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Total Strategic Loss
May 11, 2026
AI Analysis: Bandwagon
Posted 1 hour ago by
Foreign policy analysts from across the spectrum are all coming to the same conclusion and it’s a sobering one. Here’s Joe Cirincione formerly of the Carnegie Endowment for Peace: Robert Kagan was a vocal advocate for invading Iraq and Iran. He wanted the Iraq War to be the beginning of serial regime-change in the Middle East. He believed that it would strengthen Israel, create a string of pro-American democracies in the region and ensure American dominance for generations to come.
So it is all the more powerful that the writes this week in The Atlantic that the Iran War he long championed has resulted in the worst defeat in American history. Kagan underplays the disaster of the Iraq War, including the hundreds of thousands of lives lost, but his overall point is correct. Similarly, I think he is goes too far in predicting Iran’s emergence after the war as the dominant power in the Gulf — exactly the opposite of the predictions made by Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu when he lobbied Trump to attack. But his analysis is sobering. Simply put, Trump is out of cards to play. He could escalate with new bombings, but that is unlikely to force Iranian concessions and very likely to trigger devastating Iranian attacks on Gulf state oil and gas facilities that could take years to repair. He could try to wait Iran out, but Iran’s leaders are likely to win that game. Trump has reportedly asked U.S. intelligence agencies to assess how Iran would respond if he simply retreated and
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Technique: Bandwagon
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