Jonathan Last with an excellent (if depressing) rundown of the many ways America lost this conflict:
Truth and Consequences
Here is a rundown of (some of) the consequences of Trump’s defeat.
Iran is now a mid-major power. Before the war, Iran was a pariah state ruled by an aging mullah while fending off massive internal unrest. Post-war, Iran has made a successful transition of power; will have forced the world to stop sanctioning it; will have defeated a regime of international laws and annexed control of one of the world’s most important waterways.
No longer a pariah, Iran is now in the position to force its regional neighbors to make peace with it and learn how to live with the Islamic Republic.
China’s right hand. Have you ever wondered why the Chinese courted the Iranian regime? The ChiComs have no ideological kinship with the theocrats in Tehran. But the Chinese are dependent on the flow of oil east from the Gulf and they understood that Iran might one day control that flow. So they created a working relationship.
Now that Iran controls the Strait of Hormuz,
China also controls the Straight of Hormuz. Which strengthens China’s hand in dealing with wary neighbors such as South Korea, Japan, and even Australia. Not to mention Taiwan.
China’s pre-existing relationship with Iran is now an extremely valuable source of power undergirding the Chinese ambition to dominate its near-abroad.
End of the unipolar American order. There are lots of ways America influenced the world order it created following World War II. The biggest was by guaranteeing freedom of navigation. We built a bunch of institutions that benefited basically everyone (but mostly us) and took over from the British as the enforcers of freedom of navigation.
The Strait of Hormuz was governed by international laws enforced by American hard power up until 100 days ago.
Now the strait belongs to Iran. International law has been replaced. We have acceded to this change. We have proven that America no longer has the strength, will, or wisdom to enforce free navigation.
From this, everything will change.
The unipolar world will be replaced by multipolarity. If America does not control everything, then different powers will control different areas. Iran will dominate the strait. The Chinese will dominate the South China Sea. Every set of interests will have to make separate arrangements with each regional power. The Europeans will have to deal with Iran and China—and America—separately. So will the Gulf states. So will the Asian countries. And India.
First, this new order will be inherently unstable. Too many moving parts dependent on too many brittle, authoritarian regimes, with too many overlapping claimed spheres of influence.
Second, America’s relative position weakens. The fact that countries also have to placate the Iranians and the Chinese means, by definition, that our relative importance declines. Meaning that we have less leverage. Meaning that our ability to protect our interests diminishes.
America will have to content itself with bullying South America and the Caribbean nations—and seeing if we can bully the Europeans into ceding Greenland.
Fortunately, that arrangement dovetails nicely with Trump’s ambition for America. He never cared about preserving the American order. He wants to use America to further his own interests—and he can do that more aggressively if international law breaks down and he is liberated to throw America’s weight around in our hemisphere.
Cuba is next and I would not be surprised if we return to stalking Greenland.
The Israeli–American crackup. Over the last two years the government of Israel systematically destroyed its standing in the world. In America, the Netanyahu regime aggressively pursued policies designed to make Israel disliked by both Democrats and Republicans. The last redoubt of support for Israel in the United States came from Trump’s MAGA establishment.
It’s unclear what Israel will make of Trump’s “deal.” Netanyahu tried to stop it from happening—but it’s not clear that Bibi had an endgame for his war. Did he think Trump would absorb political damage for him? That Trump would stick with him
forever?⁴
If Netanyahu can’t sell Trump’s surrender to the Israeli public, then he will have two options.
- Go along with Trump’s surrender and Iran’s new power—and have his career ended.
- Break with Trump and try to go it alone against Iran.
The first option risks prison for Netanyahu. The second would cause a rupture between Israel and Trump.
If Netanyahu breaks with Trump, it will mean that there is no world in which the next U.S. president continues America’s historic relationship with Israel.
Trump might get away with it. Gas prices will go down. Slowly. And they won’t go back to their pre-war lows.⁵ But directionally, gas will cost less than it did at its peak.
Maybe American voters will look at $3.75 gas and say, “Well things are getting better, I guess” and give Trump credit. Not enough credit to save the House, but enough to hold the Senate.
Americans won’t care about all that “end of the American order” stuff. By November they’ll still understand that inflation is high and they’ll see that interest rates are up—but they’ll barely remember that Trump started a war with Iran. Let alone that he lost it.
We often talk about how Trump is both arsonist and firefighter. The Iran war is the best example to date. Trump’s decision to go to war destroyed billions and billions of dollars. Value destruction on a scale we haven’t seen in a long time. Dollars in lost shipping, decreased oil production, destroyed infrastructure. And America will have gotten
nothing in return.
Let’s say this clearly: America would be in better shape today if Trump had simply taken $50B in cash and set it on fire.
But, having caused this value destruction, Trump will now claim to have fixed everything. And when our ****** reality gets 10 percent better, some significant percentage of voters will look at Trump and say,
Things are finally on the right track!
If Trump gets away with it—if the House is close and Republicans hold the Senate—then what will that say about America?
It's not a deal. It's a memo of understanding in advance of a surrender of the American-led world order.
open.substack.com
