by Roger Kimball
Iran’s regime and its media enablers insist they’re winning—even as their capabilities are dismantled, their reach exposed, and the clock on their survival runs out.
Delusion, thy name is Iran. Or maybe it’s The Economist magazine, a mouthpiece of the Mullahs.
A day or two back, an inadvertently comical, Baghdad Bob-like Iranian spokesman took to the airwaves to warn about the “hollowness” of U.S. naval power. God, you see, has guaranteed Iran’s victory. Meanwhile, The Economist treated its readers to a hysterical (I do not mean “humorous”) anti-Trump cover story about “Operation Blind Fury.” That once-valuable outlet decried as “reckless” the U.S.–Israeli effort to liberate Iran from the grip of the theocratic death cult that has oppressed Iranians since 1979, when the Ayatollah Khomeini arrived from Paris and began hanging people he didn’t like from cranes.
Just Friday, The Wall Street Journal reported that “Iran Believes It’s Winning—and Wants a Steep Price to End the War.” “Litotes” is a fancy word for rhetorical understatement. The Journal gave its readers a beaut: “This attitude may prove to be a dangerous misreading of President Trump’s determination, or of Israel’s capacity to inflict strategic blows on the Islamic Republic’s surviving leadership and military capabilities.” Indeed. Those commentators who have compared the bluster from Iran and our complicit media to the Monty Python skit about the Black Knight are closer to reality. King Arthur slices off both the knight’s arms; then he slices off both his legs. The knight continues to insist that he is winning the fight. “’Tis but a flesh wound,” he cries.
The New York Times wonders, “Who Is winning the War in Iran?” A couple of days ago, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth offered a clue: “We’ve decided to share the ocean with Iran,” he said. “We’ve given them the bottom half.”
True, Iran continues to lob missiles and drone swarms at Israel and at its Arab neighbors. Most are neutralized. A few get through. Last week, an attack inflicted serious damage on an important energy installation in Qatar. Perhaps the most surprising development was Iran’s launching two ballistic missiles at the U.S.–U.K. airbase in Diego Garcia. Apparently, one failed in mid-flight, the other was intercepted. Diego Garcia is nearly 4,000 kilometers from Tehran. A few weeks ago, Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister, said that his country had deliberately limited the range of its missiles to 2,000 kilometers. Oops. Turns out that was a fib. If Iran has missiles that can travel 4,000 kilometers, that means they have missiles that can target cities in Western Europe. As one commentator observed, “A 4,000-kilometer capability changes the map.”
Major European capitals begin to enter the conversation. Paris comes into range. London moves much closer to the edge of vulnerability depending on launch point and payload. This would mean the missile threat is no longer confined to the Gulf, Israel, or parts of South Asia. It would mean the radius of deterrence, defense, and fear has expanded dramatically. . . . Diego Garcia was not just a target. It was a message.
That is worth bearing in mind when confronting people like Joe Kent, the now-former counterterrorism official who maintains that Iran is not an imminent threat to the West. The long-range missiles are one threat. So are the 460 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60 percent. With a few more turns through the centrifuge, that is enough, Iran’s own negotiators acknowledged (or perhaps bragged), for 11 nuclear bombs.
Iran is an atavism with nuclear ambitions. The United States has a serious national security interest in frustrating its efforts to acquire nuclear weapons. Those countries that depend on Iran’s oil—not the United States, by the way—have a serious national interest in making sure that the Strait of Hormuz remains open for the passage of that black gold. The Iranian people have a serious existential interest in ridding their country of the oppressive theocratic regime of the mullahs.
On Friday, Donald Trump said that “We are getting very close to meeting our objectives as we consider winding down our great Military efforts in the Middle East with respect to the Terrorist Regime of Iran.” Some people think that Trump was signaling his impatience with the war. I think that what he went on to say puts paid to that idea. Our military efforts, Trump said, include:
(1) Completely degrading Iranian Missile Capability, Launchers, and everything else pertaining to them. (2) Destroying Iran’s Defense Industrial Base. (3) Eliminating their Navy and Air Force, including Anti-Aircraft Weaponry. (4) Never allowing Iran to get even close to Nuclear Capability, and always being in a position where the U.S.A. can quickly and powerfully react to such a situation, should it take place. (5) Protecting, at the highest level, our Middle Eastern Allies, including Israel, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Kuwait, and others. The Hormuz Strait will have to be guarded and policed, as necessary, by other Nations who use it—the United States does not! If asked, we will help these Countries in their Hormuz efforts, but it shouldn’t be necessary once Iran’s threat is eradicated. Importantly, it will be an easy Military Operation for them.
The United States and Israel began their operation against the Iranian regime just three weeks ago. Iran’s military movements now resemble the movements of a frog’s legs during dissection. The legs may twitch, but the frog isn’t going anywhere. Meanwhile, the U.S. and Israel continue to search for and destroy weapons storage and manufacturing facilities and anything having to do with Iran’s nuclear program. Early yesterday, we again struck a uranium enrichment facility at Natanz. On March 13, a 2,500-man Marine Expeditionary Force left Okinawa for the Persian Gulf. It is due to arrive any day. Its object? The consensus is Kharg Island at the north end of the Persian Gulf. Some 90 percent of Iran’s oil passes through Kharg Island. Secure that, and the regime starves.
The anti-Trump press is skirling about soaring gas prices and shudders in the stock market. Those shocks are painful but temporary. A nuclear-armed Iran would be a disaster and permanent. Mark Penn got it exactly right in a post on X called “War Resolve.” “In the past,” Penn noted, “casualties were the important and real limiting factor in any war.”
Today, people are worked up over a transitory increase in the price of gasoline and the most evil regime on earth is banking its survival on the West being more concerned about money than lives.
Consequently they even execute teenagers without fair trials to create fear among the population to prevent an uprising. And the global anger is over gas prices not the executions.
It will take resolve to see it through. The Iranians appear to have enough command and control left to launch desperate attacks on the region and suppress people at home. The aims of the operation have not been met until that chain is broken and the regime can no longer inflict terror on the world. And that may well take another month or so to accomplish and so the world will have to decide if it can withstand a temporary bump in gas prices to rid us of one of its most evil actors whose despicable actions are even more evident each passing day. Hopefully we can find that resolve because the good of ridding the world of this regime, ending its terror network and ending its threats against the West far outweigh a spike at the pump that will quickly be forgotten once this is finished.
My only quibble is with Penn’s timetable. He said it “may well take another month or so.” I give the regime another ten days or two weeks, tops.
Roger Kimball is editor and publisher of The New Criterion and the president and publisher of Encounter Books. He is the author and editor of many books, including The Fortunes of Permanence: Culture and Anarchy in an Age of Amnesia (St. Augustine's Press), The Rape of the Masters (Encounter), Lives of the Mind: The Use and Abuse of Intelligence from Hegel to Wodehouse (Ivan R. Dee), and Art's Prospect: The Challenge of Tradition in an Age of Celebrity (Ivan R. Dee). Most recently, he edited and contributed to Where Next? Western Civilization at the Crossroads (Encounter) and contributed to Against the Great Reset: Eighteen Theses Contra the New World Order (Bombardier).
Source: https://amgreatness.com/2026/03/22/tis-but-a-flesh-wound-irans-delusional-victory-claims-amid-regime-collapse/
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