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How To Win The Iran War

Portfolio Armor's Photo
by Portfolio Armor
Friday, Apr 10, 2026 - 10:59

Uncle Sam negotiating with an Ayatollah

How To Win The Iran War

If you go by damage done in the five weeks of Epic Fury, it was a lopsided tactical defeat for Iran.

By the time the ceasefire took hold, the damage was overwhelmingly lopsided against Iran: according to Gen. Dan Caine’s post-ceasefire briefing, as reported by Business Insider, U.S. and allied forces had struck more than 13,000 targets in Iran, destroyed roughly 80% of Iran’s air defenses, damaged or destroyed more than 155 naval vessels, and wrecked about 90% of Iran’s weapons factories, including every known Shahed drone factory. By contrast, Iranian retaliation, while real and costly, was far smaller in physical effect: Reuters reported that 23 people were killed in Israel by missiles from Iran and Lebanon, 11 Israeli soldiers were killed in southern Lebanon, and the U.S. lost 13 service members, with hundreds more wounded.

Put simply, Iran absorbed the catastrophic destruction of a state’s military infrastructure, while the U.S. and Israel absorbed painful but much lighter losses in personnel and local damage.

But the U.S. may still be headed for a strategic defeat if it fumbles the ball during the peace talks. It wouldn’t be the first time. The current war with Iran can be thought of as the Third Gulf War, after the 1990-1991 war and the later Iraq War starting in 2003. Had the armistice negotiations been handled right in the first Gulf War, the Iraq War may well have been prevented.

The 1991 Warning

When President Trump threatened earlier this week to bomb Iran’s bridges and power plants, critics called those strikes war crimes. That was a new, tendentious accusation. You didn’t hear as much criticism when the U.S.-led coalition bombed Iraq’s power grid and its bridges in 1991, although that directly into one of the biggest blunders of the war’s endgame.

At the Safwan armistice talks, the Iraqi delegation was led by Lt. Gen. Sultan Hashim Ahmad. He asked Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf for permission to fly helicopters. Schwarzkopf agreed, but later said he had been “suckered.” He had assumed the request was reasonable because the coalition itself had destroyed so many Iraqi bridges.

Saddam Hussein’s regime then used those helicopters to help crush the Shiite and Kurdish uprisings that might otherwise have toppled him. The regime survived, regrouped, and the world eventually got the Second Gulf War. Winning the shooting phase and losing the political endgame is not a hypothetical risk for the United States. It is something Washington has already done once in the Gulf.

The Minimum Terms Of Victory

If this war is going to count as a strategic victory for America, the minimum conditions are straightforward.

Iran’s highly enriched uranium has to be removed from its control. Iran has to make a verifiable commitment not to pursue nuclear weapons. Not a “fatwa” that can be ignored by whichever faction actually controls the stockpile, but a real mechanism with enforcement behind it. Freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz has to be restored. And ideally, Iran should also be made to stop supporting its proxies, especially Hezbollah, whose attacks on Israel from Lebanon have drawn Israel deeper into battle there.

Given President Trump’s longstanding concern about nuclear proliferation, it seems unlikely he’ll give way on the uranium question. But he has publicly floated the idea of letting Iran collect tolls in the Strait. That would be a terrible idea.

The United States is not a party to the Law of the Sea convention, but Washington has long treated most of its navigation rules as customary international law anyway. More important, the strategic implications would be enormous. If the world’s largest navy cannot restore freedom of navigation against a second-rate regional power, that would be a grave blow to American maritime credibility. It would tell every chokepoint state on earth that shipping lanes are open to coercion if only the price is high enough.

Before More Bombing, Use Real Leverage

There is still a path to a better outcome, and it starts with diplomacy backed by leverage instead of diplomacy as an excuse for drift.

The first step is to isolate Iran diplomatically. That means trying to bring Russia and China on board, not because either suddenly shares Washington’s worldview, but because each has leverage over Tehran and each has reasons to prefer a contained settlement to an open-ended regional war. On China, there are already signs of movement. Trump said this week that he believes China helped persuade Iran to negotiate; China’s diplomacy also fit Beijing’s interest in improving the atmosphere ahead of the coming Xi-Trump summit.

To get China more fully on board, Washington would likely have to offer something in return. That could include allowing China to import more of Nvidia’s H200 chips. More broadly, Washington could lower the rhetorical temperature on Taiwan, emphasizing peaceful resolution and eventual reunification with Mainland China.

For Russia, the most obvious concession would be to stop providing ISR that helps Ukraine kill Russians. Ukraine can continue fighting with European money and weapons if it chooses, but if Washington wants Moscow’s help in isolating Tehran and removing uranium, there is no compelling reason for the U.S. to keep supplying targeting data to an enemy of Russia while asking Russia for help against an enemy of the U.S.. A second, less-obvious concession would be to signal that Washington will not interfere with the International North-South Transport Corridor, the Russia-Caspian-Iran-India route Moscow sees as a sanctions-resistant trade artery.

And if sanctions on Iran are going to be relaxed as part of a settlement anyway, Washington should think carefully before leaving Russia sanctioned while restoring Iran’s trade. That would risk turning Iran into an unnecessary intermediary in commerce that could just as easily flow directly. Might as well drop sanctions on Russia as well in that scenario.

The Next Lever

If Russia and China can’t deliver enough pressure, the United States still has another lever to pull before bombing Iran again or sending ground forces to secure the Strait.

It can go after Iranian oil exports directly. If Iran is going to impede its neighbors’ exports through Hormuz, Washington has an obvious asymmetry available: identify the ships carrying Iranian crude once they are outside the Strait, interdict them, arrest the crews if necessary, and seize the cargoes. That would hit the regime where it hurts most without immediately escalating to another major bombing campaign.

And if the concern is that China, Japan, Australia, and others still need Gulf oil, the U.S. and its partners could offset some of that by exporting more oil themselves and by reselling the cargoes taken from Iranian tankers. That would be coercive. But it would also be more directly connected to the actual problem than allowing Tehran to weaponize a global trade artery while Washington debates how many more bridges to bomb.

After The Shooting Stops

So far, even the ceasefire has involved a lot of shooting. Iran and its neighbors have continued firing at one another during the supposed pause. Israel has continued attacking Hezbollah in Lebanon.

But when the shooting finally does stop, one thing is already obvious: a lot of infrastructure is going to have to be rebuilt.

That includes oil infrastructure. We recently entered a trade related to that.

 

And it includes desalination plants too. We entered a trade related that earlier this week.

The key thing now though is to make sure the diplomacy that follows the war does not squander the military advantage that has already been won. America does not need another Gulf War that ends in a tactical victory and a strategic mess. It has already tried that once.

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Contributor posts published on Zero Hedge do not necessarily represent the views and opinions of Zero Hedge, and are not selected, edited or screened by Zero Hedge editors.
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