From: andy.cain <andy.cain@comcast.net>
Sent: Wednesday, April 8, 2026 5:07 AM
To: Mike Brattland <mgbrattland@gerlecreek.com>
Subject: Fwd: The end of the war, not the regime
One Briton's perspective.
Sent from my Galaxy
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From: Andrew Fox from Fox On War <mrandrewfox@substack.com>
Date: Wed, 8 Apr 2026 at 09:29
Iran is battered but intact, America is spent, and the world is left to absorb the cost
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Y The end of the war, not the regimeIran is battered but intact, America is spent, and the world is left to absorb the cost
This will be the last free post of my Iran war series. I hope you found them useful, and I would humbly suggest my last post was especially prescient! All I ask is that you like and share if you find them useful. You can take advantage of the last day of my Easter Weekend sale and join thousands of other paid subscribers. 20% off a year’s subscription. Your support keeps the work going—thank you! Last night’s announcement is unlikely to represent an enduring peace. It was a two-week ceasefire, agreed just before Trump’s own deadline to launch a much larger assault on Iran, with talks now scheduled to continue in Islamabad. Oil prices fell, markets rallied, and everyone exhaled. However, even in the early hours, the deal already appeared fragile, with reports of further missile exchanges and Israel making it clear that Lebanon was excluded. A ceasefire can end a phase of a war, but it cannot, on its own, resolve the political issues that caused it.
The timing alone suggests that Trump’s disgraceful, shameful weekend bluster about destroying civilisations was just political theatre. Negotiations of this magnitude do not emerge in the last ninety minutes before a deadline. Pakistan had already been calling for a pause; talks were ongoing before the deadline, and China was among the outside powers backing the diplomatic effort. The Strait of Hormuz had become an economic pressure point that Trump could not keep shut for much longer, so he needed an escape route and wanted it to look like a victory achieved through intimidation. That is why the threats became so exaggerated just before the ceasefire he knew was coming anyway. On the military ledger, the United States and Israel can point to substantial achievements. By CENTCOM’s own account, more than 10,000 targets were hit inside Iran, 92% of Iran’s largest naval vessels were destroyed, and over two-thirds of its missile, drone, naval production facilities, and shipyards were damaged or destroyed. There were strikes on two Iranian steel factories, while Israeli attacks on South Pars and Asaluyeh struck a central pillar of Iran’s petrochemical and export economy. In the short term, Iran’s war-making industrial base has been significantly mauled. Israel is considerably safer today than it was six weeks ago. That said, there is no solid basis for claiming Iran has been completely disarmed. US intelligence can only reliably confirm that about a third of Iran’s missile arsenal has been destroyed, with another third likely damaged or buried, and a substantial amount still remaining, as shown by ongoing rocket fire right up to (and slightly beyond) the ceasefire announcement (which also indicates damage to Iranian command and control). Therefore, the honest assessment is more cautious: Iran’s offensive capacity has been significantly reduced, its launch rate has decreased, and its navy has been severely damaged, but it still has enough capability to threaten neighbouring countries and create a shipping crisis in Hormuz. The darker outcome is political. The regime has survived. As I initially wrote at the start of the war, survival itself is their victory. Even more concerning, the strongest faction appears to be the IRGC. Iranian President Pezeshkian was compelled to make an awkward climbdown after apologising to the Gulf states, with IRGC commanders furious and hardliners clearly in control of the direction. Mojtaba Khamenei’s promotion (regardless of his medical condition) was orchestrated by the IRGC, and insiders fear the Islamic Republic is increasingly becoming a military state, with harsher domestic repression and a tougher stance internationally. The war may be nearing its end, but it ends with the men in uniform more dominant than ever. Then there is the ten-point proposal. The Iranian media version attributed to Iran (and denied by Trump) includes a US guarantee of non-aggression, continued Iranian control over Hormuz, acceptance of uranium enrichment, broad sanctions relief, an end to UN and IAEA measures, compensation for war damage, a US military withdrawal from the region, and a ceasefire on all fronts including Lebanon (and Netanyahu has announced that the war in Lebanon continues, which is denied by Pakistan). We must wait to see how this situation evolves. If Washington accepted that list in its entirety, it would represent one of the most stark strategic humiliations in modern US history. I do not believe that is what actually happened. The more plausible interpretation is that Tehran released a maximalist opening stance, and Trump chose to present an incomplete, partial deal in victory language.
The unanswered questions are the most critical. What will happen to Iran’s nuclear material? Will Iran continue enriching? Who truly controls Hormuz once the headlines fade? Are there reliable verification mechanisms for missiles, naval harassment, rearmament, or proxy activities? Trump has offered only vague assurances that uranium will be “taken care of,” while Iran persists in demanding its right to enrichment and asserts a governing role in the Strait. A war may end superficially while its strategic issues remain unresolved. That is our current situation. China remains one of the unresolved issues. Beijing supported the diplomatic effort behind the ceasefire, and China joined Russia in vetoing a UN resolution aimed at reopening Hormuz on terms nearer to Washington’s preferences. This does not specify exactly what the postwar oil order will be, but it shows that Beijing was not a bystander. It was engaged in diplomacy and ready to influence the legal and political final stages. Analysts who considered this war partly about exerting influence over energy flows were not mistaken, but at this stage, the resolution appears to fall well short of the desired American influence. Economically, the worst panic may have been averted, but the damage has already been done. Around 130 million barrels of crude, plus large volumes of refined fuel and LNG, are still effectively bottled up by the disruption, and even with a durable truce, the market could remain 3 to 5 million barrels per day tighter than pre-war expectations for years. The IEA, IMF, and World Bank are now considering the shock severe enough to require coordinated crisis talks. In other words, the ceasefire relieves pressure but does not repair what has been broken. The world will feel the pain of this inchoate conflict for many months to come. That is the main lesson of the war. The United States can destroy infrastructure on a large scale. Israel can strike deep and repeatedly. Neither fact guarantees regime change. A well-entrenched revolutionary state that sits on a global chokepoint and is willing to endure extraordinary punishment can outlast its enemies’ expectations. Tehran will now tell its own people and the region that it took the blows, kept the regime alive, and forced Washington back to negotiation. That story is propaganda, but survival has always been the regime’s minimum goal. By that measure, it will declare victory. For Israel, the operational gains are clear and immediate. Iran’s launch rates have fallen, its navy has been devastated, and its production network has sustained serious damage. Since Lebanon still appears to be outside the ceasefire, Israel can now concentrate on its northern front against Hezbollah. However, the political repercussions are much less positive. Netanyahu is still heading into an election season in which the Iran conflict has provided him with little or no polling advantage, and the reaction from opposition politician Yair Lapid clearly shows how the domestic debate will be framed: the military met its objectives, while the political leadership failed to define the final terms.
The core US-Israel issue remains time, as I mentioned here. Israel’s military position may have improved, but its political backing in the United States is weakening. Independents now sympathise more with Palestinians than Israelis, while Republican support for Israelis has fallen to its lowest level since 2004. 60% of Americans hold an unfavourable view of Israel, and 59% lack confidence in Netanyahu. Israel can still count on significant US military support. However, it cannot safely assume that the old American political consensus will continue after the midterms, let alone after 2028. Reports like yesterday’s NY Times article, suggesting Bibi led Trump into war by the nose, will not help. The US relationship with its (former?) allies has also been strained, perhaps more profoundly than Washington realises. Europeans who stayed out of the conflict now appear wise rather than weak. France, Italy, and Spain denied or limited support for parts of the US-Israeli campaign; the EU had little desire to expand its naval mission into Hormuz; and Britain is now openly discussing a closer strategic alignment with Europe, because this war revealed the limits of US power in the clearest way: America could cause destruction, but it could not establish a credible end goal or secure allied legitimacy. Trump’s rhetoric has worsened that damage and may prove the most lasting part of this whole episode. He threatened attacks on civilian infrastructure that would have amounted to war crimes, publicly mused that “a whole civilization” could die, mocked Starmer as “No Winston Churchill,” derided British carriers as “toys,” berated France, and floated quitting NATO altogether. Alliances rely on trust, and if you cast doubt on commitments every day, you weaken them. That is the real transatlantic shift here. Trump has poisoned the well not only in chancelleries and foreign ministries but also with voters on both sides of the Atlantic. 58% of Americans disapproved of the strikes, while Britons opposed them by 49% to 28%, Spaniards by 68%, and Germans by 58%. America comes out of this weaker, poorer, and more isolated from Europe than when it entered, with Americans in turn feeling scorned by former allies. The Gulf states face their own reckoning ahead. They endured significant economic and infrastructural damage in a war they neither initiated nor controlled, and any in the Gulf fear bearing the strategic cost of a conflict they had no influence over. The UAE now insists that any agreement must guarantee free passage through Hormuz and address Iran’s missiles, drones, and nuclear programme. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia and the UAE are already investigating more affordable non-American interceptor systems from Ukraine, because the war revealed the absurd economics of shooting down inexpensive Iranian drones with very costly US missiles. I do not anticipate a sudden Gulf split from Washington. Instead, I expect increased hedging, greater security diversification (almost certainly increasing China’s influence), and much less confidence in the notion that the US security umbrella can contain Iran at an acceptable expense. That captures the central American paradox of this war. The United States demonstrated unmatched firepower and operational reach. No one else could have managed this campaign. Yet the same war is now causing inflation to rise, growth to slow, missile inventories to be strained, allied weapons deliveries to be delayed, and critical minerals to be consumed at an extraordinary rate. It concluded, at least for now, not with a dictated settlement but with Washington negotiating under the economic pressure created by Hormuz. Militarily unrivalled, strategically diminished. Rich in firepower, but weaker in every practical sense that matters. My overall assessment is blunt. Militarily, this was a limited US-Israeli success. Huge tactical wins across the board: Iran’s military and industrial infrastructure has sustained significant damage, and Israel is more secure in the short term. Politically, Iran achieved the one outcome its leaders value most: regime survival. Strategically, the situation remains unstable because the nuclear issue is unresolved, the future of Hormuz is uncertain, Lebanon continues to erupt, and the IRGC appears stronger than before in terms of domestic influence. Economically, the war was disastrous and widely disliked globally, with economic and diplomatic costs that will endure long after the ceasefire ends. The conflict might be coming to an end, but a prolonged solution is not yet in sight. Thanks for reading! This post is public so feel free to share it. This post went to the whole list, but your subscription is the reason it exists. Paid readers cover the cost of travel, fieldwork and the hours of research it takes to turn that into something more useful than a hot take. Thank you. If you know one person who’d value this kind of reporting, feel free to forward it — you’re the reason this community grows. If you’d like to back this work for the long haul, you can switch to an annual plan in one click in your account settings. If there’s anything I can do to make this subscription more valuable to you, just let me know by reply.
© 2026 Andrew Fox
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