August 24, 2026:
The progress of this year’s Iran war has proven perplexing for America and its Persian Gulf allies. Weeks of bombing Iran have had no effect on the Iranian government or its ability to continue firing missiles and drones at regional targets. In other countries, this tends to be because the population is either inspired to respond to the attackers or tacitly supports its government in defending the nation rather than demonstrating against it. Neither of those factors is present in Iran, where 80-90% of the population hate the corrupt mullah regime and its security forces to the extent that most Iranians have ceased being Islamic. Most likely the reason for the regime’s resilience is because about 1% of the total population are murderous regime protection forces who have killed scores of thousands of rebellious Iranian civilians, most recently about 30,000 in January 2026.
Iran is also proving that it had more missiles available than the Americans suspected. This occurred despite the Israeli network of operatives inside Iran. Apparently, this force was told to stand down until the bombardment ended, while still trying to obtain information on current missile and drone supplies. These weapons are well concealed and guarded. American satellite and drone surveillance has apparently failed at gathering such information. Plus, Iran has received significant stocks of missiles, drones, and rocket fuel precursor chemicals since the war started.
The Iranians are clever in other ways and have based their current tactics on those that worked during 2024 and 2025 confrontations. The Iranian military has always prepared for prolonged conflicts, and what is happening now is another example of that.
Iran does not try to defeat American forces but is continually working to keep their resistance going. That’s an ancient strategy; the American hero of the 18th-century revolution, George Washington, beat the British by keeping the rebel forces intact and a constant threat. Eventually the British gave up because the war seemed endless and the expense was something Parliament would not tolerate.
Iran has made several critical errors. Not only has it relied on one resource for most of its exports, but it also has relied on only a few trade routes; Iran relies too much on the Strait of Hormuz. As a result, a blockade against the Strait of Hormuz, combined with cutting off some of the trade between Iran and its neighbors, has struck a devastating blow to Iran’s economy. This has caused the pay of its regime protection forces to go down – some units’ pay is already several months in arrears.
The current American strategy is to continue its blockade of Iranian ports and eventually attacks on land and Caspian Sea routes. If most of this traffic were blocked, Iran would have no income and no imports. A siege, rather than constant air strikes, will make Iran, or at least the Iranian people, more amenable to unconditional surrender. That’s the only form of surrender that works.