Who’s winning this war, anyway?
Speaking at the UN on Tuesday, President Donald Trump painted a grim picture of the current state of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s military forces: “As a result of Operation Epic Fury,” Trump declared, “all 159 ships of their navy are now lying at the bottom of the sea. Likewise, their air force is gone. Their radar is gone. Their anti-aircraft equipment is gone. Their missile and drone manufacturing capacity is almost gone. Their economy is gone. The only thing that isn’t gone is inflation, which is destroying their country and is now well over 300 percent.” That all makes it sound as if the Islamic Republic is on its last legs.
Meanwhile, in Tehran, the state-controlled Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) reported Wednesday that the Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council (SNSC), Mohsen Rezaei, was in no mood to take any guff from Donald Trump. Rezaei, according to IRNA, “reiterated that Iran will not return to its pre-war diplomatic approach toward the United States, calling on Washington to ‘take action’ and meet Iran’s conditions for reopening the Strait of Hormuz.”
Rezaei “made the remarks in a post on X on Wednesday, saying, ‘Iran’s new diplomacy will not return to the past,’ as the Islamic Republic has reached a new strategic peak.” Rezaei declared: “We will force the United States to respect the rights of the Iranian people and comply with the conditions communicated to it; otherwise, the Strait of Hormuz will not be opened. Enough with negotiations. Take action.”
In another story on Wednesday, IRNA added that Iran was demanding that the U.S. meet “seven conditions set by Tehran.” Rezaei explained that these conditions were “completely different from those of the past and that Tehran would not return to previous arrangements.” He declared: “Until our conditions are met, the Strait of Hormuz will not be opened and we will not negotiate.” Rezaei also said that Iran “wanted the United States to take action first to restore the trust of the Iranian people, stressing that Washington would have to act before Tehran would consider entering negotiations.”
Directly contradicting Trump’s statements at the UN, Rezaei “also said Iran had emerged from the war in a stronger position, stressing that the country was now at the peak of its standing and that Iran today was not the same as it was before the war.”
Well, this is extraordinary. It’s as if General Eisenhower detailed the sorry state of National Socialist German forces in April 1945, only to have Göring or Goebbels insist that the National Socialists were stronger than ever, and that the United States had to meet its demands.
For the American people and the world, it’s essentially impossible to know what’s going on here. The Iranians could be pulling an elaborate Baghdad Bob act, trying to fool the world into thinking that they’re in a stronger position than they actually are. In light of the fact that this is a regime based on an Islamic sect that has an elaborate theology of taqiyya, or religious deception, that is a very real possibility. It is also possible that Trump, who is well known to be given to exaggeration, is portraying the Iranians as weaker than they actually are. Most likely, they aren’t as strong as the Iranians are proclaiming, or as weak as Trump is saying.
So what next? More of the same. Trump was talks, and the Iranians are saying they won’t talk until the U.S. meets their conditions. Trump seems not to know or care that any deal he signs with the leaders of the Islamic Republic will be utterly worthless, as the people he is trying to deal with simply don’t believe either in making honest deals or in a lasting peace. Trump might have agreed to disastrous conditions, as he did in the Memorandum of Understanding he concluded with the Islamic Republic in June, in order to try to bring the appearance of enough of a victory to stave off disaster for the Republicans in the midterm elections, but on Tuesday he said any new negotiations with Iran would take place after the midterms, and that disaster seems inevitable.
The only hope amid all this is that the economic (and possibly military) woes of the Islamic Republic get so bad that the regime finally collapses. We can hope.
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