The energy crisis is approaching, and the United States is losing the Iran war.

Title: Trump Has Officially Lost The War In Iran And The Great Energy Collapse Of 2026 Is Coming. Author: Dean Blundell Translation: Peggy

Author: Rhythm BlockBeats

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Reprint: Mars Finance

Editor’s note: When a military operation originally packaged as a “quick victory” evolves into a long-term blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, rising global energy prices, countries initiating fuel rationing and strategic reserve releases, the consequences of war are no longer confined to the battlefield itself but enter the underlying systems of the global economy.

This article takes Robert Kagan’s piece in The Atlantic as a starting point, pointing out a symbolic turning point: those who long provided strategic justification for U.S. military interventions, like Victoria Nuland’s husband, Frederick Kagan, and the “war philosopher” for every U.S. war in the past thirty years, now have to admit that the U.S. has not suffered a localized setback in Iran but a deeper strategic failure. What the author truly wants to discuss is not just whether the U.S. has won or lost a war, but whether the U.S. still has the capacity to safeguard global energy security, Gulf order, and its alliance system.

More worth paying attention to is not whether the Strait of Hormuz will reopen in the short term, but that the global trust structure surrounding this strait has already been rewritten. In the past, the U.S. maintained “freedom of navigation” through naval power and security commitments; now, the author believes, this mechanism is being replaced by a new “licensing system,” with the license shifting to Tehran. Gulf countries are beginning to reassess their relations with Iran, allies are questioning the validity of U.S. commitments, and energy importers are responding with rationing, reserves, alternative imports, and price controls to adapt to the new reality.

The sharpness of the article lies in its understanding that military failure, energy crisis, and domestic political deception are interconnected: war is not an isolated event but the result of years of strategic arrogance, policy misjudgment, and political spectacle. When decision-makers treat war as a victorious narrative on TV screens, the real costs are borne by those queuing at gas stations, small businesses relying on diesel transport, the food system pushed up by fertilizer prices, and all ordinary people dependent on global supply chains.

When the U.S. cannot reopen a long-promised energy lifeline, the global order has already begun to reprice itself around this fact. The cost of war will gradually shift from strategic reports into the numbers on everyone’s bills.

Below is the original text:

On Saturday, Robert Kagan published an article titled “The Deadly Move in the Iran Chess Game” in The Atlantic.

Yes, that’s the co-founder of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), Victoria Nuland’s husband, Frederick Kagan’s brother, and the “go-to philosopher” for every U.S. war in the past thirty years.

In the article, he writes that the U.S. has experienced “a complete failure in the conflict, a defeat so decisive that this strategic loss cannot be remedied or ignored.”

This is not an ordinary critic, but someone who has long provided strategic justification for hawks like Dick Cheney; it’s not just any media outlet, but the magazine that almost always frames every U.S. military intervention as “strategically necessary.”

But now, it is precisely they who are telling readers—using language that might once have been called “defeatism” or even “unpatriotic”—that the U.S. has just lost. Not a battle, not a military operation, but its position in the global order.

If even Uncle McDonald’s starts saying burgers are not tasty, then the problem is truly serious.

What’s more worth every American’s serious reflection is: while Kagan is still writing post-mortem analyses of this strategic failure in The Atlantic, the real world—the world of gas stations, supermarkets, refineries, and freight—has already begun to feel the consequences.

Sri Lanka is rationing fuel via QR codes; Pakistan is implementing a four-day workweek; India’s strategic oil reserves are down to 6-10 days; South Korea is enforcing odd-even license plate restrictions; Japan is releasing its second emergency stockpile this year. Meanwhile, in the U.S., a country where the Defense Secretary publicly declared in February that Iran would “surrender or be destroyed,” gasoline prices are rising, and the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is being released in the largest coordinated action in IEA history.

This is the reality of a “choose-your-war”: the choice is made by a group willing to burn their own country to manipulate markets and satisfy fragile egos.

Let’s examine step by step.

1. Trump told you this war could be over in a weekend

Rewind (actually, not even that long ago, just 70 days ago) to February 28, 2026.

That night, the Trump administration launched “Operation Epic Fury” in coordination with Israel. An air and naval combined strike. Within 72 hours, Iran’s Supreme Leader was killed, the Iranian navy destroyed, Iran’s defense industrial complex incapacitated on a large scale, and a generation of Iranian military leadership was wiped out.

Before the smoke even cleared, Trump announced on Truth Social: “Peace through strength.” Pete Hegseth—who now insists on calling himself “Defense Secretary”—seems to always indulge in some role-playing at press conferences—then took the podium at the Pentagon, with his usual bluster and almost nonexistent analysis, declaring: Iran “has no defense industry and no replenishment capacity.”

But he missed a key detail. Iran’s next move doesn’t require a defense industry. It only needs a map.

On March 4, just six days after Hegseth claimed victory, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps announced it was closing the Strait of Hormuz. Not “blockading,” not “restricted navigation,” but closing. According to Tehran, no oil—“not a single drop”—may pass without permission. Any vessel attempting passage “related to the U.S., Israel, or their allies” will be considered a “legitimate target.”

Within 48 hours, war risk insurance premiums quintupled. Within 72 hours, AIS transponders on many large oil tankers worldwide shut down. The strait, which normally handles about 20% of global seaborne oil and a significant portion of LNG, fell silent.

To be fair, the Joint Chiefs of Staff had warned Trump. Multiple reports indicate that in briefings before “Operation Epic Fury,” the military explicitly warned that Iran’s most likely countermeasure would be to close the Strait of Hormuz.

And Trump’s response was essentially: Iran will “surrender”; if not, “we’ll reopen the strait.”

But the reality is, the U.S. did not reopen it. And it cannot.

This sentence is the core of the entire story.

2. What Kagan truly admits—and what he still cannot say

The most notable aspect of Kagan’s article isn’t what he predicts, but what he admits.

Strip away the strategic jargon and Atlantic-style rhetoric, and what remains is essentially a confession. More bluntly, he admits the following:

First, this is not Vietnam or Afghanistan. According to Kagan, those wars “did not cause lasting damage to America’s overall position in the world.” But this time, he openly admits, the nature of the failure is “completely different,” and the consequences “cannot be repaired or ignored.”

Second, Iran will not relinquish the Strait of Hormuz. Not “this year,” not “unless negotiations fail,” but never. As Kagan states, Iran “not only demands tolls but can also restrict passage for countries with good relations.”

In other words, the “freedom of navigation” system that has underpinned the global oil order— the core justification for America’s 40-year military presence in the Persian Gulf—has ended. Now, a new licensing regime has emerged, with Tehran holding the license.

Third, Gulf monarchies must compromise with Iran. Kagan writes: “The U.S. will prove to be a paper tiger, forcing Gulf and other Arab states to make concessions to Iran.”

More directly: every Saudi and UAE royal who has seen the U.S. fail to defend refineries and shipping lanes is now on the phone with Tehran, negotiating new arrangements. The security architecture built over half a century in the Gulf is unraveling in real time.

Fourth, the U.S. Navy cannot reopen the strait. This is worth serious attention because it’s the most explosive admission in the entire article. Kagan writes: “If a powerful navy like America’s cannot or will not reopen the strait, then any coalition capable only of a fraction of America’s strength cannot do so either.”

German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius almost bluntly states the same: “Is Trump really expecting a few European frigates to do what even a strong U.S. Navy cannot?”

This sentence can almost be read as a eulogy. The U.S. demands allies clean up the mess, but allies ask: with what?

Fifth, U.S. weapons stockpiles are depleted. Kagan writes: “A second-tier power’s short war—please note, this phrase comes from someone who has long supported regime change—has depleted U.S. weapons stocks to dangerous lows, with no quick fix in sight.”

If you’re sitting in Taipei, Seoul, or Warsaw reading this, you won’t feel safer; you’ll feel distinctly less secure.

Sixth, trust in allies is damaged, U.S. security commitments are discredited, and China and Russia’s assessments are validated. Kagan almost never states this directly—he cannot, at least not as plainly as in The Atlantic—but the conclusion lurks behind every sentence, like a corpse under the floor.

Of course, what he cannot say is: how did the U.S. get here?

Because he himself is one of those who brought the U.S. here. He, his wife, his brother, the signatories of every “PNAC” open letter since 1997, and every think tank researcher over the past 25 years who has relentlessly portrayed Iran as an indispensable enemy—are part of this process.

His article shows no self-reflection. Not even a moment to admit: perhaps 30 years of maximum pressure created today’s opponent, capable of turning the tables on America.

Smoke is everywhere, but the arsonist still wonders why the air smells burnt.

So what is his proposed solution?

You’ll probably laugh first, then realize you can’t.

The answer: a larger-scale war. Specifically, he advocates “launching a full-scale ground and naval war to overthrow the current Iranian regime and occupy Iran.”

A person who just wrote 4,000 words explaining why the U.S. Navy cannot reopen a 21-mile-wide waterway against a “second-tier power” concludes that: invading and occupying a country of 90 million people, in the rugged mountains of West Asia, is the solution.

The arsonist’s fire-extinguishing plan is to light an even bigger fire.

3. Meanwhile, in the real world: a global oil crisis is unfolding country by country

Strategic analysis is one thing. Strategic analysts can write articles, go to a café on Washington Street, order a flat white, and not think about the milk truck that’s burning diesel from somewhere.

But others on Earth are calculating the bill right now. And the bill doesn’t look good.

As of this morning, the global situation has become this:

• Sri Lanka has entered nationwide fuel rationing. Cars are allocated quotas via QR codes, schools and universities are implementing energy-saving measures. This is not a forecast, but a current reality.

• Pakistan is implementing a four-day workweek across public and private sectors. Markets are closing early, remote work is being scaled up to reduce commuting.

• India’s strategic oil reserves are down to about 6-10 days. Although total system inventory is around 60 days, panic buying is surging, and the government is scrambling for emergency imports. Increasingly, oil is coming from Russia, which is happy to supply.

• South Korea is enforcing mandatory odd-even license plate restrictions for the public sector, with voluntary measures for others, and price caps as incentives. It also imposed a five-month export ban on naphtha.

• Japan is releasing its second large emergency strategic reserve this year. The first was in March. Now, Japan is drawing from its previously declared 230-day buffer stock with the IEA.

• The UK is entering price shock mode. The government is offering targeted aid to households using heating oil, reintroducing windfall taxes, and cracking down on price gouging.

• Germany is extending fuel tax reductions and introducing employer-funded fuel subsidies.

• France is rolling out targeted fuel discounts and accelerating energy vouchers for high-mileage drivers, transport workers, fishermen, and farmers.

• South Africa is sharply reducing fuel taxes, but queues at stations persist.

• Turkey is lowering the special consumption tax on fuel.

• Brazil is canceling diesel taxes and directly subsidizing producers and importers.

• Australia is halving fuel consumption taxes, launching a nationwide “Every Point Counts” energy-saving campaign, and providing business loans to industries affected by fuel shocks.

• The U.S. is participating in the largest coordinated strategic reserve release in IEA history, totaling 400 million barrels. Meanwhile, several states have implemented gasoline tax relief, and the federal government is openly considering expanding this policy nationwide.

• China, as the world’s largest crude oil importer, is responding in its usual crisis manner: pulling back the oil infrastructure, maintaining large domestic reserves, banning refined oil exports, and tightening domestic price controls. Meanwhile, quietly buying every discounted Russian and Venezuelan spot crude available—because it will.

All this is happening even as the IEA has launched a record-level coordinated release.

Read this part carefully, because from here on, it’s no longer just numbers on a chart but will enter daily life.

Ninepoint Partners energy analyst Eric Natorp recently told Bloomberg that, based on his understanding, “we’re not talking about months or quarters from now. In the coming weeks, demand will have to be compressed at a rate exceeding that of the COVID period.”

According to his description—my summary—this could be “the largest energy crisis in modern history.” And rationing, especially demand-side rationing—something the U.S. has rarely seen since 1973—may only be a “matter of weeks” away.

Weeks. Not months, not an abstract mid-term, but weeks.

You should now see your car in a completely different light.

4. Why this will not “resolve itself”

I want to pause here because American readers might easily interpret this as a temporary disturbance.

They will instinctively think that with some combination, things will be over in the next news cycle: Iran “blinks and surrenders”; Trump finds a decent way out; Saudi opens the oil tap; or the U.S. Navy finally “acts.”

But this will not happen, for the following reasons.

Iran has no motivation to relinquish the Strait of Hormuz.

None. Zero.

Today, this strait has become Iran’s most valuable strategic asset—more valuable than its nuclear program, which it nominally fought for, or the proxy networks it used as bargaining chips. Iranian Parliament Speaker Kalibaf has openly stated, “The situation in the Strait of Hormuz will not return to pre-war conditions.”

This is not bluffing but a policy declaration.

Over the past 40 years, Iran has been told it has no chips. Now, it holds the most important card in the global economy. The next Iranian government—and there will be one, because the airstrikes have killed enough old leaders—will inherit and use this card.

To think Iran will easily give it back is a fundamental misunderstanding of what just happened.

Gulf monarchies can no longer openly oppose Iran. Saudi refineries, UAE ports, Qatar LNG terminals—all are within Iran’s missile, drone, and proxy attack range. These countries have just seen the U.S. fail to defend Israel’s most strategic targets, fail to protect U.S. bases in the UAE and Bahrain, and fail to reopen the vital strait that sustains their economies.

The so-called security commitments have been discredited by reality.

Riyadh and Abu Dhabi will not stake their survival on a guarantor that just proved unable to provide guarantees. They will seek deals. In fact, they are already seeking negotiations.

The U.S. Navy also cannot reopen the strait in reality. This should make everyone sit up.

In terms of absolute strength, the U.S. Navy remains the most powerful maritime force in history. But after just 38 days of “major combat operations” against a “second-tier power” that Kagan himself calls “a second-rate power,” it has depleted its weapons stock to “dangerously low levels.”

Now, the U.S. Navy has launched a gradually more cautious operation called “Project Freedom,” attempting to escort one merchant ship through the strait at a time. The result: only two ships in a week.

Two ships. The pre-war average was 130 per day.

On Tuesday, Rubio called “Project Freedom” the first step toward establishing a “protective bubble.”

A bubble. Once a highway-like passage, now the U.S. can only try to protect a bubble.

More importantly, no coalition is coming to take over. Boris Pistorius, Germany’s defense minister, has been very clear. The UK and France’s defense departments are less direct but equally clear: Trump’s call for South Korea to “join the mission” was politely responded to with “we will consider it.” In diplomatic language, that means: we will not join.

Japan is busy depleting its strategic reserves, with no time to send navy ships to the strait. India is buying Russian oil. China, the country most dependent on the Strait of Hormuz, is conspicuously absent—and apparently has no intention of cleaning up a mess that was not made by China and may even benefit China.

The U.S. is asking the world for help. The world looks at the situation, does the math, and finds an extremely uncomfortable fact: for the first time in 80 years, the U.S. is effectively unable to guarantee global energy security.

This means the world is reorganizing itself around this fact. This is not a news cycle; it’s a change of order. But it’s not the “regime change” envisioned by Trump and Hegseth.

5. Trump and Hegseth: deception as policy

We must be precise about what is being accused here, because it’s important.

This is not an unforeseen disaster. It’s not a black swan. Almost everything that has happened was predictable: the Joint Chiefs warned in briefings before the “Epic Fury” operation; every major think tank analyst not led by Kagan warned; every veteran with Gulf combat experience warned; even Iran itself has repeatedly forewarned in public statements over the past 20 years.

The Hormuz scenario has been so thoroughly modeled that it even has its own Wikipedia category. Yet this government still did it.

Why? Because Trump needs a victory. Because Hegseth needs to look like a real defense secretary. Because the political logic of Trump’s second term—domestic chaos, declining polls, restless base—requires an overseas adventure: it must have a clear villain, and ideally, a quick victory narrative on TV.

During the Bush era, this was called “a pretty little war.” Hegseth, on the podium, called the 2025 preemptive strike “Operation Midnight Hammer,” “the most complex and secret military operation in history.” Such ignorance of history should have ended his term immediately.

But it didn’t.

He’s still there. Still calling himself “Defense Secretary.” Still walking onto the Pentagon podium, announcing that even as missiles fly, the ceasefire holds; even as ships burn, the operation is not offensive; even as diesel prices in Los Angeles hit $7.40 per gallon, Iran has been “destroyed.”

This man is essentially a cable TV pundit in a Pentagon suit. And his job requires the most rigorous strategic judgment and logistics capacity of the U.S. government. He has neither.

The consequences of this mismatch are now borne by every ordinary person on Earth: drivers going to work, students taking buses, small business owners relying on logistics, people eating food grown with nitrogen fertilizer, and countries living on imported diesel.

In other words, almost all of us.

This war is illegal. Such a large hostile action was not authorized by Congress, nor by the United Nations, and there is no credible imminent threat. It has only a president eager for war, a defense secretary eager for a press conference, and a national security apparatus—trained over the past 30 years by people like Kagan—to ultimately say “yes.”

And those who once said “yes” are now writing 4,000-word essays in The Atlantic explaining how surprising it all is.

6. What you should do this week

I usually don’t write practical advice sections. This newsletter isn’t usually that kind.

But Natorp talks about “weeks.” Sri Lanka, Pakistan, and South Korea are no longer waiting. The IEA’s reserve releases are not unlimited. I think those reading this deserve some straightforward words.

So:

• If you’ve been considering buying an electric vehicle, the calculus has changed. I’m not telling you how to use your savings. I’m just saying that every extra week you keep your gasoline car now costs you more than last month; and the marginal benefit of electrification—the ability to get around when gas stations are queued and supplies are exhausted or rationed—has increased accordingly.

• If you have the ability to charge at home, now is the time to reconsider your logic.

• If you can stockpile some basic foods relying on diesel-intensive logistics—this is not panic buying but reasonable household reserves. The fertilizer supply shock—remember, the Persian Gulf accounts for 30-35% of global urea exports, and ammonia exports are also significant—will transmit to food prices in 6-9 months, and it will. Legumes, rice, oats, frozen proteins. This is standard emergency preparedness, not doomsday hoarding.

• If your job depends on physical supply chains, start discussing contingency plans with your employer this week. Especially since shipping costs are still rising—North American airline fuel prices are up 95% over pre-war levels, with no relief in sight.

• If you’re in the U.S., call your congressman about the War Powers Resolution. Nothing happening in the Persian Gulf now has congressional authorization. Nothing in the past, and nothing now. The legal basis for the “Project Freedom” operation is just the residual authorization from the “Epic Fury” action, which Rubio has said has ended. The legal framework supporting all this has evaporated, in technical terms.

• If you’re a journalist or analyst, read Kagan’s article twice. Notice what’s missing: moral reflection, self-examination, the human cost, the names of the dead. Also note what it presents: an acknowledgment at the strategic level—the end of the neoconservative project. This is a document of historical significance, to be read both as a confession and as a warning.

• If you’re outside the U.S., you may have already done the math. You’re rationing, stockpiling, hedging. You don’t need my advice. Maybe you just need to know that some Americans are still watching these developments. Not enough, but they exist.

7. The smell of smoke

I want to end with a sentence that has lingered in my mind after reading Kagan’s article, because I think it captures the whole story.

The arsonist smells smoke.

For 30 years, a certain group in Washington—Kagan, Nuland, Frederick Kagan, every signatory of the “PNAC” open letters, every think tank researcher with “America,” “Defense,” or “Security” in their name—has consistently argued that the U.S. must maintain military dominance in the Middle East.

They said that regime change in Iraq would lead the entire region toward democracy.

They said that maximum pressure on Iran would either overthrow the regime or render it harmless.

They said the U.S. could indefinitely guarantee the security of Gulf monarchies.

They said U.S. weapons, intelligence, navy, and resolve would keep the global energy system running smoothly on Washington’s terms forever.

Now, all these propositions have been discredited by reality—and in real time.

In just 70 days, a war originally envisioned as the final victory of this project has become its obituary. And in many ways, the architects of this catastrophic worldview, sitting in the pages of The Atlantic, are writing in near-straightforward language: we lost.

But they still cannot say: we caused this.

They cannot mention the dead—the 165 female students killed in a single airstrike, the thousands of Iranian civilians bombed, the workers on burning oil tankers, the port workers in Bahrain, the passengers on Tel Aviv buses, soldiers from a dozen countries.

They are absent from their own narrative.

For them, it’s just a strategic puzzle, with the pieces being human lives.

But the strategic question itself is a moral question. The two are inseparable.

A war launched, sold, executed, and ultimately lost by liars is first and foremost a moral disaster before it becomes a strategic one. And the strategic disaster grows directly from the moral disaster: the same inability to think clearly that produces lies also produces operational failures; the arrogance that ignores the warnings of the Hormuz Strait, and the arrogance that dismisses human lives—both are the same hubris.

In the next six months, Trump will try to spin this failure as a victory. Hegseth will continue to hold press conferences, where the word “destroy” will appear far more often than “fact.” Cable news will oscillate between inciting anger and fostering optimism. Strategic reserves will continue to be depleted. Lines at gas stations will grow longer. Shipping rates will keep rising. Fertilizer prices will eventually pass into bread prices.

And somewhere in Washington, Bob Kagan might be holding a glass of wine, experiencing the first hints of a kind of fear.

Not for the female students, not for Karachi truck drivers, not for Sri Lankan families rationing via QR codes, but for that project. For the building he helped construct for 30 years—now collapsing before his eyes, along its own foundations.

The arsonist smells smoke. And he is finally beginning to realize that the house was his own all along.

Americans now have to bear these consequences. And these consequences will become painfully clear in the coming months, possibly lasting for years.

So, everyone, prepare yourselves.