On May 10, Robert Kagan, the high priest of neoconservative thought, the bell ringer for muscular interventionism and general American meddlesomeness, lamented in The Atlantic that the United States had suffered a unique defeat in its efforts to subjugate Iran.  The article says much about Kagan’s own identification with the obvious, some feat given the military fancy and fantasy that continues to blot the current Trump administration.

Be that as it may, he finds the Iran War dishing out a defeat to the United States of unique quality, one that “can neither be repaired nor ignored.”  No ultimate American triumph could emerge, and nothing would “undo or overcome the harm done” to “return to the status quo ante”.  The Strait of Hormuz would not be “open” as it was prior to February 28.  Iran’s regional position, far from being blunted, had improved. China and Russia had been strengthened; the US “substantially diminished”.

“Far from demonstrating American prowess, as supporters of the war have claimed, the conflict has revealed an America that is unreliable and incapable of finishing what it started.”

“Far from demonstrating American prowess, as supporters of the war have claimed, the conflict has revealed an America that is unreliable and incapable of finishing what it started.”

This prompting was undoubtedly due to the claim made by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on May 5 in the White House Press Briefing Room that Operation Epic Fury had concluded, though US President Donald Trump, ever keen to keep an iron in the fire, huffed that Iran had to “agree to give what has been agreed to”.  (The “what” is always the problem in Trumpland.)  Not doing so would result in bombing “at a much higher level and intensity than it was before.”  The President had also “paused” Project Freedom, that massive prop of wishful thinking involving the use of the US military to escort commercial shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.  The pause – effectively a breezy termination – had........

© Middle East Monitor