How a US defeat in its war with Iran is reshaping regional and global power dynamics
Patrick Henningsen, journalist and founder of 21st Century Wire, joins Glenn Diesen to discuss US military and diplomatic failures in Iran, Ukraine, and the broader Middle East.
Summary
Patrick Henningsen argues that the United States has no genuine intention of reaching a negotiated settlement with Iran, Russia, or in Gaza, and that the repeated talk of being "close to a deal" is a deliberate media management strategy rather than real diplomacy. He contends that Iran has emerged from its recent military confrontation with the US and Israel as a normative geopolitical power — one that has enforced red lines, extended its deterrence umbrella to Lebanon, disrupted the Strait of Hormuz, and inflicted historically unprecedented aircraft losses on the US military. Henningsen also argues that US soft power infrastructure — particularly USAID and NGO networks — has been the primary tool of political colonisation across Eastern Europe and the Balkans, and that Trump's defunding of these programs has inadvertently accelerated the loss of US influence in countries like Bulgaria and Georgia. He draws a parallel between Iran's and Russia's strategic approach: both have concluded that the US is not agreement-capable and are managing Washington accordingly, while orienting themselves economically and geopolitically eastward.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Opening: Is the US actually seeking a ceasefire with Iran?
Glenn Diesen: We are joined today by Patrick Henningsen, a journalist who is following the Middle East as well as the conflict in Ukraine extremely closely. Thank you for coming on the program.
Patrick Henningsen: It's great to be with you, Glenn.
Glenn Diesen: I wanted to discuss the escalations against both Iran and Russia. I don't think people always appreciate how much they've gotten out of control. Let's start with Iran, because only now, over the past 24 hours, we've seen the US attacking Iran, including at least two water reservoirs which has cut off tens of thousands of people from water, and Iran has retaliated against US bases in Bahrain, Kuwait, and Jordan, if not more. How do you make sense of this new round of escalation? The United States already fought the Iranians in this 39-day war. The US was in a very difficult position — they wanted the ceasefire badly, and we know this. This is why Trump accepted Iran's 10-point plan as the point of departure for talks, even if he walked it all back later on. How do you make sense of what the United States is doing here?
Patrick Henningsen: That's not easy. You need some special superpowers to be able to do that these days. One thing that makes this conversation complicated is that I'm not fully convinced — having studied this president for many years, having studied his senior foreign policy advisers and the Trump administration generally — that they want a ceasefire, despite the rhetoric you might hear from Trump and the way the media has conformed to the pace set by the Trump administration through his tweets: the reactions, the actions, the outrage, then the resolution comes, then another falter, another outrage. This incredible control of the media cycle. So I'm not convinced that the US actually wants a ceasefire.
I'll go even deeper than that. I'm not convinced that the current administration understands what a ceasefire is in a traditional diplomatic framework. They talk about it, and they've got the media on board with this internationally as well. They're saying, "Oh, we're close to a deal. Oh, we want a deal. They want a deal. We want a deal. Everybody wants — we're close to a deal." A deal is not a ceasefire. A deal is not an accord, and a deal is definitely not a treaty. That's the problem. They've recast the language on this, which kind of precludes any meaningful negotiated settlement.
And if you look at the track record — you mentioned Russia-Ukraine, you mentioned Iran, and I'll add Gaza — the Israeli-Gaza situation, which this administration was trying to broker from the minute Trump was inaugurated. They have failed completely on every single front, and it's ended in disaster. One will argue: is this by design? Does this administration have any intention of doing what it takes in terms of statecraft, in terms of diplomacy? It seems like there's a non-diplomacy policy with this White House. This is reinforced by a very hawkish Republican and Democratic Congress and Senate, and a media that I think is somewhat bamboozled.
So one of the problems with this conversation is that I don't think there's any chance for what I'm calling a negotiated settlement or a peace agreement — which other people are calling a deal. A deal, at this point, we should all agree that a deal in Trump's lingua franca is of no use to anybody. It's ephemeral. It doesn't mean anything. Look at the Russia-Ukraine situation. How many potential deals? "Oh, we're close to a mineral deal. We've got this deal. The Alaska summit — oh, it's looking great." And it's all going nowhere. I think the exact same thing is happening with Iran. And it's the same thing that happened with Gaza. Any other theater that pops up, it's going to be the same. That's my sort of black-pill analysis of this.
The US as a false mediator — Ukraine and Iran compared
Glenn Diesen: There's another element to this: the US ability to present itself as a mediator. I find this quite extraordinary. As you said with the Ukraine war, people forget that for years the United States was the one pumping in all these NGOs, trying to build up an anti-Russian opposition. It was America who led the coup in 2014. It was the Americans who undermined the Minsk agreement for seven years while building up the Ukrainian army, training it, preparing for this war, targeting Donbas. It was the US who helped essentially reverse the election results of 2019. They're the ones who sabotaged the Istanbul peace agreement in April of 2022, and they're still the country that has most of the war planners positioned in Germany. They provide the intelligence, the weapons, the targeting — all of it. And yet they present themselves as mediators.
Two days ago I saw articles saying the US will try to broker a deal between Israel and Iran. It seemed that this approach worked with the Russians, because they genuinely saw some hope that Trump would do something very different — that he actually wanted to put an end to this war, that he kind of saw a new distribution of power, that the US and Russia didn't really have to be adversaries, that he could stop NATO expansion on Russian borders because it consumed too many US resources and was pushing Russia too far toward China. They really thought this was what America wanted. But it appears that all he did was take a high-intensity war and push it over to the Europeans and Ukrainians while distancing the US and making itself into a mediator.
Do you think there's something similar happening with Iran? Because they don't seem to want any peace. I don't think any peace agreement would be acceptable to them either. But it appears that the goal is to take a high-intensity war and make it into a low-intensity one where it can be managed — where they can gradually strangle the Iranians without running out of weapons or seeing all their allies burned to the ground. What is the strategy?
Patrick Henningsen: I'll bounce back and forth between those two because there are a lot of points you raised. One of them is that the US has no choice but to string out a semi-low-intensity conflict with Iran. Why? They don't have the munitions stock. Missile defense stocks are down. They're having to borrow from Peter to pay Paul around the globe in terms of US military supplies, and it's going to take years for them to recover to something like pre-war levels — and ditto for Israel as well. So that kind of suits them, and I wouldn't be surprised if that's the mode they're clicking into right now.
The biggest deception, as you pointed out, is this idea that the US is a neutral party, that they're separate from Israel. They're absolutely not. If they wanted to wield real leverage, they would just threaten to stop supplying Israel. It's not just deliveries — it's all of the technical support that the United States provides on a minute-to-minute basis inside Israel: US personnel, joint command centers that they run together. People don't realize how deeply enmeshed the United States and Israel are. The Iron Dome system is effectively a US system, or at least it began like that. There are Israeli components to it now, but not without US involvement. That's just one example, to say nothing about the air-to-air refueling support the United States is providing to Israel. In fact, it looks like they provided that support to Israel over Saudi Arabian airspace in the past couple of days — reports suggest F-35s being refueled by the US over Saudi airspace to strike Iran. So that's a serious issue.
They're not separate. They can't credibly pretend to be — at least not to the rest of the world. Within the US western political-media conversation, people are generally naive enough not to understand the level of nefariousness the US is operating on here, but the rest of the world is not fooled.
A perfect example: going back to Russia and Ukraine. A lot of Russia analysts in the west will say Russia has been duped by Washington, and I've seen some Russian analysts in Russia say this as well — that they've been duped by Trump, that he's not serious about any real negotiations. I don't believe that's the case. I believe Russia has very cynically recognized that you can't really do any real diplomacy or negotiations with the US. So Russia has very skillfully managed Trump, and Russia has simply consigned itself to the reality that they have to do what they have to do on the ground — extract whatever benefit they can from interactions with the US, keep the United States happy.
A perfect proof of this is that the US deployed a fake diplomatic corps — people who don't even have positions with the State Department: Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner. What did Russia do? They deployed their own non-official diplomat — he's not a fake diplomat, but he's not an official Russian diplomat — Kirill Dmitriev, based in the US, very good with US PR, understands the US political landscape. So he's managing the relationship. This works for Trump, it works for Russia. It's not ideal, but they've consigned themselves to it.
So you have to ask yourself: when Foreign Minister Araghchi or Peskov travels to Moscow to meet a delegation from Russia, what do you think they're talking about? I can tell you a portion of that conversation is going to be how to manage the United States. Russia has priced in this erraticism — what Sergey Lavrov coined a couple of years ago when he said the US is "not agreement-capable." That's a bold, historic statement, and it signals a paradigm shift in international relations between these powers.
I think Iran has also priced in the United States. They're managing the US, but doing it in a probably much more complex way because they're currently at war with each other. But they're still doing it, and I think they're doing it well. Iran has taken this Russia doctrine of always leaving the door open to talks. Why? Not only for their own interest, but to signal to the rest of the world — to China, Russia, and other potential allies and neutral parties — that Iran is a reasonable, normative power in the international system.
And if you look at the behavior of Iran in terms of consistency and being able to back up their deterrence, their statements, and acting very adroitly — as opposed to the US, which is totally erratic, completely inconsistent, hypocritical, going back on their own statements constantly — the US is no longer a normative power in the international system. And what you see in international relations, traditionally in IR studies, is that the system tends to bend in favor of normative powers over time. That's why I think the United States has really isolated itself by tethering itself to the likes of Israel, Ukraine, and some of these other allies. It's not going to go in their favor.
The results are simple. Look at where the US is now compared to where they were on February 27th — under three categories: militarily, politically and geopolitically, and economically. They're in horrible shape in just three months. A lot of that, I will argue, is part of their failure to understand where their position is, what they're doing, who their allies are, who their enemies are, what their strategy is.
Iran, by contrast, is showing absolute strategy. You're seeing a normative strategic power emerge. And with the US, you're seeing the terminal death spiral of a former hegemon mired in tactical ambiguity and maneuvering, having lost complete control over its own foreign policy portfolio.
Russia, Iran, and the conclusion that the US is not agreement-capable
Glenn Diesen: The Russians — ever since they met with the Americans in Anchorage — I think they started to lose trust in the US being capable of making any deals. That was really the straw that broke the camel's back. And then of course they've been looking toward Iran as well, learning from those lessons. All this talk every once or twice a week about how close they are to a deal, before Trump threatens to annihilate them again — it puts things in context. It's more evidence complementing what the US interactions with Russia have shown. I think they are reaching the conclusion now that it's just a bunch of nonsense. And as you say, it's okay to talk with the United States, see if anything can improve, but meanwhile it doesn't affect anything on the battlefield. This continues as if what the Americans are saying is all nonsense. But it appears that the Europeans — their diplomacy is nonsense too, it seems.
Patrick Henningsen: If you look at the Ukraine issue, keep in mind that when the NATO countries destabilized Ukraine at the end of 2013, the Europeans signed up as guarantors for a unity government if Yanukovych would accept a new government to be formed — and they betrayed this within the first few hours. Then of course they had the Minsk agreement for seven years. They betrayed that as well. They did nothing when the Istanbul agreement was repealed. And now, after boycotting diplomacy for more than four years, the Europeans — or at least some of them — have put out these five conditions for peace, which just reads as a capitulation document. How do you see these five conditions for negotiating with Russia? Is this essentially faking diplomacy, managing the narrative that Russia doesn't want to talk?
Oh, absolutely. If you look at the press coverage and the statements by various leaders — I started noticing this about four weeks ago — there's been a real concerted push: all this reporting that Ukraine has magically turned the tide on the battlefield, that they're in the ascendancy, they're winning. And then the letter from Zelensky to Putin, and the rebuff from Russia, and then the reaction in the western press: "Oh, it's a perfectly good opportunity to come to the table and Russia's rejected it. Only the stronger party is going to make that overture for peace, so Russia must be the losing party — of course they're going to reject it." So they've found a way to run this narrative again — like they have at multiple points over the last four years — that Ukraine's winning. And by doing that, you can then accuse the other side of saying no to opportunities for peace.
This is the virtual war. It's not the real war. It's the virtual war, and it's the war that the Europeans have been playing, going around in circles, trying different iterations of it for four years. And as you rightly pointed out, nobody wants to talk about pre-February 24th, 2022 — all of the events that led up to that. They will not listen to anything Russia says along these lines. There's been a memory wipe about UN Security Council Resolution 2202. Doesn't exist. Never happened. There were no Minsk Accords. That's just a conspiracy theory. Nobody wants to discuss that, because when you start to discuss it — even going back to Yanukovych and the EU agreements prior to Maidan — when you put it into a wider perspective, it's very clear who started a civil war in Ukraine. And when you have violent civil wars in countries, something happens in history: states break up, often having to do with neighboring countries, often having to do with ethnic enclaves. This is no surprise in history, no surprise in international relations. But the Europeans and the West have taken this convenient view of not wanting to see any of that. History began on February 24th, 2022, and they start their narrative from there.
Russia has been adamant that we need to address the root causes, and until you address the root causes — which are the things you mentioned, and also what Ukraine has done in the interim: attacking and killing Russian civilians, striking Russia's nuclear deterrent, and many other examples — once that phase of hostilities started, you don't have any moral high ground anymore. You're at war. And anything about "Russia's in violation of Ukraine's territorial sovereignty" and "they annexed Crimea" — these are no longer relevant arguments in the real world.
In the new virtual world, you can selectively compartmentalize all of these things and just stay on this one public relations propaganda track that the West is on, framing this as the evil Russian empire hellbent on expanding and overrunning Ukraine and then onto Europe. That's what they're running on. And if you're doing this, there's going to be no negotiated settlement. They're abandoning diplomacy in favor of a rearmament of Europe.
I don't think there's any chance unless there's some internal political convulsion in Europe. I always look at the political dimension because there's always a chance. The same with Israel — there are internal political tumultuous factors in Israel that could even temporarily alter the trajectory of Israel's military ambitions, for instance in South Lebanon. If that happens, it can also transform the entire dynamic of the region. A lot of military analysts aren't looking at the political dimensions, but if you look at Ukraine, it was the political dimensions that enabled this chain of events that have led us to this horrible geopolitical impasse.
There are a lot of changes in Europe right now. Even Bulgaria has peeled off — a new progressive government has come into power in Sofia, and that's massive. And what's hilarious about this is that when Trump came in and did the DOGE chainsaw cutting of USAID and everything like that — I speak to Republicans and MAGA supporters all the time, and they don't understand what USAID did and what it is. It's a massive Trojan horse for the CIA to go in with soft power in conjunction with the US embassy. They fund all of the media outlets in Bulgaria, Ukraine, Poland, and half the other countries. Without USAID, they lost a lot of traction in Bulgaria by defunding some of these programs. I don't think that's a problem for Bulgaria, but for US Empire it's a bit of an own goal.
It shows you how out of touch and uninformed a lot of the current Trump administration is. They don't even understand how the US managed to get to where it is in the world in terms of working through multilateral institutions and NGOs. That was a mesh of soft and smart power that is really essential. Once you pull that, you're left with hard power, intimidation, coercion, sanctions, tariffs, and things like that.
I'm laughing to see the situation in Bulgaria because Bulgaria is one of the most important anchors of NATO — it is nominally, culturally, and historically aligned with Russia. The US has spent hundreds of millions of dollars to turn it into a pro-NATO, westward-looking country, but it's always teetering on the balance. The new government is no longer supplying arms to Ukraine, and they're also very much against the boycott or embargo of Russian energy that Europe is enforcing. So while Hungary falls to the wayside, they lose control of Bulgaria. Central Europe, the Balkans — these areas are really interesting because that's what matters most, despite what they're screaming about in London, Berlin, Paris, Brussels, and Oslo.
USAID, NGOs, and the political colonisation of Eastern Europe
Glenn Diesen: You manipulating reality essentially allows them to take a lot of power. But a lot of this is done in the open. All the documents from the establishment of the National Endowment for Democracy — this was established under Reagan in cooperation with the CIA in 1983 to essentially, in their own words, instead of doing things covertly with the CIA, they could hide in plain sight by doing all their activities under the guise of democracy promotion. All of this is evident. And after they topple the government in Ukraine, what is the first thing? The NGOs are used to topple the government and then they take on the new job afterwards — they finance all the media. This is what was interesting when Trump cut off USAID: they found out that USAID finances 85 to 90% of all Ukrainian media. And then you had some Ukrainian journalists who received money from this asking how they can do independent reporting now that the American intelligence agencies aren't paying them. You couldn't really make this up.
But they also work in other ways. I was just in Georgia in Tbilisi last week. You have the former president of Georgia complaining a lot. The current prime minister and president — they were both at the same conference as me — they're warning that the US and other NATO countries are hoping to topple the government there in Georgia with NGOs so they can open a second front against Russia, throwing their young men into the meat grinder. The former president, when Georgia was under NATO control — she actually entered the country as a French citizen. She was a French ambassador to Georgia, and then after this role, post-revolution sponsored by the same NGOs, she took Georgian citizenship while she was still the ambassador to Georgia from France.
Patrick Henningsen: She didn't even speak Georgian.
Glenn Diesen: No need to speak Georgian — they just gave her the citizenship, and then she essentially transitioned into the position as Georgian foreign minister and later became president. So essentially one day representing French interests in Georgia, the next representing Georgia itself — seemingly no problem at all. And they did the exact same thing in Ukraine. You had Natalie Jaresko, US-born, who worked for the State Department and also worked at the US embassy in Kyiv — essentially representing US interests in Ukraine. After the coup of 2014, again by the same NGOs, she gets Ukrainian citizenship on the same day she becomes finance minister of Ukraine. So no longer representing American interests in Ukraine — now she's representing Ukraine.
Patrick Henningsen: Well, she is representing American interests, but from the inside. The archetypal avatar of this sort of geopolitical gender fluidity has to be Mikheil Saakashvili, who was parachuted in from a New York law firm to become president of Georgia, and then after that was shipped by John McCain to become governor of Odessa — to allow the neo-Nazi elements to fester and manage that instability in the country right around the time of Maidan. And then he's also employed by Edi Rama as a national security adviser or economic adviser for Albania — I can't remember which. He's all over the place. I don't know where he is now. Maybe in a mental institution after all of that.
These are things that would never have been accepted years ago, but for some reason they've become normalized. Why? Because the Balkans and Eastern Europe have big sovereignty problems. That's one of the things the United States has done — they've colonized central Europe, the Balkans, Eastern Europe to a large degree, with US money through NATO. If you think about it — forget Georgia and Ukraine, let's talk about Poland and some of these other countries. You're a member of the EU, you're a member of NATO, you're getting direct military occupation by the US. Do you have an independent foreign policy at that point? Is it possible? That's the paradox. But the governments don't have to be accountable under this Russian threat umbrella atmosphere. They just have to say we're small, we're weak, we need US support. All accountability goes out the window within that crisis framing.
I'm very encouraged by the recent developments in Georgia — hugely encouraging that people have woken up to this level of subterfuge. And not just Georgia — pretty much all around the world, a lot of these NGOs are getting blacklisted anyway, even if USAID was only temporarily defunded.
Glenn Diesen: McCain has been standing very close to a lot of these NGOs. And the funniest thing of all — the Georgian president, the NATO puppet, after she was forced to step down, took a job for the McCain Institute in the US. You can't make it up.
But in Bosnia, it's actually run like a colony. When the war came to an end in 1995 with the Dayton Agreement, they allowed the World Power — which were essentially the powers they were going to use to implement the peace agreement, which was to create a Bosnia with two entities: one the Bosniak-Croat entity and the other the Serbian entity, half-half in terms of territory. They have these World Power to implement it, then they outsourced the World Power essentially to the EU, which walks around with two hats. And the EU then says, "Well, actually, the only way Bosnia can be at peace is if it joins the EU, and it can only join the EU if it dismantles the entity system." So now they're using the dictatorial World Power to try to dismantle the entity system. It was supposed to be in place for two years. It's been 31 years. They can fire elected politicians. They can scrap laws. They run it like a colony, and there doesn't seem to be any problem with it because it's under the name of advancing liberal democratic values.
Iran's strategic rise and the extension of deterrence to Lebanon
Glenn Diesen: Anyways — I wanted to ask very specifically about the issue in Iran. Iran is pushing back so hard against the US and Israel that it's kind of taken some air out of the whole mirage of the US and Israel being all-powerful. You even see some rhetoric now coming out of Turkey. I'm not sure if it's because the population is demanding a tougher tone with the Israelis, or if they just see a weakness in the armor of Israel. Do you think this can have an effect on how other countries in the region treat Israel? Because the rhetoric between the Israelis and Turks is kind of extraordinary at the moment.
Patrick Henningsen: Naftali Bennett famously said recently that Turkey is the new Iran — really laying that right down on the table. But when you're talking about West Asia and Islamic countries, the three important countries in terms of the Ummah — the global Muslim community — are Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Iran. Saudi Arabia is the custodian of Mecca and Medina, a very important role within the Muslim Ummah. Turkey used to have that position prior to the breakup of the Ottoman Empire, then became a secular government under Atatürk, and took the country in a certain direction for the better part of the 20th century. When Erdogan came in — after being mayor of Istanbul, with the AKP party — he embarked on a transition, a 30-year plan to bring Islam to the center of Turkish government, civic life, and culture, and away from the more secular, European-facing Turkish society. That was his MAGA movement for Turkey.
So to be custodian of, say, Al-Aqsa Mosque — the third most holy site in Islam — who is going to be the steward or custodian of Al-Aqsa Mosque within the Islamic world? The only country that's really stepped up to kind of enforce the protection of Palestine and the Holy Land is Iran. That's created a real problem for Turkey, because Turkey was kind of in second place vying for first place prior to these rounds of hostilities.
Now, the West and Israel and Israeli media and Zionist-dominated media and political organizations always try to characterize Iran through a sectarian lens — Shiite Islam — and they add all sorts of epithets: they're eschatologically obsessed, they'll die and become martyrs, that's all they care about, suicide bombers, terrorists, the world's number one state sponsor of terror, et cetera. But when you listen to the rhetoric of Iranian religious leadership for the total existence of the Islamic Republic, they talk about Islam in universal terms. They've always taken that leadership in the Islamic world, putting the moral question at the center of state affairs — almost explicitly written into their constitution that they must defend anyone who's oppressed or being bullied in the world, be that not just Muslim countries but Venezuela, Cuba, and definitely Palestine, Gaza, the people of Lebanon, and the list goes on.
People in the West — and definitely the Gulf States — can't understand how anybody would take such a position, because they themselves wouldn't dare think about taking any position based on morality. Instead, we have all these fake pseudo-imperial cloaks like Responsibility to Protect and other doctrines we've constructed in the West to make us appear moral — defending democracy, et cetera. And Iran, the Islamic Republic of Iran, actually takes an actual moral position, and it's being characterized by the US and Israel as being terrorist or pro-terrorist. That's why the EU has proscribed the IRGC as a terrorist organization even though they've never carried out a terrorist attack against any European country or any other country that anybody can put their finger on — unless you believe that everything Iran does is terroristic, which is kind of the general Washington impression and what Israel wants to portray to the world.
So, long story short, Iran has taken up the axis of resistance — the Islamic resistance is very real and very much alive. And on top of that, Iran has now elevated itself to be, if not the leader, then a leader of the global Ummah from a moral point of view. Who else stood up for the Palestinians? Hezbollah, too — because Hezbollah attacked Israel to pull Israeli forces away from Gaza after October 7th. That's a huge risk, but they did it on principle. Hassan Nasrallah was very clear about their intentions, why they were doing things like this. And this has not fallen on deaf ears for the Muslim community globally.
What has that enabled Iran to do? It's enabled them not just to elevate themselves in the Islamic world — and also Pakistan, where there's a lot of affinity, Farsi being spoken by many people in Pakistan, and a lot of intellectual overlap from the 1979 revolution — but to take that from being a leader in the Islamic world to being a geopolitical power. They've absolutely done that. And they've earned it through fighting, standing toe-to-toe against the most powerful conventional military in the world, which is the United States, and arguably one of the most powerful — Israel. They're still standing.
Not only are they still standing, they have flipped what I would call the escalation dominance. Iran is now drawing red lines and managing the pace of action and reaction, and they did that this week. There was a lull for a while, then Iran enforced a red line regarding Israel and Lebanon, and everyone reacts.
I'll give you an example of the geopolitical benefits you can't calculate. When Russia entered the Syrian war in October 2015, this changed Middle Eastern geopolitics because all of a sudden all major decisions had to go through Russia. That wasn't the case before. It transformed things, and the geopolitical center of gravity started shifting eastward. You had the Astana conference instead of Geneva, happening in Kazakhstan, with other actors involved in brokering. Was it successful in the end? You could argue it was successful for a time — it stabilized the situation in Syria, much to the chagrin of NATO, Turkey, Israel, and Jordan, who were all conspiring to destabilize and destroy the government in Damascus. Eventually they got what they wanted, and the black flag is flying over Damascus. But for a period of time — 2015 to 2024, nine years — it transformed the geopolitical dynamics of the region for the first time in many decades.
The same thing is happening here. Iran is now in a position — and very soon, I would argue — where one of the easiest solutions, as the US is waffling around being dragged by Israel on a leash, is for Iran to work with other actors like China, Russia, and other countries to bypass the United States altogether and bypass Israel altogether. Because if there's going to be a negotiated settlement regarding the Strait of Hormuz, it's becoming more and more doubtful that the United States will be able to do it, much less be a credible partner in any kind of agreement, because they started the war to begin with. So they're kind of disqualified.
But Iran has that position now. They can control the pace of actions and reactions, and they're doing it. They've shown it this week. If we were having this conversation before February 28th, you would have said: is this possible? And a lot of us would have said probably not. But it's happening. That to me is the extraordinary thing.
Iran's unprecedented military achievements and the Lebanon deterrence umbrella
Glenn Diesen: Yeah, that's some of the most extraordinary consequences of this war. Not just for Iran to be able to seize control of the Strait of Hormuz and essentially — not depending on any peace agreement — use this to construct their own security architecture of the region, creating some gravitational pull for all the countries in the region. But also quite extraordinary: extending their security guarantees, their deterrence umbrella, to Lebanon — attacking Israel for having attacked Lebanon. This goes against what the US and Israelis always do in the region. If you're going to bomb one country — be it Libya, Syria, Iran, Iraq — you always isolate this country completely, make sure everyone stays out, put all your pieces in place, and then just pound the country and do what you want. Iran actually extending its deterrence and hitting Israel with all these ballistic missiles for having attacked — this is putting Iran as a world power, but it's also putting a lot of pressure on the countries around it. If you're in Turkey, yes, Erdogan talks a lot about caring about Palestinians, but he would never stand up to the Israelis in any significant way — maybe rhetorically, which he did today, but not through actions. So this can put a political crisis throughout the Arab states. It's quite extraordinary what one short year, or even a few months, have achieved. This must be the worst possible strategic defeat for the US if they go down like this. Can you unpack what you meant about Lebanon?
Patrick Henningsen: Absolutely. If you look at what happened in the immediate aftermath of the beginning of this last three months of war, Iran did something which was brilliant looking back: they managed to extend their zone of influence by striking back against the GCC countries as co-belligerents enabling the US attacks and enabling the Israeli attacks. What that did was extend their zone of influence regionally, but it also made it global. It pulled the world into the conflict through the disruption of energy supplies, and then the closure of the Strait of Hormuz further compounded that situation. They created leverage and allowed themselves to punch so far above their weight.
They also absolutely destroyed a good portion of the US military footprint in the Persian Gulf. In the post-Vietnam era — put Vietnam aside — the United States has lost more fixed-wing aircraft in the last three months, and I'll add the Yemen adventure from last year because I see this as part of the same conflict, than in any comparable period. We're looking at upwards of around 75 aircraft — maybe more by the end of this week. That's the equivalent of what the US lost in aircraft — not counting helicopters — in both Iraq wars combined: the Gulf War in the early '90s and the 2003 to 2010 war. Think about that: in just three months, record losses in aircraft by the United States. An unprecedented number of bases either inoperable or unusable. And not only that — drawing fire to the countries they're supposed to protect. That was a protection racket. That was the sales pitch by the United States. So that's a huge flip in terms of influence, power, and leverage.
That globalized the conflict and brought the world to Iran in that sense. Now with Lebanon — this further regionalizes Iran's zone of influence. Only a normative power could draw a moral red line. And the moral red line is: Israel is attacking and killing civilians in Gaza, in South Lebanon, and also in Iran. When we get hit in Iran with Israeli or American aggression and they're killing our girls in schools — that is a deep moral wound. It needs to stop. This is against not just international law, and we're going to enforce that.
That's the first thing. So they drew a red line, and they enforced it. This also breaks up that compartmentalization you just talked about — the United States and Israel want to compartmentalize all of these different pockets so that they're not joined together. What Iran has done is break that compartmentalization up so that it's going to be treated holistically.
The mechanism of this is not obvious, but we can now see it after the reactions by Israel. The mechanism is that Iran does not want to allow Israel to use civilians as leverage against itself in negotiations. And Israel did the stupidest thing you could do: after these last missiles came down a couple of days ago, they cut off aid into Gaza. That is total vindication of the Iranian position. And then Bezalel Smotrich, the finance minister, goes and threatens to say that we need to take down an apartment block in Beirut for every missile Iran fires. And then Itamar Ben-Gvir says we need to kidnap women and children in order to demoralize Hezbollah and the Iranians to stop what they're doing. So Israel has provided the total case evidence — end of story.
I'll take this even further. This is how crazy it's getting for Israel: the Home Front Command of the Northern Territory of Israel has just announced that they're going to reopen schools again — they want the children to go back to school this week. Can you believe that? So effectively they're creating a human shield situation, or even using their kids as cannon fodder, at a time when tensions are very much escalated. I question the motivation behind that quite frankly. That's how desperate they're getting.
But all of this — Iran is able to enforce norms. Look at the interplay. Look at the conflict between the US and Israel that this has created. They've created political tension between their two enemies who are supposedly best friends. That's another level of what you could call genius, or you could just say that's what normative powers can do. Iran does have power, and they're demonstrating that it's not just military power — it's political power, and it's a combination of all those things.
The killing and destruction in Lebanon, in South Lebanon, in Gaza, in Iran, and elsewhere in the region — it's now being viewed by the world. If Iran sticks to their guns, if Lebanon had solidarity amongst the various sectarian factions and Hezbollah, they could together with their allies hold off Israel and bring political support from Europe. Because the US, Israel, and Saudi Arabia have done such a good job dividing that country, they're not able to do that. But if Iran sticks to its red lines, eventually European countries and other countries will begin to increasingly blame Israel for the failure of any peace negotiations. You just have to stick to your guns. And as long as Iran does that, I think the strategy is going to win out in the long run.
The collapse of western soft power and the eastward shift of global capital
Glenn Diesen: For anyone who was in universities in the early 2000s studying or teaching international relations, a key theme was always US soft power — it didn't need to rule by military force. The US was just this cultural, gravitational force the whole world was moving toward. And the EU as a normative power — its norms became its appeal and attractiveness. How things have changed now. You have German chancellors saying the Israelis are doing our dirty work for us, backing attacks on nuclear reactors, supporting genocide, now looking to expel some Ukrainian refugees to refill the trenches in their proxy war as they go back to war with Russia. And Iran — when I was younger, no one could say one kind word about this country. This was one of the most demonized countries in the world. Now, as you said, not only have they become a central point in the Islamic world, but I talked last night to Colonel Douglas Macgregor, and he was making a similar point to you — arguing that Iran is becoming the leader of the Islamic world. And the way people around the world view Iran compared to only a few years ago — it's extraordinary.
Patrick Henningsen: The way the Russians and the Chinese are viewing Iran has transformed.
Glenn Diesen: Because Iran has engaged the United States in a full-blown war, and Russia has never even done that — not even throughout the history of the Soviet Union. So Iran kind of stands at the pinnacle of global resistance in a way that is just kind of amazing when you think about it.
Patrick Henningsen: And ultimately, wars — whatever they are — are usually won economically as much as or more than militarily in the long run. Like you said, where the European Union had this power of attraction — that was the biggest market at one point GDP-wise, maybe 15 years ago, the EU was the biggest single market that everybody wanted access to. So it could dictate a lot. It could even project its foreign policy into Africa, because those African countries wanted access. So you had to comply with the equivalent of ESGs — these sorts of social, economic, and political standards you needed to meet to get into the EU market.
And all of a sudden that whole system is eating itself in Europe. The capital is not going into Europe now. The capital is going eastward. China is the safest, most stable place to park global capital. And so that means anybody allied with that side of the paradigm is ultimately going to be victorious in the long run. Iran is absolutely anchored eastwardly. So I think it's pretty inevitable, unless Europe pulls itself out of its insanity, that that situation is not going to change. Those trends are just going to continue, and it's not good for Europe and the West.
Unfortunately, there are a lot of risks along the road in front of us right now. If they come good on their promises of war with Russia by 2029 or 2030 or whatever — if that's the way things are going and that's a fait accompli — then there are going to be a lot of problems. But ultimately it's going to be impossible to reverse these very clear economic and geopolitical trends.
Glenn Diesen: I think that's one of the key problems. As we've been steaming ahead with these horrible, self-destructive — I would say anti-western — policies, the reason why they haven't been able to be reversed or there hasn't been any course correction or critical assessment is because they've all, again ironically, been pushed forward under this big banner of being pro-western, pro-democracy, and human rights. So if you oppose these policies — what has been done in Ukraine, against Iran, the war there — then you're taking the enemy's side, you're anti-western. But as again, it is amazing what horrible journalism has done. So I'm very happy for the work you're doing out there, and I would recommend everyone to follow you. Where can people follow you?
Patrick Henningsen: I'll drop you a couple of links afterwards by email or in the chat, but definitely 21st Century Wire is our main platform, which I founded in 2009. And I've also got a Substack page as well as a YouTube channel, 21st Century Wire TV. I'll drop those links to you, Glenn. I appreciate the conversation today.
Glenn Diesen: We'll put them in the description. Thank you very much for taking the time.
Patrick Henningsen: My pleasure.