13 April 2026

Claiming Victory, While Admitting Defeat: There Is No Easy Way To Open Hormuz – OpEd

Alastair Crooke

Bloomberg: “It is arguably Iran that has secured the most significant strategic victory … There is every sign that Tehran’s ability to control the Strait is increasing” The defeats which the West keeps on having “[are] above all … intellectual”. And “not being able to understand what they are seeing – means that it’s impossible to respond effectively to it”. So Aurelien has argued. But “the problem goes beyond the fighting on the battlefield, to seeing and understanding the nature of asymmetric wars and their economic and political dimensions”.

“This is particularly the case for Iran, where… Washington appears to be incapable of understanding that the ‘other side’ does have a strategy with economic and political components – and is implementing it”. “[In line with the western obsession with trivia], all the media concentration recently has been on the movement of U.S. troops to the region and their possible uses, as though that, in itself, was going to decide something. Yet in fact, the real issue is the development and deployment by the Iranians of a new concept of warfare, based on missiles, drones and defensive preparations, and the inability of the West, with its platform-centric mentality, to understand and process these developments [i.e., fully assimilate the strategy behind asymmetrical warfare]”.

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