The One Outcome The Left Can’t Stomach

The media and their allies keep saying there’s only one way to win the war in Iran: lose.

Let Iran have a path toward a nuclear bomb, give them a boatload of cash, and beg them to leave the Strait of Hormuz alone. The alternative, they say, is endless war.

That’s colossally stupid.

First of all, the war in Iran doesn’t have to be endless. Second, giving Iran a clear pathway toward a nuke, ballistic missile development, funding of terror, billions of dollars in cash, and the capacity to continue shutting down traffic in the Strait — that’s losing.

Alternatively, we could do this thing called winning.

That’s what President Trump may now be considering.

The real reason people in the United States are very concerned about what’s happening in Iran is inflation; if we weren’t experiencing price inflation due to the energy cutoff, no one would care. It would just be something that’s happening quite far away, especially because the military has done an extraordinary job of minimizing the damage to the U.S. and our allies.

The reason people are worried right now is that inflation is coming in very hot. As reported by CNBC, the annualized inflation rate in May, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, clocked in at 4.2%; it rose a seasonally adjusted 0.5% for the month.

If you exclude food and energy prices because of the war in Iran, the so-called core Consumer Price Index accelerated to 0.2% for the month and 2.9% from a year ago, which is not amazing, but it’s not terrible either. The annual rate was in line with the forecast. The monthly gain was below the 0.3% estimate and less than the 0.4% increase in April.

What we’re really watching right now is a temporary price spike caused by a bottleneck in energy supply in the Strait of Hormuz. President Trump was asked about this and effectively stated that, despite the fact that we’re in a war, inflation numbers are much lower than anticipated, and when we’re out of that war, the numbers will be lower than they were before it even started.

That’s true.

So how do we get to the end of this war?

Iran has been tapping the United States, as per their usual arrangement. Frankly, I’m a little surprised that whoever was advising President Trump got this so wrong. They certainly should not have. I don’t know whether it was the Witkoff team or the vice president’s office that was leading the negotiations through Pakistan, which is a Chinese cutout.

But the idea that Iran was ever going to be in negotiations, give up its nuclear program, its ballistic missile capacity, or its funding of Iranian terror groups abroad, was not a great premise. You can tell it’s not a great premise because if the offer to Iran is “You get to reenter the world economy, if you do all those things,” you know what’s been on the table for decades?

All of this.

If Iran had given up its extraterritorial ambitions, if it had not threatened its neighbors with ballistic missiles, if it had not tried to develop nuclear weapons, if it had been clear and open about all of that, they’d be in exactly the same position as Qatar or UAE or Bahrain or Saudi Arabia, none of which are democracies, all of which have Islamic law written into their constitutions and all of which are well integrated into the world economy.

Iran could have reintegrated itself into the world economy at any time. In other words, the sort of carrot that is being offered by the negotiators is not a carrot at all. Iran has had that carrot the entire time.

The ceasefire was misbegotten, a bad idea.

The reason it was a bad idea is that it gave Iran hope. And when you give the Iranian regime hope, they push. When you give them an inch, they take several hundred miles. They try to link up all of their terror apparatus by linking activity in Lebanon to activity in Iran.

The idea is that if Israel strikes Hezbollah in Lebanon, then Iran will fire missiles at Israel. They are trying to link all these causes and create a regional hegemony for themselves.

There’s really only one way to stop all of that: To exert extraordinary pressure on Iran and to show that you are willing to take what Iran is willing to dish out in return.

That is the only way to win a war.

In response to the Iranians shooting down an American helicopter yesterday, U.S. military forces struck air defenses and radar sites near the Strait of Hormuz.

Will that actually generate any meaningful concessions from Iran?

I’m highly doubtful because Iran is not led by people chiefly concerned with the economy. I think they are only worried about one thing: the preservation of their regime. What they’re worried about is that if their economy continues to tank, eventually there will be a movement inside the country to overthrow them.

The phrase that’s often been used about the Iranian government is that the Iranian government has never won a war or lost a negotiation.

If you’d want them to lose the negotiation, they need to lose the war. You don’t win by simply playing not to lose.

Today, President Trump stated:

The United States will be hitting Iran (Whose Navy, Air Force, Radar, Anti Aircraft, and all other forms of Defense, together with most of its offensive capability, are GONE!), VERY HARD TONIGHT. At some point in the not too distant future, we will be taking Kharg Island, and other oil infrastructure points, and assume total control of their Oil and Gas Markets, much like we have with Venezuela, which is working out brilliantly for both Venezuela and the United States of America.

I said on March 19: “In my opinion, the faster you move, the better. And so my temptation would be to take Kharg Island. My temptation would be to do it; if that requires putting special operators on the ground to do it, I would do it. My temptation would be to basically obliterate the entire coastline where Iran is firing drones and missiles at ships, and then to provide whatever help is necessary in order to provoke a popular uprising in Tehran.”

That seems to be the strategy now.

This morning, Trump said:

They’re finished. But the papers, the media refuse to write it. They’re finished. We can walk in there tomorrow. We could take soldiers. I don’t want to have boots on the ground, but if I wanted to, we could put a small group of soldiers and take over the whole place. They’re finished.

Declaring they’re finished is not the same thing as finishing them.

You need to close it out. That’s the only way to do it.

The Treasury Department is ready to close it out. Scott Bessent wrote this morning:

The Iranian regime will lose the zero sum game it is playing. Any damage it inflicts on our allies in the Gulf will be paid for with funds extracted from running accounts. And it also paid to the Persian Gulf state authority will be offset by funds extracted from their accounts. Every attack Iran launches will only deepen the economic and financial consequences it faces.

Buried in this tweet is one of the things that can solve the problem: a lot of worry about the Iranians responding to American action by firing a bunch of missiles at gas and oil facilities in places like Bahrain, Kuwait, Iraq, UAE, and Saudi Arabia. That has been the big concern.

But Bessent is saying that if they do that, we will just pay the targeted governments with Iranian money because we’ve frozen the Iranian assets.

With all that said, President Trump is going to have to overcome not only the Iranian military and government; he’s going to have to overcome people who legitimately dislike America here at home and want him to lose this war.