian use of sea power as economic statecraft.
Energy markets are already adjusting. Tankers are head to the Gulf of America. In a world where a single strait can a risk to economies is Europe and Asia, without ever being fully closed, assets tied to secure basins and diversified export routes deserve a premium.
The Americas sit in an enviable position: vast, politically stable hydrocarbon resources, multiple pipelines and ports, and no dependence on a distant maritime chokepoint controlled by adversaries. By contrast, Europe, much of Asia and China find themselves downstream of vulnerabilities they do not control and regimes they cannot stabilise, exposed to shipping routes that can be threatened faster than alternative supply can be mobilised.
All of this plays out against a domestic backdrop in Iran that looks less like revolutionary vigour and more like fear. A state that cannot safely keep its internet on, that must rely on public brutality to deter dissent, is not projecting confidence. It is signalling weakness, to its own citizens as much as to its rivals.
Winston Churchill once remarked that “in war, resolution; in defeat, defiance; in victory, magnanimity; in peace, goodwill.” Iran’s leadership offers only defiance, without realistic prospects of victory or peace.
The uncomfortable conclusion for those still insisting that Tehran is “winning” is that what they are observing is not the rise of a regional hegemon, but the protracted, strategically exploited unwinding of a brittle regime at the centre of an overexposed energy system.
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True, but public perception is part of warfare. And the USA often loses that battle due to our communist media.
Beautiful analysis. Thanks for posting, SeekAndFind.
Mahanian sea power is about treating the oceans as the world’s great highway: build the commercial fleet, protect it with a strong navy, secure the ports and straits, and you shape the destiny of nations.
We are applying this directly to leverage our navy around Hormuz—using naval assets and market signals to reprice risk and favor secure Western Hemisphere energy routes. Drill baby drill policy is bearing fruit.
📌
Churchill:
“How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property – either as a child, a wife, or a concubine – must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the faith: all know how to die but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome.”
The above is almost prophetic.
Modern Europe IS falling.
We can’t allow it to happen here.
In my opinion, the most important kind of opinion, I think the best model for governance doe Iran is the USA model. Where the federal government has an overarching reserved powers that ethnicities or states really can’t do on their own and the ethnicities and states that make up Iran are given state-like powers to be responsible for themselves.
In ten days the Iranians will have to begin shutting in Wells. That will be a long term economic disaster for them.
They can’t keep going.
True, but public perception is part of warfare. And the USA often loses that battle due to our communist media.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>..
Yes, and the communist media is strongly allied to the Marxist-Democrats in Congress and to many other anti-American
institutions both public and private.
Here we go, just like the Ukraine threads. Half of them say Iran is winning, the other half say Iran is losing.
Wars and rumors of wars.
INO, the Iranian regime will cannibalize the country to lower than the level of North Korea, in order to stay in power. That could take years. The populace will not be happy about that, but, what can they do if not armed?
If armed, do we get a good resolution, or do we get another Syria or Libya? What will the time frame be, even in “good” scenarios?
Do Trump, the Pubbies, and MAGA, have the time? The mid-term elections loom ever closer.
More than anything else, we must realize the Iranian leaders think in ways completely alien to us. Some of those ways may work, for them, because their beliefs and goals are based on radical theocracy. Consider: One of the Fox News shows was saying this morning that much of what we are seeing out of Iran is a pre-war plan to decentralize in the event of a large war with the USA. Now, aside from the question of how did our intel miss this(?), the goal of the Iranian leaders may be that as long as the population keeps obeying the right laws and dictates, worshipping Allah as the former Ayatollah would have seen fit, etc., whether the people follow a central leader or they follow 100 dispersed leaders is not so important. Further, the people’s wealth and wellbeing is certainly not important. In fact, if the people can be martyrs, so much the better!
There is a way to defeat this, but, a ceasefire is certainly not part of it. I’ll post about that below, soon.
This article writer, as do so many, sure does think in a box. See my post just above, for one aspect of that.
I like the little things the media misses, Like when after Europe tried to stick it to America, favoring Iran, And an MSC ship is fired upon by the IRGC, Trump says, not our problem, not an American Flagged Vessel. Et tu EU.
Both sides (of those analyzing) make so many mistakes that it is hard to know where to start questioning them, sometimes. The biggest problem is people who don’t recognize that the Iranian theocracy (or those running it) thinks in ways very much alien to most of the West. I am rather troubled that Trump and his advisers all seem oblivious to this, unless their public statements are all part of some grand illusion.
The key to winning wars in the long run is to understand your enemy... You can dislike or even hate them, but, you have to know who and what they are, and how they think, FULLY.
We of course are not the only prey to this folly. Pooty and his pals are up to their ears in not understanding the Ukies. In that case, it’s like being mystified and befuddled by a next door neighbor who you thought you knew inside and out, but you are blinded by your own norms.
BTW, I do think Trump has a grand plan, basically to the US control or have leverage on almost all the world’s most major oil and gas reserves, and it could work out extremely well for the USA. The problem is, it is a plan that plays out over a decade or more, and Trump has to “get there” — he has to survive the result of the mid-terms. Therefor, his patience with Iran may be badly misplaced.
The problem for Europe is, it has no way of contributing usefully in the seas around Iran... The problem is fundamental, and in this time arises essentially from the population(s) of the major European countries themselves.
And you’re in a different box.
L
IMO, Iran as it presently exists must be stopped, quickly. As “in its tracks”.
I see only one way to do that, but, it is relatively easy, for us. Take out Iran’s refineries’ distillation towers, all major storage of refined products, and any import terminals.
No refined products = Iran grinds to a halt.
I-ran will play the “Trump’s blockade is starving our people” card, if they haven’t already. MSM will dig up various pics of random, emaciated children.
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