Iran has won the war. Trump and Netanyahu now face a reckoning

“Iran has won the war. Trump and Netanyahu now face a reckoning Submitted by David Hearst on Mon, 05/25/2026 - 19:07 The balance of power has shifted, and nations of the Middle East will no longer accept a regional order dictated by the US and Israel A billboard depicts the Strait of Hormuz with a caption in Persian reading 'Forever in Iran’s Hand', at Tehran’s Vanak Square, on 25 May 2026 (Atta Kenare/AFP) Off Each day brings a fresh turn in the tortured negotiations between US President Donald Trump and the Islamic Republic of Iran . Each time an agreement on one point is close, Trump picks up the phone to call his partner-in-crime, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu - and Trump then retreats from it. This is what has happened to two points on which Iranian negotiators thought they had an agreement. According to Hassan Ahmadian , an Iranian affairs analyst, the two key elements of a 30-60 day ceasefire being proposed were that the truce would cover Lebanon , and that some Iranian assets would be unfrozen. But however tortuous the path, and even if this deal fails and Trump decides to attack Iran for a third time, it is brutally clear that the US has just lost another war in the Middle East - its sixth in 25 years. Iran has all the cards , chiefly the Strait of Hormuz, but also the deterrence its drones and missiles have achieved over its Gulf neighbours - and other cards still it has yet to play, like the closure of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait at the mouth of the Red Sea. Trump has none. These serial failures by the US in the first quarter of this century, when its military power was undisputed, and it held a monopoly on its use, are quite the achievement and should go down in the annals of warfare. In attacking Iran, Trump did not merely repeat the mistakes of his predecessors in Afghanistan, Iraq , Yemen , Libya and Syria . He added a few of his own, for good measure. If former US President George W Bush invaded Iraq on false intelligence that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, Trump likewise attacked Iran on false intelligence. The emergence of a strong military and diplomatic alliance of Sunni Muslim nations is exactly what Israel and the UAE did not want But at least Bush’s dodgy dossier was provided by his own intelligence services. Trump’s false intelligence was concocted by Mossad, and swallowed whole by the US commander in chief, against the best counsel of his own intelligence community. Netanyahu and Mossad director David Barnea convinced Trump that the regime in Tehran was so weak after the January uprising that it would last at most a few days after the assassination of its supreme leader. No one argued harder than Netanyahu, whose life’s ambition was about to be realised, that all it needed was one final push. No one is a bigger loser now that the war is about to end; hence, he is trying his hardest to stop Trump from signing a memorandum of understanding with Iran. But a final reckoning for both men is surely coming when this war finally stops. Balance of power They are not just bad losers. The threat that the Islamic Republic poses to US and Israeli regional plans is substantial. It has been the policy of three US administrations - Trump’s first term, Joe Biden, and now Trump’s second term - to get Sunni Arab nations to normalise with Israel . The proposed new order has been called various things: a Sunni-Israel alliance, an Arab Nato , the Abraham Accords - but the shape of it is clear. It would be anything but a partnership of equals. Israel would be installed as the new regional hegemon, the centre through which arms, high tech, data and trade would flow from east to west. How US-Israeli war gave Iran all the cards in the Middle East Read More » This alliance only ever had one committed partner: UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed. He alone saw the benefits of the two “ Little Spartas ” hooking up with each other to form a mutually beneficial empire of airfields and ports, strategically dotted around the Persian Gulf, the Gulf of Oman and the Red Sea. The total surrender of Iran would have led to either a weak placeman like Reza Pahlavi , the shah’s son, being parachuted in, civil war, or the fragmentation of Iran. Israel did not care. The fragmentation and permanent weakening of Iraq and now Syria is established Israeli policy. There is a common religious purpose in seeking to re-establish the supposed biblical land of Israel on the current map of the Middle East, but the pragmatic expression of this from the entire Jewish establishment in Tel Aviv is that it has decided it can only live with neighbours it either occupies or permanently weakens. A crushed Iran would have been the coronation of Trump as the king of this new order in the Middle East, and the anointment of his regional satrap, Netanyahu. He alone would have slain the beast that had so persistently defied Washington’s will to crush it for 47 years. Happily, this is a fantasy that now exists in Trump’s head only. The survival of the Islamic Republic has fundamentally altered the balance of power in the region. From periphery to centre Just look at who is leading the negotiations: Pakistan and Qatar . Since the start of the Israeli- Palestinian conflict, Pakistan has always been at the periphery of the region. It showed sympathy, as did other Muslim-majority nations, such as Indonesia or Malaysia, but that was it. The key switch came at the height of the Iran war, when the major Arab powers - Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait - found that the US military umbrella, for which they had paid so dearly, could not protect them. Consequently, they looked to outside players with big armies and established air power: Turkey and Pakistan. Out of the blue, Pakistani army chief Field Marshal Syed Asim Munir emerged as a major player - in or out of uniform. Pakistan, another nation that a previous US president had threatened to bomb “back to the Stone Age” if it did not comply with Washington’s war against the Taliban, has been written off too easily in the past as the debt-laden, disaster-prone, terrorist-targeted basket case of the subcontinent. It is a nuclear power with a sophisticated missile programme. It has a strong trade and military relationship with China . Consequently, it has Chinese-made PL-15 missiles capable of shooting down India ’s cutting-edge French -made Rafale jets. Significantly, Mohamed bin Zayed’s first reaction to the left-field emergence of Pakistan as a negotiator in the Gulf war was to demand its money back. The UAE had given Pakistan $2bn in 2018 , a debt that had rolled over each subsequent year. The petulant move to request repayment only hardened its neighbour’s resolve to cement the new counter-alliance to Trump and Israel; Saudi Arabia gave Pakistan the funds to pay off Abu Dhabi. Qatar was less of a surprise as a lead negotiator. Israel and its lobby in Washington had appealed in vain to throw the Gulf state under the bus, as Trump had all but done in his first term as president when Saudi Arabia and the Emirates laid siege to it, but the US president’s own family interests stopped him. In one of the posts announcing the imminent agreement with Iran, no less than three Qataris were name-checked by Trump. Emerging alliances But two distinct alliances have now emerged. One forged in the heat of battle includes Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Turkey, Qatar, and Oman. It is thought that Kuwait is veering towards Pakistan, while Egypt has too much to fear from Israel’s plans in Gaza . Most of these states are members of Trump’s " Board of Peace , but that means little after Iran’s victory. They all oppose Israel’s attempts to permanently occupy half of Gaza, the south of Lebanon, and two-thirds of the West Bank. Another sign of this emerging alliance was a statement by their foreign ministers condemning the opening in Israel of an embassy for the breakaway region of Somaliland. Guess whose signature was notable by its absence? The UAE’s. The emergence of a strong military and diplomatic alliance of Sunni Muslim nations is exactly what Israel and the UAE did not want. Trump may try to arm-twist Riyadh into signing the Abraham Accords as the price for a ceasefire with Iran, but what he will get is deafening silence Their own alliance is still powerful and increasingly overt. They have India and the US behind them. But these countries are far away. If peace breaks out, Abu Dhabi will find itself looking down the barrel of the gun, metaphorically at least, of its two most powerful neighbours: Iran and Saudi Arabia. The Emirati tactic of trying to drag Saudi Arabia into a military conflict with Iran failed. Riyadh more or less stuck to its guns and kept its relationship with Iran and its ceasefire with the Houthis in Yemen intact - even though considerable evidence is emerging that some of the missiles intercepted over Saudi oil fields came from the south, from Yemen, rather than from Iraq to the north or Iran to the east. One thing is for sure. Although the emerging alliance of Sunni nations will not style itself as anti-Israel, its existence is definitely not to Israel’s benefit. Trump may try to arm-twist Riyadh into signing the Abraham Accords as the price for a ceasefire with Iran, but what he will get is deafening silence. He is trying again, in his latest social media post , to salvage victory from the jaws of defeat. “It may be possible that one or two have a reason for not doing so, and that will be accepted, but most should be ready, willing, and able to make this Settlement with Iran a far more Historic Event than it would, otherwise, be,” Trump noted on Truth Social. The deluded and defeated president even offered Iran membership: “In speaking to numerous of the Great Leaders mentioned above, they would be honored, as soon as our Document is signed, to have the Islamic Republic of Iran as part of the Abraham Accords. Wow, now that would be something special!” Empowering resistance Here on planet Earth, Iran is positioning itself to be another major player in the Gulf. It has once more established its deterrence over all other oil and gas producers in the region, and working alongside Oman, it will not surrender its de facto control of Hormuz ever again. This is more precious to it than its pile of highly enriched uranium, which it only produced after Trump pulled out of the nuclear accord negotiated with former President Barack Obama. Iran’s cards still exist even if Israel or Trump sabotages the framework deal for a ceasefire that is in existence. Yes, Trump and Netanyahu obliterated Iran’s air force and navy, as Israel did to Syria’s. But they did not obliterate Iran’s air and naval power, conveyed by drones, missiles, small boats and naval mines. How Iran war will shape the future of Hezbollah and Israeli expansionism Read More » In recent days, it is no coincidence that tankers have been going through Hormuz bound for Pakistan and China . Iran has proved that it can turn Hormuz on and off like a tap. Iran’s victory has also empowered resistance movements across the region. Hezbollah had been written off as a fighting force after its leadership was decimated several times over by booby-trapped pagers and successive strikes. But with a new generation of fighters that have learned basic counter-intelligence lessons (no one answers the phone after Hezbollah realised its internal communications had been fatally compromised), and with a new weapon - the FPV drone - it is defending Lebanon far more effectively than the Lebanese government, which is in talks with Israel. Iran has also changed the global balance of power. It was painful to watch Trump cringing before a highly relaxed President Xi Jinping, while the Chinese leader felt confident enough to issue an explicit threat not to touch Taiwan , as Trump stood next to him. Political scientist Francis Fukuyama rightly observed that it is the US’s turn to be considered a rogue state, with China becoming the voice of stability and a centre, if not the centre, of future international agreements. China has been the only major power not to fight a war in the last 25 years. Iran’s resistance to subjection bears a powerful message to the Arab world. It is this: with enough determination and a high enough pain threshold, the middle powers of the Middle East can resist US and Israeli colonial domination and prevail. Historic defeat What happens after a framework agreement has been signed? I expect Israel to resume its bombardment of Lebanon and Gaza with renewed intensity. Netanyahu will want to continue demolishing every house, village and town south of the Litani River, to hide his debacle in Iran for as long as possible. He may even consider occupying the whole of Gaza to seek the demilitarisation of Hamas. But he will be digging his own political grave, as there is no chance Israel will emerge from its continuous wars with any of its objectives achieved. Neither Trump nor Netanyahu can look their nations in the eye and claim to have been anything other than defeated by the Islamic Republic Trump will do the same with his siege on poor Cuba . Just watch how quickly these two men will change the subject once a deal with Iran has been done - because they won’t be able to answer the critics at home who will try to hold them to account for the last three months of a highly unpopular war. If Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza lost the support of an entire generation of American Jews, its war on Iran has had a similar effect on an older generation of Republican Trump supporters. In Republican Christian circles, the idea that Israel is “occupying” the US is growing apace. Neither Trump nor Netanyahu can look their nations in the eye and claim to have been anything other than defeated by the Islamic Republic. Once again. And if I were the ruler of Abu Dhabi, I would not be asking myself about regime change in Tehran. I would be asking myself, how long can I stay in power? The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye. War on Iran Opinion Post Date Override 0 Update Date Mon, 05/04/2020 - 21:29 Update Date Override 0

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