By Ben Norton – May 23, 2026
It is so widely accepted that the USA is losing the war that now even neoconservative hawks admit it. They lament that Iran’s victory reflects the decline of US hegemony and rise of multipolarity.
It is now widely acknowledged that the United States is losing the war against Iran, which Washington itself started.
Even some neoconservative hawks — who were architects of the wars on Iraq, Libya, and Syria, and who for years advocated for an attack on Iran — have now reluctantly acknowledged that Tehran is winning this war, and that Washington’s loss will have massive geopolitical repercussions.
“There will be no return to the status quo ante, no ultimate American triumph that will undo or overcome the harm done”, wrote the prominent neocon Robert Kagan in The Atlantic. “With control of the strait [of Hormuz], Iran emerges as the key player in the region and one of the key players in the world. The roles of China and Russia, as Iran’s allies, are strengthened; the role of the United States, substantially diminished”.
Western media outlets report that the US is losing the war with Iran
Just a few weeks after the United States and Israel launched this war of aggression on 28 February, British newspaper The Independent acknowledged that “Iran is the clear winner, as Trump’s desperate bid for peace shows he wants out of the war”.
Soon after, the US corporate media began to concede the same.
In mid-April, the Wall Street Journal published an op-ed observing that “the Iran War seems to be failing”. This was written by Gerard Baker, the conservative former editor-in-chief of the newspaper, and an erstwhile Trump supporter.
Meanwhile, US intelligence agencies have been feeding information to US media outlets, disclosing that the war has been going very badly.
The New York Times reported in May, citing US intelligence sources, that Iran still has access to the vast majority of its missile capabilities.
Tehran can still use 30 of its 33 missile sites on the Strait of Hormuz, the world’s most important oil transit chokepoint, through which roughly 20% of globally traded crude passed on a daily basis before the war.
Trump declared a US naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, to try to choke off Iran’s oil exports.
However, US intelligence officials acknowledged in an article in the Washington Post that Iran is able to withstand this US military blockade for many months.
Moreover, US intelligence officials told numerous media outlets — including CNN, NBC News, the New York Times, and the Washington Post — that Iran has succeeded in destroying or at least heavily damaging the majority of the US military’s bases and other assets in West Asia.
At the same time, Fortune magazine reported that the US military has been quickly using up its stockpile of missiles.
Fortune cited Harvard Kennedy School lecturer Linda Bilmes, who estimated that the US war on Iran will likely cost more than $1 trillion.
Trump has denied all of this publicly, instead adamantly claiming victory.
“They’re militarily defeated. In their own minds, maybe they don’t know that”, Trump said of Iran.
Nevertheless, these constant leaks by US intelligence officials, to a multitude of media outlets, tell a very different story. They show that this war is going very badly.
Neoconservative hawks admit Iran is winning the war
In fact, the war is going so badly that some of the most prominent neoconservative ideologues in the United States have publicly conceded that Iran is winning.
This was the conclusion of an article published in the pro-war mouthpiece of Atlanticism, The Atlantic. The piece was titled “Checkmate in Iran”, and it bore the subtitle “Washington can’t reverse or control the consequences of losing this war”.
The author of this essay was none other than Robert Kagan, perhaps the most influential neoconservative intellectual.
Kagan was one of the original advocates for the US invasion of Iraq, and he long pushed for a similar war on Iran.
Kagan co-founded the influential think tank the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), which was the closest thing that existed to being the Church of Neoconservatism.
PNAC promoted a hyper-aggressive foreign policy. Its neoconservative adherents were proud of the fact that the United States runs a global empire. They believed that the US military should wage war everywhere in order to overthrow independent governments that resisted Washington’s hegemony.
Founding members of PNAC included several top officials in the George W. Bush administration, such as Dick Cheney (vice president) and Paul Wolfowitz (deputy secretary of defense and former president of the World Bank).
Another founding signatory of the PNAC statement of principles was John Bolton, a hard-line hawk who served in the Bush administration and was brought back by Donald Trump, in his first administration, to serve as national security advisor (and to oversee Washington’s coup attempt in Venezuela).
In the 2016 election, the original alliance of PNAC neoconservatives split. About half supported Trump, while the rest backed Hillary Clinton.
Kagan was among the prominent neocons who became a “never Trump” Republican.
Kagan is also married to another influential neocon, Victoria Nuland, who served as US ambassador to NATO in the George W. Bush administration and later filled top roles in the State Department under Barack Obama and Joe Biden.
Nuland was deeply involved in the coup in Ukraine in 2014, which set off a proxy war that has dragged on for more than a decade.
Given all of this context, one can see how incredible it is to read Kagan’s article in The Atlantic, admitting that Iran is defeating the United States. It is kind of like the Pope coming out and saying he was wrong and will convert to Islam.
Kagan is one of the most staunchly pro-war voices in US politics. This is why the following passage that he wrote is especially significant (emphasis added):
Defeat in the present confrontation with Iran will be of an entirely different character [compared to the US loss in the wars in Vietnam Afghanistan]. It can neither be repaired nor ignored. There will be no return to the status quo ante, no ultimate American triumph that will undo or overcome the harm done. The Strait of Hormuz will not be “open,” as it once was. With control of the strait, Iran emerges as the key player in the region and one of the key players in the world. The roles of China and Russia, as Iran’s allies, are strengthened; the role of the United States, substantially diminished. Far from demonstrating American prowess, as supporters of the war have repeatedly claimed, the conflict has revealed an America that is unreliable and incapable of finishing what it started. That is going to set off a chain reaction around the world as friends and foes adjust to America’s failure.
Moreover, Kagan is not the only prominent neocon who has come to this conclusion.
The other co-founder of the Project for the New American Century, Bill Kristol, has reluctantly acknowledged the same.
Kristol is an editor of the neoconservative website The Bulwark, where he lamented that the United States has been “humiliated” by Trump’s failed war against Iran.
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US war against Iran is extremely unpopular among Americans
What explains the sudden opposition of these notorious neoconservative hawks, who spent decades pushing for war on Iran?
They can apparently see the writing on the wall. The war has gone horribly, and it is extremely unpopular at home.
60% of Americans oppose Trump’s handling of the war on Iran, while just 33% support it, according to a May survey published by NPR, PBS News, and Marist Poll.
Similarly, a YouGov poll in May found that only 13% of Americans think the US is winning the war against Iran, while 39% say it is not and will not.
Prominent neocons are simply jumping off the sinking ship. They recognize that Trump and the Republican Party are extremely unpopular, and that this war is blowing back, hard.
Ben Norton
Benjamin Norton is the founder and editor of the independent news website Multipolarista, where he does original reporting in both English and Spanish. Benjamin has reported from numerous countries, including Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Ecuador, Honduras, Colombia, and more. His journalistic work has been published in dozens of media outlets, and he has done interviews on Sky News, Al Jazeera, Democracy Now, El Financiero Bloomberg, Al Mayadeen teleSUR, RT, TRT World, CGTN, Press TV, HispanTV, Sin Censura, and various TV channels in Mexico, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Ecuador, and Bolivia. Benjamin writes a regular column for Al Mayadeen (in English and Spanish). He was formerly a reporter with the investigative journalism website The Grayzone, and previously produced the political podcast and video show Moderate Rebels. His personal website is BenNorton.com, and he tweets at @BenjaminNorton.
