Iran has been bloodied, but it is winning against the US-Israel axis | US-Israel war on Iran
Today, to borrow a phrase, we are all Iranians.
We are Iranians, witnessing the failure of a thuggish logic practised by the United States and Israel, which operates on a single, crude premise: that enough pain can bend any nation to their imperial designs.
The US-Israel axis has long believed that force and coercion would eventually compel Iranians to abandon their sovereignty and accept the leash. It has failed. By refusing to surrender, Iranians have turned a lonely struggle for survival into a universal symbol of resistance — a testament to the endurance of the human spirit.
For weeks, we have watched the predictable mechanics of an empire trying to drain a people’s will. We have seen the familiar script of demonisation followed by the machinery of industrial slaughter. Then, we saw America’s “commander-in-chief” issue a threat that defied decency and defiled statecraft.
US President Donald Trump did not just threaten a government or a military. He threatened to end “civilisation” in Iran.
It was a monstrous decree. It was also a transparent one. This was the desperate act of a desperate man. It was the foul howl of a leader who knew he had lost a war.
So, Trump resorted to the “madman theory” of diplomacy, hoping that by appearing unhinged and capable of infinite destruction, he could scare a proud country into capitulation.
He failed. The prospect of annihilation was meant to trigger a collapse. It was meant to prompt the surviving leadership in Tehran to flee and panicked Iranians to yield.
The American-Israeli axis has made a fatal miscalculation. It remains wedded to the discredited conceit that resolve is a commodity to be bought or broken.
Instead, Iran and Iranians stood fast. The “madman” in the White House was obliged to negotiate with an adversary he claimed had already been defeated.
The moving measure of Iran’s success is found in that defiance. The Iranian people could have wilted, succumbed under the burden of such military, economic and psychological terror.
But Iranians fought back. They proved that you cannot bomb a civilisation into oblivion, nor can you erase a history that spans five millennia with a venomous post on social media.
Iran is prevailing. It is winning a war of attrition militarily, strategically, politically and diplomatically. Iran is winning because it understood its enemies’ limits better than they understood themselves.
Iran is winning strategically since it refuses to fight the war its enemies prepared for. It does not try to match the axis ship for ship or jet for jet. Rather, it stretches the battlefield across borders, allies and time.
It absorbs blows and keeps moving. Its doctrine is simple: survive, retaliate, prolong. In doing so, it raises the price of every strike against it. The axis is now trapped in a reactive crouch — bogged down, bleeding money and credibility, while Iran moves its pieces with precision.
Analysts now warn that the war meant to weaken Tehran may leave it stronger. Iran is winning because it adapts. It uses drones, proxies and patience. It does not need air superiority to impose pressure. It needs endurance. Its “mosaic” strategy — layers of command and decentralised power — means leaders can be killed, but the system survives. It turns vulnerability into resilience. It turns time into a weapon.
Of course, Iran’s control over the Strait of Hormuz serves as a masterclass in “asymmetric leverage”. By sitting atop a chokepoint through which approximately one-fifth of the world’s liquid petroleum passes, Iran effectively holds a “kill switch” for the global economy.
This geographic reality transforms a narrow waterway into a powerful diplomatic shield. For Iran, “winning” isn’t necessarily about permanently closing the strait — which would hurt its own fragile economy — but about maintaining the credible capability to do so.
This creates a permanent state of strategic caution among Western powers and energy-dependent Asian economies, ensuring that Tehran continues to be an indispensable architect of Middle Eastern security.
Politically, the win is even more stark. The axis has not achieved its paramount goal: “regime change.” The war was launched to fracture the Iranian state. It did the opposite. It appears to have fused the people and the state together against an external existential threat. The American-Israeli axis is not viewed as a force of liberation. It is seen as a collection of would-be occupiers. That perception matters more than any missile.
While Washington is paralysed by chaos and tribalism and Israel is consumed by a descent into blatant, corrosive authoritarianism, Iran — although damaged — is sturdy and intact.
Diplomatically, the United States has never been more isolated. Trump’s ignorance, incoherence, bluster and erratic behaviour have alienated America’s closest allies. Europe, once a reliable partner in so-called “containment,” looks at the bizarre cacophony on display day after dizzying day in Washington and turns away.
Iran, meanwhile, has deepened its ties with the East. It secured its flank with China and Russia. It played the long game while Trump played for the next news cycle.
The world is moving towards Beijing and Brussels, while Washington shouts into the void of its own fading relevance. Iran has turned the “maximum pressure” campaign into a “maximum cost” reality for the West.
The axis can no longer move in the Middle East without accounting for Iranian influence. The hunter has become the hunted.
Still, we must be clear. Iran’s success is not a sterile “win” on a geopolitical scoreboard. It is not a triumph of flags and parades. Its survival is born of fire and bone. It is draped in black and soaked in grief.
The halting human costs and trauma of this war of choice will last for generations. We must remember the thousands who have been killed and maimed. We must remember the schoolchildren whose lives were extinguished by “precision” munitions. The axis failed to break Iran’s back, but it has broken Iranian hearts. That is the nature of war: the winners are merely those who inherit the ruins.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
