Has Iran Won? Why Did We Not See It Happen?
Saeed Naqvi
Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar and his comrades, martyred or killed, must be
laughing their heads off at the ponderous pundits puzzling over the outcome of
US and Israel war with Iran. “Its over” they must have whispered to each other.
Their audacious, grizzly by some definitions, attack on October 7, 2023, killing 1,200 Israelis excluding the 251 taken hostage, was not the clarion call for war or victory. It was a trap to invite Israeli retaliation on a scale which would make them pariahs globally.
Ironically, Prime Minister Netanyahu’s support base, indeed Israelis, were the last to get a whiff of this revulsion wafting in the air. Netanyahu fell back on the chant “they are amaleks (sub humans)”. It is a Judaic duty to destroy their animal’s homes, women and children “who will otherwise grow up to be our permanent enemies.”
In the US Bible belt where the Judeo-Christian belief in Armageddon or the “Second Coming” has not yet amalgamated with this maniacal hatred, it was possible for Trump, Jarred Kushner and neo-cons like Marco Rubio to play footsie with the triumvirate – US Israeli lobby (in conjunction with 52 Israeli billionaires, Netanyahu and the Trump entourage.
The war with Iran has strained relations between the three entities in this triangle to a point of rupture. Netanyahu’s pressure on the Israeli lobby and the lobby’s on Trump may have weakened. This is a hugely important development.
What is cracking up is Trump’s Make-America-Great-Again (MAGA) base. Let me give you examples of rupture, earthshaking in the midst of a war which is reshaping world order like never before.
On September 10, 2025 Charlie Kirk, 31, founder of Turning Point America, an activist close to Trump was shot dead by a sniper while given a talk at the Utah, valley university. Kirk was a prominent figure and his murder would have made news in any case. But a major controversy got attached to the murder because he had become a vocal opponent of “America fighting Israel’s war with Iran.” Suddenly the ranks of Kirk’s supporters swelled. The needle of suspicion began to point at Israeli intelligence.
One Tyler Robinson, 22, was arrested because he had been heard ranting that “Kirk was spreading too much hatred.”
An hourlong Tucker Carlson interview with Joe Kent has poured more oil on the flaming cauldron. Kent, Chief of the National Counter terrorism, a slot at the highest level of US intelligence, resigned from his job for reasons which impinge on Trump’s Iran policy. Kent had seen no confidential reports which would tally with Washington’s case for supporting the war on Iran. No case for regime change in Tehran and there was no shred of evidence that Iran was embarked on a nuclear weapons programme.
Worse, Kent as an intelligence man, was blocked by authorities from pursuing important leads in the Kirk murder case. These leads implicated a “foreign” hand.
The break up in the MAGA base had manifested itself most dramatically in December, 2025 in Phoenix Arizona. The mainstream US media, hand in glove with Israel lobby, did not play up the growing isolation of Trump from his own base because of his insistence on dancing to Netanyahu’s tune 24/7.
The headline in The Guardian, London summed up the story.
“Gripes and Infighting on Display as MAGA stars gather at the Turning
Point USA conference” in Phoenix, Arizona. Turning point USA was a successful
movement with 83 chapters nationwide, started by Charlie Kirk. The deck line to
the Guardian article furnishes revealing details:
“figures at event include Tucker Carlson, Steve Bannon and Trump Jr.:
cohesion of political right shows signs of stress.” The headline does not
mention far right but pro Israel activist and journalist, Ben Shapiro who in
fact started the fire works by attacking Tucker Carlson. He poured vitriol on
Carlson for having interviewed anti Israel icon Nick Fuentes. That Fuentes is a
top rank racist does not incur Shapiro’s wrath. In fact on that count the two
are soul mates.
Fuentes has a reputation for being a supremacist ofcourse but is additionally a notorious anti semite and a holocaust denier. That Carlson promoting him on his podcast was reason enough for Ben Shapiro to unfurl his pro Israel leanings, Genocide in Gaza notwithstanding.
In fact he persistently leans towards Israel in his publication The Wire. Shapiro was biting in his criticism. “Building up Fuentes is moral imbecility on Carlson’s part.” Shapiro boomed. This rupture is for real and places Trump’s friendship with Netanyahu delicately in the balance.
The tone and tenor of the Phoenix event shows how the Genocide of Gaza has damaged the conservative right’s ability to be seen with Israel. Let us now revert to the war.
In a sense, keeping Iran under pressure and isolated has cost the US-Israel dear. Armed to the teeth with the latest military technology and an impressive array of lethal weapons, the combine has forced Iran to be inventive and thrifty.
The homespun nature of Iranian drones and missiles has caught the combine flat footed. Now comparisons are being made. US action in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen and Lebanon are all very telegenic: plumes of smoke, mountains of debris, the homeless on the march.
The Military Industrial Complex has in its inventory enough to destroy cities. But that was achieved even in Dresden 80 years ago. How does America break its duck and learn to win wars or better still refrain from them if only to recover prestige?
No war resembles a boxing ring where pugilists knock each other out. The remarkable thing about this war is that folks are waiting for victory which has happened but outside their definition of winning and losing.
Yahya Sinwar and his gang must be smiling at the outcome.
Who had ever imagined the war will lay the foundation for Israel to be a country on its own, not America’s unsinkable aircraft carrier as Ronald Reagan’s Defence Secretary Caspar Weinberger had famously said. And then, enters Palestine, centre stage as never before.
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