Aletho News

US suffers ‘total defeat’ in war against Iran, faces irreversible strategic collapse: Neocon analyst

Press TV – May 11, 2026

In a noteworthy mea culpa from one of America’s most influential neoconservative commentators, Robert Kagan believes the United States has suffered a “total defeat” in its ongoing war against Iran, which has permanently shattered its global standing.

Kagan, a co-founder of the Project for the New American Century and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, was a vocal advocate of the war against Iraq and a lifelong champion of American military interventions in West Asia.

But in a recent article for The Atlantic, he offered a grim verdict on the current war of aggression against the Islamic Republic of Iran, launched on February 28.

“The US suffered a total defeat,” Kagan writes, describing the loss as having no precedent in American history and one that can “neither be repaired nor ignored.”

While acknowledging that previous American military failures carried heavy costs, Kagan insists this war is fundamentally different in nature.

“The defeats in Vietnam and Afghanistan were costly but did not do lasting damage to America’s overall position in the world,” the prominent commentator writes.

“Defeat in the present confrontation with Iran will be of an entirely different character.”

At the heart of this catastrophe, Kagan noted, is Iran’s newfound ability to control the Strait of Hormuz, the world’s most strategic waterway, without any challenge.

“Iran will be able not only to demand tolls for passage, but to limit transit to those nations with which it has good relations,” he writes.

According to Kagan, Iran has no interest in returning to the pre-war status quo. Most Persian Gulf states, he believes, will have no choice but to accommodate Tehran, effectively making Iran the dominant regional power.

“The United States will have proved itself a paper tiger, forcing the (Persian) Gulf and other Arab states to accommodate Iran,” Kagan writes.

He also dismisses any notion that a coalition of allies could rectify the situation.

“If the United States with its mighty Navy can’t or won’t open the strait, no coalition of forces with just a fraction of the Americans’ capability will be able to, either,” he states.

Kagan frames the collapse not as a regional setback but as a global strategic failure that fundamentally alters America’s position in the world.

“America’s once-dominant position in the (Persian) Gulf is just the first of many casualties,” he warns. “America’s allies in East Asia and Europe must wonder about American staying power in the event of future conflicts.”

Compounding the strategic humiliation is a staggering depletion of American military resources during the ongoing war, which has been widely documented in the US media.

“Just a few weeks of war with a second-rank power have reduced American weapons stocks to perilously low levels, with no quick remedy in sight,” Kagan writes.

He hastens to add that the United States now finds itself unable to control the consequences of a war it initiated – a war it has already lost.

May 11, 2026 - Posted by aletho | Militarism, Wars for Israel | Iran, Israel, Middle East, United States, Zionism