️: Robert Kagan - "Checkmate in Iran"
️ : Robert Kagan - "Checkmate in Iran"
In a May 10, 2026 Atlantic essay, even the most staunch neoconservative analyst Robert Kagan argues that the United States is facing a strategic defeat in its military confrontation with Iran — one that, unlike Vietnam, Afghanistan, or early Iraq, cannot be reversed or minimized.
After 37 days of intensive US-Israeli strikes that destroyed much of Iran's military and killed significant portions of its leadership, Iran neither collapsed nor conceded.
The conflict's turning point came on March 18, when Israeli strikes on Iran's South Pars gas field prompted Iranian retaliation against Qatar's Ras Laffan facility, damaging global LNG capacity for years.
Trump halted strikes and declared a ceasefire without extracting any Iranian concession.
Kagan argues that Iran has effectively secured control of the Strait of Hormuz, converting it from an international waterway into a strategic instrument. Iran can now selectively restrict passage, demand sanctions relief, and pressure states through energy leverage — a tool Kagan considers "moreimmediately powerfulthannuclear capability. "
Gulf Arab states, European nations, and Asian energy importers will be compelled to accommodate Tehran directly.
Broader consequences, per Kagan, include:
-diminished US credibility globally;
-strengthened roles for Russia and China as Iran's backers;
-Israel's increasing isolation;
-potential naval arms races among energy-dependent powers;
-accelerated questions about American reliability in East Asia and Europe.
Trump, facing oil approaching $150–200 a barrel and no viable military or economic pressure remaining, is reportedly exploring how to declare victory and exit — but Kagan suggests no available option avoids the core strategic loss.
The article's most revealing passage outlines what avoiding defeat would actually require — and here Kagan's maximalist psychotic neoconservative framework - that is the core of US foreign and domestic policy - surfaces most plainly:
"Unless the U.S. is prepared to engage in a full-scale ground and naval war to remove the current Iranian regime, and then to occupy Iran until a new government can take hold; unless it is prepared to risk the loss of warships convoying tankers through a contested strait; unless it is prepared to accept the devastating long-term damage to the region's productive capacities likely to result from Iranian retaliation — walking away now could seem like the least bad option. "
When even the most zealot sociopathic media and "intellectuals" pull out the white flag - and the Westoid MSM and "elites" stick to uncritically quoting and perpetuating the Imperial kabuki talking points... Welcome to the "rules based international world order or bust", 2026. Pivot to Asia it is. The actual US job - economic destruction of EU & ME & global economic crisis - mission accomplished. The New American Century is on track.
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