Anthony Aguilar

The campaign is failing because it was launched without a clear political or military objective, so overwhelming force becomes bombing policy out of the desert with no path to a negotiated end. Iran holds a growing attrition advantage, trading cheap drones and missiles for costly US interceptors Washington cannot resupply fast enough, and time itself favours Tehran as the midterms approach. Momentum has shifted: Washington now reacts to Iranian strikes rather than setting the pace, and Iran will keep striking US forces and regional shipping to deny Trump a face-saving withdrawal. Now says the Iranian strike on US bases in Jordan hit an F-15 and an A-10 and that the real damage is worse than disclosed, while interceptor stocks run critically low. Now says Ansar Allah holds Mayun Island and the whole Yemeni Red Sea coast, controls the Bab el-Mandeb corridor and is outfighting the Saudi-backed forces, and calls them formidable opponents with ballistic missile and drone capability rather than an Iranian proxy.

The Iran war directly benefits Russia by forcing the United States to expend ATACMS and other strategic munitions that would otherwise go to Ukraine, extending Russia's advantage on that front.

Argues the April fourteen-point US-Iran memorandum collapsed because its first condition required an Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon, which Israel refused, giving Israel an effective veto over US-Iran diplomacy. Judges that Israel can no longer defend against a coordinated multi-front barrage from Hezbollah, the Houthis, Iran and Iraqi militias, and that its tough talk masks eroded interception capacity and dependence on a fraying US backstop. Now says Israel is exploiting the regional power vacuum to expand into southern Lebanon and Syria, including strikes approaching Damascus, leaving Washington positioned to have to back it alone.

China and Russia are moving from indirect support of Iran (intelligence, satellite imagery) to direct material aid, including a Russia-Iran nuclear deal, because both read an Iranian defeat as a threat to their own position. Now says China and Russia are supplying Iran with satellite-based targeting assistance and windows of opportunity to strike.

Calls the Iran war "Donald Trump's Ukraine," an open-ended attritional conflict with no achievable end state, which is accelerating a Mecca-style regional realignment among Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Turkey that sidelines Washington. Reads US power as overstretched: diplomatically up on the ropes, no longer able to reliably backstop Israeli brinkmanship, and holding a Gulf blockade posture it cannot sustain. Now reports the Fifth Fleet forced to shift its headquarters from Bahrain to Diego Garcia, 2,200 miles away, leaving no US naval capability operating in the Persian Gulf or the Strait of Hormuz. Now says Washington has no plan beyond rhetoric, is being pushed toward deeper military involvement it does not want, and that the region is realigning into a post-American order with allies like Pakistan and Turkey hedging.

Control of the Strait of Hormuz, specifically who levies transit fees and administers passage, has become the war's most consequential stake, eclipsing its original objectives. The cost asymmetry runs against Washington: multi-million-dollar interceptors and cruise missiles against cheap Iranian drones, with a weapons-production pipeline that cannot expand until 2028. Now argues that with Iran-aligned forces positioned to hold both Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb, global trade and energy flows face a chokepoint risk the American public has not grasped. Now reports the Saudi East-West pipeline shut down and not operating and the US national average for regular petrol at $4.32 a gallon, with the choking of Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb set to inflict a months-long cost on global shipping and consumer prices.