The U.S. has only made Iran stronger | In Focus

Published 11:00 am Wednesday, July 29, 2026

Riots against Iran’s religious leaders resulted in the deaths of at least 30,000 Iranians.

Logic would tell you the Iranian people would rise up and overthrown Ayatollah Khamenei and his oppressive regime. Israel and the U.S. attacked and decapitated Iran’s religious leadership thinking the Iranian people would topple the Islamic state. But it didn’t happen that way.

“… Decapitation did not produce regime collapse. Instead, it opened the door for a new generation to take over” (Bajoghli & Nasr. “Iran’s New Grand Strategy”. Foreign Affairs, July-August 2026. All quotations below come from Foreign Affairs with the rest from various news sources).

The U.S. and Israel attacked Iran’s nuclear facilities, bombing them with bunker busting bombs, that according to President Trump “obliterated” their nuclear program. Unfortunately for the President, the June 2025 12-day war only prepared Iran’s leaders to defeat the U.S. and Israel.

Iran’s leaders knew they could not defeat the might of the U.S. military, so they devised a series of strategies to thwart Trump and Netanyahu. The assassination of Ayatollah Khamenei and its top leadership occurred not in a bunker, but in Khamenei’s home, turning his death into a martyrdom, uniting the Iranian people in nationalism against their attackers.

By the start of the war in February 2026, Iran had dispersed its command-and-control centers in a “mosaic” of 31 such centers, making it impossible to decapitate active resistance.

Iran sent “systematic salvos of missiles and drones skyward designed to deplete U.S. and Israeli interceptor stockpiles across the region.”

Iranian missiles and drones hit U.S. bases/radar stations across the Middle East, weakening U.S. technological advantages and killing American soldiers, which makes the already unpopular war even more unpopular in the U.S.

By attacking its Arab allies in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Oman, the U.A.E., Qatar, and other allies, Iran demonstrated that the U.S. is incapable of defending these nations. As a result, the leaders of these countries have turned to Ukrainian drone and missile experts to defend them.

Iran used new, long-distance missile and drone technology hundreds of miles from the Strait of Hormuz to control the shipment of 20% of the world’s oil, natural gas, and fertilizer economy. The U.S. is incapable of controlling the Strait as a result.

The new government’s “rush to publicize infrastructure reconstruction projects—bridges, railways, and hospitals—signals that the government is moving toward a new social contract, one that will rest on demonstrated competence rather than ideology.”

The Houthis, Iranian allies in Yemen, have declared the blockage of the Red Sea from shipping for their own reasons, not Iran’s, a source of 12% of the world’s oil shipments.

Iran has made red line demands to stop Israel’s war in Lebanon against Hezbollah, Iran’s proxy. Iranians also demand the right to set tolls on shipping through the Straits of Hormuz.

“The new regional order will be defined less by American primacy than by multipolarity, with China an increasingly central play and Iran an integral rather than a marginal actor.”

Iranians hold daily rallies across the country, “forming human chains to protect power plants, and gathering on bridges threatened by Trump…. The war created a shared experience through the bombing and witnessing its destruction.”

“The IRGC [Islamic Republican Guard Corps] is not counting on diplomacy, it no longer believes the United States will ever lift sanctions. Rather, it seeks a deal to end the war, consolidate Iran’s gains, and pave the way for economic dividends from taxing maritime traffic through the Strait of Hormuz.”

“What is now on offer is a nationalist-technocratic bargain, in which state legitimacy rests on a demonstrated ability to defend the country and rebuild it. The terms are national, not Islamic.”

The changes between the two wars [June 2025, and February 2026] gave confidence to its new leadership, “and the new social contract [between the government and the Iranian people] the fighting has made necessary and possible.”

The U.S. and Israel have already lost the war against a far weaker country due to Iranian strategy brought about by the June 2025 attack on Iran.

The only question that remains is whether President Trump can admit his plan has failed due to ignorance, lack of planning, and arrogance, or whether he will send American soldiers to invade Iran, turning his defeat into another “forever war.”

My guess is that Trump will choose the “forever war,” putting U.S. boots on the ground unless Congress acts now to stop his madness. Time and the midterm elections will decide America’s fate, not Trump.

Richard Elfers is a columnist, a former Enumclaw City Council member and a Green River College professor.