Aletho News

Even The Neo-Cons Admit The Iran War Is Failing

The Dissident – March 16, 2026

The current U.S./Israeli war on Iran is, in many ways, a product of the policies long advocated by U.S. neoconservatives, most importantly the clean break strategy drafted by the Project for a New American Century (PNAC), which advocated taking out “Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and, finishing off, Iran” on behalf of Israel.

But many of the original Neo-cons who first drafted this plan, including John Bolton and even Robert Kagan and Bill Kristol, the founders of the Project for a New American Century, are now jumping ship and admitting that the U.S./Israeli war on Iran is failing.

In an interview with NPR, longtime Neo-con John Bolton, despite saying he has “been a supporter of efforts at regime change in Iran for a long time” was forced to admit that the regime change plan has failed and that the U.S. underestimated Iran’s response.

Bolton was forced to admit that Trump underestimated Iran’s ability to effectively close the Strait of Hormuz and disrupt oil shipping in response to the U.S/Israeli bombing, saying:

… it was questionable whether he was cooperating effectively with and assisting the opposition inside Iran. That’s what I said, I think, in our last conversation. Since then, I’m very worried that there are now signs that they haven’t thought about a lot of other things. For example, there’s reporting that the White House was surprised at how quickly oil prices went up.

And all I can say to that is I’m surprised that they’re surprised. If they weren’t planning for that both economically, politically and militarily, then that’s a huge hole in the planning. I am worried that they apparently didn’t take as seriously as they should have the potential to mine the Strait of Hormuz. Trump said several days ago that the Iranian navy had been completely destroyed. And despite years of listening to that kind of thing, I should have known better. I actually sort of believed in for a while. But now we learned that it was only yesterday that we got around to destroying 16 mine-laying vessels. Of course, they’ve got the capability to mine via drones going over the strait and dropping mines in it.

Even more shocking than Bolton’s admission was a podcast released by the founders of PNAC, Robert Kagan and Bill Kristol, where they essentially admitted that the U.S. war on Iran was destroying the U.S. empire.

Robert Kagan, in the podcast, admitted that the Iran war was debilitating America’s ability to wage a new Cold War on Russia and China, and isolating the U.S. empire globally.

The “undoubted effect of the Iran war has been to drive a deeper wedge between the United States and pretty much all of its allies or at least all of its traditional allies, both in Europe and in Asia, and I would say potentially even in the Middle East” Kagan Said.

Kagan lamented that the Iran war was crippling the U.S.’s ability to continue the proxy war in Ukraine saying, “the skyrocketing oil prices … are even before Trump took the action of lifting sanctions against Russia was going to increase Russian income” and “American forces are … burning through major stocks of weaponry and particularly Patriot and other forms of interceptors on which Ukraine depends heavily because those are the interceptors that defend their major cities from constant Russian attacks.”

Kagan also lamented that the war was taking away the U.S. empire’s ability to wage a new Cold War on China, saying, “very few countries in the world are more dependent on Middle East oil, including the oil that comes directly through the Strait of Hormuz, than Japan. Japan I think, depends on something like 95% of its oil supplies come from the Middle East and 70% of that runs through the Strait of Hormuz. So once again the Japanese were not consulted”, adding, that the prime minister of Japan is “very upset” and “ talked about how this crisis has severely impacted Japanese interests”.

He also added “the Japanese will notice that the United States has sent significant forces that are dedicated both to the defense of Japan and are sort of critical to any response to a Chinese attack on Taiwan. Those forces are now being sent or some of them are already there, and some are being sent to the Middle East.”

Kagan also admitted that the war in Iran is isolating the Gulf States from the U.S. and potentially moving them towards China.

He said, “I just wonder whether the Gulf States in particular are wondering whether they’ve joined the right team here because they have, by the way, been very on background, very vocal in saying that they were against the war. … They did not favor it. They thought they had a pretty good deal going with the Iranians, that kind of an agreement that they would get to, they would leave each other alone for the most part,” adding, “it turns out the United States can’t really protect them. I mean they have suffered the worst in some respects because it’s not only that they’ve been targets and that they’re shipping you know they’ve lost money on oil, but you know they with the tremendous cooperation of the Trump and I would say in this case the Trump family and social circle have been very deeply involved in the United States making investments in AI and other things but particularly AI they’re hosting data centers for all kinds of companies and in general, they’ve been trying to make themselves an attractive place for investment and also tourism.”

Citing the example of Dubai, Kagan said, “You watch the UAE is basically arresting people for taking pictures of damage that may have been done by Iranian drone strikes and other things on things in Dubai. For instance, I think they’ve arrested foreigners who took pictures of these things. Why? Because they don’t want people to see that it’s risky to be in Dubai, because then people won’t invest and they won’t come, and so it’s kind of a disaster for them,” adding, “the bottom line for the Gulf States is that the United States undertook this war and then was not able actually to protect them”.

He added, “I don’t think it’s hard to persuade certain Gulf states like the UAE and others that maybe China is also a pretty good partner or at least as much of a reliable partner as the United States has turned out to be.”

In other words, Kagan and his host Bill Kristol are essentially admitting that the Iran war is destroying and isolating U.S. empire and destroying the U.S.’s ability to project power in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East through proxy states.

This is why Kagan- as journalist Max Blumenthal described it – essentially “describes Israel as a strategic liability leading the US into a quagmire” saying, “I find it a little bit it’s kind of a syllogism when people talk about what a great ally Israel is. It it is a great ally in defense of Israel” adding, “at the end of the day, Iran is a much greater threat to Israel than it is to the United States.”

Kagan also admitted that Iran, “were deliberately not closing the straits for all these years precisely because we did not confront them with the prospect of complete annihilation” adding, “it was only when both the Israelis and the United States made it clear that their goal was the annihilation of regime, assassinated the entire leadership with a bombing strike that they then did this. So we are now solving a problem that we clearly provoked.”

Make no mistake about it, John Bolton, Robert Kagan, Bill Kristol, and their fellow Neo-cons set the stage for this war with Iran, but the fact that even they are now jumping ship shows that war is not at all going as planned for the U.S.

March 16, 2026 - Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | China, Israel, Japan, Middle East, Saudi Arabia, UAE, United States, Zionism