No, Iran Is Not Winning, and Yes, There Is a Strategy

From the first days of Operation Epic Fury, critics have howled that Trump is losing the war, empowering Iran’s extremists, and has no strategy for victory. 

Much of that criticism is simple, reactionary outrage that accompanies any action by Donald Trump. If Trump cured cancer, we would be subjected to outrage that he is killing innocent cells and preventing people from experiencing the joy of dying painful deaths. 

Donald Trump has managed to get Democrats to defend pedophiles and rapists, turn MS-13 gang members into heroes, and cry in outrage that Nicholas Maduro was captured. Should it surprise us that Democrats and Europeans have rallied around Iran as a victim, even so shortly after the Islamist regime killed tens of thousands of protesters and used rape as a weapon against innocent women?

Of course not. 

But even some of Trump’s supporters have wondered whether Operation Epic Fury was based more on hope than strategy. Just because people who are critical of every move that Trump makes are arguing that the war was a mistake, one should not assume that they are wrong. 

I believe that Trump does have a strategy, and I am absolutely certain, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that the military knew that Iran was likely to close the Strait of Hormuz. After all, it has been in its war plans for almost half a century, and Iran has tried before. To be honest, I was surprised it took so long into the war for Iran to make that move. 

Conversely, I also understand that Trump’s strategy is not guaranteed to work because no strategy is guaranteed to work, and in war, your enemy gets a vote. Short of killing every last enemy soldier and flattening a country, all wars end when one side or the other’s will to fight breaks. 

War is politics by other means, kinetic instead of verbal. Even Japan and Germany eventually surrendered, despite having nearly indomitable wills. 

So, what is and has been Trump’s strategy? If you have followed the war, you have seen it unfold before your eyes. First, the destruction of as much of the IRGC infrastructure as possible, the disruption of the regime’s internal workings, and then the squeezing of the economy on which the IRGC relies. 

Trump’s threat to destroy bridges and power plants, and his implicit threat to permanently disrupt Iran’s export industry in oil, have led the regime to stop striking out at its neighbors. Just as the Gulf countries and the Trump administration underestimated Iran’s willingness to strike Sunni Arab countries, the IRGC underestimated the Gulf countries’ willingness to absorb pain in order to defang Iran, which has been a threat for decades. 

BREAKING: Senior UAE official Reem Al Hashimy rips into Iran.

“We’re everything that they’re not.

We used our oil wealth to build a powerhouse. They used theirs for nuclear programs, missiles, proxies.

We became a global player, they’re a pariah state.” pic.twitter.com/RLeBjpJYIQ

— Eyal Yakoby (@EYakoby) April 21, 2026

So all Iran has left is control of the Strait of Hormuz, which is hardly nothing of course, but less of a trump card than they thought. The Gulf countries aren’t howling in protest and rapidly restructuring how they export oil, the US is selling more oil than the Gulf countries and Russia combined, and the US is not so worried about Europe and China groaning about the situation because they are being jerks to us. Screw them. 

In a game of chicken, and that is what this has turned out to be, Trump is driving a Mack truck with a tandem load, and Iran is driving a Yugo. The IRGC is waiting for Trump to swerve, or as the Democrats would put it, TACO. At some point they will realize that TACO is a myth. 

🇮🇱 NEW:
Israel is on heightened alert as it prepares for a possible return to fighting with Iran, with officials warning negotiations with the US could collapse as early as next week.

Donald Trump is reportedly being briefed on military options, while Israeli leaders assess the… pic.twitter.com/h4zavk63oH

— Mossad Commentary (@MOSSADil) April 30, 2026

Israel is on heightened alert as it prepares for a possible return to fighting with Iran, with officials warning negotiations with the US could collapse as early as next week.

Donald Trump is reportedly being briefed on military options, while Israeli leaders assess the US may need to “give a push” through strikes on Iranian energy and government infrastructure.

Both nations are also working to project a credible naval threat in the Strait of Hormuz.

The National Interest has an interesting analysis on the state of play inside Iran, and puts it well: the IRGC is not the government of Iran, but is an occupying force. To the extent that the old government had any legitimacy, it has evaporated with the military takeover. And that military junta is in a perilous position. 

Simultaneously, the IRGC has begun deploying foreign militias inside the country to provide added protection against a potential uprising. The Fatemiyoun Brigade, drawn from Afghan Shia recruits, and the Zainebiyoun Brigade, composed of Pakistani Shia militants, along with several Iraqi factions, have reportedly been imported into Iran and assigned internal security responsibilities across geographically distinct zones of the country.

The move is telling. It reflects the IRGC’s assessment of its own current, weakened position. With significant losses to personnel and infrastructure, and with Iranian military morale reportedly deteriorating, the regime appears to have concluded that its domestic security apparatus alone cannot be relied upon to contain potential internal unrest.

All of these measures might buy the country’s remaining leaders precious time. But they simply cannot restore the Islamic Republic’s lost legitimacy. A regime reduced to arming children, importing foreign fighters, and walling off its people from the outside world isn’t ruling. Rather, it is managing the occupation of its own country.

They’ve closed off the internet, are recruiting child soldiers, relying on mercenaries to keep the population under control, and their source of revenue has disappeared. Add to that an already weak economy from before the war began, a water crisis in the capital city, and the only thing keeping the regime in power is the constantly repeated threat of mass murder. 

In the short term, that has worked, but it can’t work forever. Iran is not Afghanistan, and as bad as it is, the IRGC is not the Taliban. Nobody in the IRGC is interested in living in caves and eating rotting goat. 

SCOOP: Pentagon commanders to brief Trump on new Iran military options Thursday https://t.co/UoTP556ei2

— Axios (@axios) April 30, 2026

Could some form of this regime survive? Obviously so. The enemy gets a vote in any conflict. Would combining continued bombing alongside the blockade of Iranian boats have been better? I can’t comment because I haven’t seen the intelligence the Trump administration has and what went into the decision. I suspect Netanyahu would have preferred to go that route. 

BREAKING: Iran’s president says US blockade ‘intolerable’

🔴 LIVE updates: https://t.co/lM13u0eWRh pic.twitter.com/eFHDCfKmps

— Al Jazeera Breaking News (@AJENews) April 30, 2026

But there is no doubt in my mind that the complaints that Trump has no strategy are the product of misunderstanding the war from the beginning. Everybody assumed this would be more of a Maduro-like excursion than a battle of wills. 

War is a battle of wills, and the IRGC is counting on domestic pressure in the US to save it. It may still, given how the Democrats have taken their side, along with Pravda. 

🚨 SPECIAL REPORT: The leftist media’s coverage of the Iran conflict is 88% negative.

As President Trump wages a war to combat terrorism and keep America safe, the media are working to undermine him at every turn.https://t.co/696O2jVVOY

— MRC NewsBusters (@newsbusters) April 28, 2026

Trump is banking on economic pressure to make the regime cry “Uncle.” That is not a guaranteed-win strategy, but it is a good one. 

Trump has the upper hand, not Iran. Thinking that Iran can win this assumes that the US cannot survive a closure of the Strait of Hormuz as long as Iran can. That is a very big and likely very wrong assumption. 

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