by Victor Davis Hanson
The headlines focus on negotiations, but the war’s real story is this: Iran is steadily being broken by sanctions, isolation, and relentless military pressure.
One day, the United States seems ready to unleash a Curtis LeMay-style devastating bombing campaign of Iran. The next, it appears trapped in endless haggling with Iranian dissimulators.
Of the roughly 150 days since the first strike, about 90 have passed without major military operations.
Iran believes time is on its side. The Strait of Hormuz remains disrupted, gas prices are too high, and antiwar House Democrats seem poised to win the midterms and bring Trump’s war to a halt.
Trump, by contrast, believes Iran can talk all it wants while sanctions, embargoes, and military pressure steadily weaken the regime.
The war has become so politicized in an election year that several basic realities have gone largely unnoticed by the media.
First, the cycle of bombing, pausing, negotiating, and bombing again may seem endless. But the confusion obscures the continuing effects of the embargoes, sanctions, blockade, and financial isolation imposed on Iran. Together, they are costing the theocracy more than $400 million a day in lost revenue, money that it can ill afford to lose. By haggling, Iran believes it can run out the clock until the midterms, but it may be only prolonging its own miserable situation.
Second, so far the bombing has not descended into a ground war. There are no embedded reporters and few Western journalists in Iran. So the world knows little about the true extent of the damage to the Iranian regime and its military-industrial-nuclear complex.
Nor do we know the mood of the once-restive Iranian street. But whether or not there are future allied military attacks, tensions will only increase as Iran runs out of money and basic goods. Whatever the outcome of negotiations or further combat operations, the Iranian military and economy have already been wrecked and will take years to rebuild.
Third, however the war ends, Iran will remain at a terrible disadvantage for years in dealing with the neighbors it has so gratuitously attacked. The regime currently has no effective combat aircraft or air defenses—and no allies.
In contrast, the Gulf states can field more than 700 combat aircraft, including F-15s, F-16s, F/A-18s, Rafales, Mirages, and Tornados. Israel has another 300, including late-model F-35s, F-16s, and F-15s. U.S. bases in the Middle East are home to some 300 more, including F-22s, F-35s, F-18s, F-16s, and F-15s—not counting carrier-based aircraft.
In sum, the United States and its allies have some 1,300 late-model combat aircraft in the region. They should therefore be able to hit Iran hard for years to come if it resumes drone and missile attacks against its rivals.
Fourth, Iran’s problems will not end when the United States declares victory and sends most of its forces home. The regime has lost a half-century and half a trillion dollars in military and nuclear investment. Until the United States lifts its sanctions and embargoes, Iran cannot rearm. And if it eventually does rearm and again tries to supply its Arab terrorist clients in its “ring of fire” around Israel, its destitute people will grow furious at a disgraced and humiliated regime for diverting the nation’s wealth abroad.
Fifth, several unforeseen developments ahead of the impending midterms—more favorable gerrymandering in red states than in blue ones, the Supreme Court’s ruling against racial redistricting, a substantial Republican fundraising advantage, and the capture of the Democratic Party by near-lunatic radical socialists—may offer Republicans a narrow path to retaining control of Congress. That possibility has added urgency to the administration’s choice: negotiate one final time or use overwhelming force to inflict still greater damage on the Iranian economy.
Sixth, air supremacy and the normal rotation of U.S. naval forces through the Middle East, together with help from the Gulf states and naval contingents from European and Asian oil-importing nations, could keep the strait open if they decide to do so. And they may need to do so for only another year or two, by which time the strait may become far less important to oil exports.
Iran’s efforts to close the strait have already accelerated the expansion of existing pipelines and the construction of new ones that will bypass the strait and connect the oil fields directly to the Gulf of Oman, the Red Sea, and the Mediterranean.
Bottom line?
Iran is losing whether it is being bombed, sanctioned, or embargoed—or all three. Its ultimate fate now rests with the Trump administration, which apparently has not yet decided what, exactly, that fate will be.
Photo: President Trump Hosts Cabinet Meeting At Camp David CAMP DAVID, MARYLAND - JULY 31: U.S. President Donald Trump listens to questions from reporters during a Cabinet meeting at Camp David, the presidential retreat, on July 31, 2026 in Camp David, Maryland. Trump convened members of his Cabinet at the presidential retreat as the war with Iran continues. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
Victor Davis Hanson is a distinguished fellow of the Center for American Greatness and the
Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover
Institution. He is an American military historian, columnist, a former
classics professor, and scholar of ancient warfare. He has been a
visiting professor at Hillsdale College since 2004, and is the 2023
Giles O'Malley Distinguished Visiting Professor at the School of Public
Policy, Pepperdine University. Hanson was awarded the National
Humanities Medal in 2007 by President George W. Bush, and the Bradley
Prize in 2008. Hanson is also a farmer (growing almonds on a family farm
in Selma, California) and a critic of social trends related to farming
and agrarianism.
He is the author of the just released New York Times best seller, The End of Everything: How Wars Descend into Annihilation, published by Basic Books on May 7, 2024, as well as the recent The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won, The Case for Trump, and The Dying Citizen.
Source: https://amgreatness.com/2026/08/06/the-long-view-of-iran/
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