This is depressing as ****. Any thoughts on if Kagan is missing something?

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/2026/05/iran-war-trump-losing/687094/

Unfortunately, I think that many of his points are spot on and true.

Trump's War On Iran Reveals 'America's Failure': The Atlantic

President Trump is frustrated because the Israelis sold him the pipe dream that arming the Kurds & other Iranian dissidents would quickly topple the Iranian regime, leading to a quick victory. This failed to happen because it was a plan based on wishful thinking not the realities… https://t.co/1C6rwBeBJ5

— Joe Kent (@joekent16jan19) May 11, 2026

President Trump is frustrated because the Israelis sold him the pipe dream that arming the Kurds & other Iranian dissidents would quickly topple the Iranian regime, leading to a quick victory. This failed to happen because it was a plan based on wishful thinking not the realities on the ground.

Instead of being mad at the Kurds, who are our critical counter terrorism partners, he should focus his ire on the Israeli government officials who lied to him to get us entrenched in this war and whoever in his inner circle that allowed the Israelis to manipulate U.S. policy to support Israel's primary goal.

Israel's primary goal was to get us into the war, not to make sure the pipe dream they were selling would actually work.

Israel has always understood that they can't topple the Iranian regime without us doing the majority of the fighting, they needed to get us into the war.

The Israelis kept their goal in mind when feeding us "intel" about Iran. Unfortunately, President Trump's inner circle failed to keep Israel's main goal in mind when receiving Israeli "intel" and providing context to the President."

Big C said:

---

socaltownie said:

---

This is depressing as ****. Any thoughts on if Kagan is missing something?

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/2026/05/iran-war-trump-losing/687094/

---

Kagan is talking about the near-worst-case-scenario, but he isn't missing anything.

This is what happens when an ignorant electorate elects an ignorant, impulsive President who surrounds himself with sycophants. This war was clearly a bad idea from the get-go to anyone with any knowledge of recent history.

Special booby prize to the top brass of our military, who were unable to persuade their Commander-in-Chief that this was a bad idea and also were unable to pivot to drone warfare despite watching a few years of Russia and Ukraine go at it.

---

A large number of top military brass and military analysts have been purged earlier this year to pave the way for that folly, Jo Kent being the most prominent one.

PAC-10-BEAR said:

---

socaltownie said:

---

This is depressing as ****. Any thoughts on if Kagan is missing something?

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/2026/05/iran-war-trump-losing/687094/

---

Is this the same Robert Kagan who's married to none other than Victoria Nuland, the prominent architect of the events preceding Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine?

---

Worst part of your cult is to focus on authorship rathwr than contents of argument. He could be married to satan and i will still read an argument and see of logical

socaltownie said:

---

PAC-10-BEAR said:

---

socaltownie said:

---

This is depressing as ****. Any thoughts on if Kagan is missing something?

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/2026/05/iran-war-trump-losing/687094/

---

Is this the same Robert Kagan who's married to none other than Victoria Nuland, the prominent architect of the events preceding Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine?

---

Worst part of your cult is to focus on authorship rathwr than contents of argument. He could be married to satan and i will still read an argument and see of logical

---

There is a very good analysis of that Kagan article from Arnaud Bertrand, which I have posted on the main thread about Iran, here it is again:

https://bearinsider.com/forums/6/topics/132518/replies/2693538

Reposting that content here:

" There's no overstating how extraordinary this Atlantic article is, given the author and the outlet.

As a reminder Bob Kagan is:

- The co-founder of Project for the New American Century, probably the single most imperialist Think Tank in Washington (which is quite a feat)

- A man who spent his entire life advocating for American military interventions, especially in the Middle East, and a vocal advocate of the Iraq war. He started advocating for intervention in Iraq before 9/11, which speaks for itself...

- The husband of Victoria Nuland, an extremely hawkish former senior U.S. official (a key architect of U.S. policy in Ukraine, with the consequences we all witness today)

- The brother of Frederick Kagan, one of the key architects of the Iraq surge

In other words, we ain't exactly looking at some sort of anti-imperialist peacenik. This is quite literally the guy Dick Cheney called when he needed a pep talk.

And the man is writing in The Atlantic, the most reliably pro-war mainstream media outlet in the U.S. (also quite a feat).

So when HE writes that the U.S. "suffered a total defeat" in Iran that has no precedent in U.S. history and can "neither be repaired nor ignored," it's the functional equivalent of Ronald McDonald telling you the burgers aren't great: it means the burgers really, really aren't great.

Extraordinarily (and somewhat worryingly, for me), his arguments for why this is such a defeat are virtually the same as those I laid out in my article "The First Multipolar War" last month ([url=https://t.co/tbnOpdYqux][/url]https://open.substack.com/pub/arnaudbertrand/p/the-first-multipolar-war?r=4r0pw&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=post%20viewer).

Here they are :

1) Vietnam/Afghanistan were survivable, this isn't

He agrees that this war - and the U.S. defeat - is fundamentally different in nature from previous U.S. interventions.

Where I wrote that the wars in Vietnam and Afghanistan didn't change the equation much in terms of power dynamics ("in the grand scheme of things, the giant walked away with little more than a bruised ego"), Kagan writes that "the defeats in Vietnam and Afghanistan were costly but did not do lasting damage to America's overall position in the world."

And when I wrote that "it's painfully obvious that the Iran war is of a qualitatively different nature" from these, he writes that "defeat in the present confrontation with Iran will be of an entirely different character."

Same point.

2) Iran will never relinquish Hormuz and uses it as selective leverage

When I wrote that Iran has turned "freedom of navigation" on its head by establishing "a permission-based regime" through the Strait of Hormuz, Kagan arrives at the same conclusion: "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 also agrees that "Iran has no interest in returning to the status quo ante," when I myself cited Iran's parliament speaker Ghalibaf in my article, saying: "The Strait of Hormuz situation won't return to its pre-war status." Same point and virtually the same words.

3) Gulf states will have to accommodate Iran

He agrees that most Gulf states will have no choice but to accommodate Iran, effectively making Iran into a, if not THE, dominant regional power.

Kagan writes "the United States will have proved itself a paper tiger, forcing the Gulf and other Arab states to accommodate Iran."

On my end, I wrote that "the Gulf monarchies will eventually have to choose between two security propositions. One where they stay aligned with a distant superpower that [can't protect them]. The other proposition being: make peace with the regional power that just proved it can hit [them] whenever it wants." Which is not much of a choice…

4) Military impossibility to reopen Hormuz

Kagan writes that "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."

On my end, in my article I cited Germany's defense minister Boris Pistorius: "What does Trump expect a handful of European frigates to do that the powerful US Navy cannot?"

The exact same argument.

5) Global chain reaction

Kagan agrees that this is a global strategic failure that fundamentally changes the U.S.'s position in the world. As he puts it: "America's once-dominant position in the Gulf is just the first of many casualties… America's allies in East Asia and Europe must wonder about American staying power in the event of future conflicts."

You'll have guessed it, I wrote essentially the same thing: "Think about what it says if you're Saudi Arabia, quietly watching your American-built defenses fail to protect your own refineries. Or any European country now facing the worst energy shock since 1973, caused not by your enemy but by your ally, and realizing that said 'ally,' supposedly in charge of 'protecting' you, couldn't even protect Israel's most strategic sites - when it's the country with which it's joined at the hip. I'm not even speaking about China or Russia who are seeing their worldview being validated on almost every axis simultaneously."

6) Weapons stocks depleted, credibility shattered

Kagan: "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."

Me: "America's most advanced weapons systems are much more vulnerable than previously thought - not theoretically, but in actual combat."

Kagan: "America's allies… must wonder about American staying power in the event of future conflicts."

Me: "The U.S. security guarantee has been empirically falsified in real time."

-----------
So, yup, Bob Kagan and I agree on nearly everything. I need a shower

Reassuringly though, we still differ on a few fundamental aspects.

First of all, arguably the most important one, the moral aspect. In typical neocon fashion, his article contains not a word about the human cost of this war - not the 165 schoolgirls, not the devastation inflicted on Iranians during 37 days of bombing, not the toll this war is taking on the entire world through its devastating economic consequences (the economic devastation on ordinary people worldwide is referenced only as a political problem for Trump). For him, this is purely a strategic chess problem, morality and people don't figure in his mental map.

For me, the moral bankruptcy of this war isn't separate from the strategic failure - it is the strategic failure. Much like Gaza can only be a failure because of its sheer abjectness.

Secondly, there is not an instant of reflection in the article on how we got there. Which is unsurprising because he personally, alongside his wife, his brother, and every co-signatory of every PNAC letter, spent a generation pushing for exactly this kind of confrontation. The man spend 30 years advocating for military dominance in the Middle East and hostility towards Iran, thereby forging them as an adversary and facilitating this very war that he now says has "checkmated" America.

I know introspection has never been the neocon forte but at some point you have to stop setting houses on fire and then writing op-eds about how surprising the smoke is.

Last but not least, we differ on what should be done. This is the funniest part of Kagan's article - showing that the man is decidedly beyond salvation. On one hand he calls this a "checkmate" by Iran, and a U.S. defeat that can "neither be repaired nor ignored," yet an the other hand his solution for it is… surprise, surprise… a bigger war still!

He writes that what's to be done is "engage in a full-scale ground and naval war to remove the current Iranian regime, and then to occupy Iran until a new government can take hold."

The arsonist's solution to the fire is a bigger fire \_()_/

For my end, this was the conclusion of my previous article:

"There is almost a Greek tragedy quality to U.S. actions lately where every move taken to escape one's fate becomes the mechanism that delivers it. The U.S. went to war to reassert dominance - and proved it could no longer dominate. It demanded allies send warships - and revealed it had no real allies. It waged forty years of maximum pressure to break Iran before this moment came - and instead forged the very adversary now capable of meeting it. It started the war in part to have additional leverage over China - and handed the world the spectacle of begging China for help. The prophecy was multipolarity. Every American action to prevent it reveals it instead."

I wouldn't change a word. The only thing that's changed since I wrote it is that even the arsonists now smell the smoke."

https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/iran-war-day-73-checkmate-at-the-chokepoint/

Relax, guys, I have a plan. We won't come out unscathed, but at least we will come out:

1. Stall until we get rid of Trump. Hopefully, China hasn't overrun Taiwan in the meantime.

2. New POTUS says, hey, that was Trump, not the rest of us. Begins to build a coalition of allies (remember allies?)

3. Large coalition of allies negotiates the best possible deal with Iran to fix this. We take a hit, but Iran is not omnipotent.

4. We learn from this and develop a sensible foreign policy.

This last part might be the hardest, as we have had plenty of chances to learn from recent history (Vietnam, Iraq, etc.) and have failed every damned time.