Nonsense.

The argument here is that there is a depth to this intellectual history of the idea that the final test is that of the battlefield. This is not at all a semantic issue. It is an issue of the facts of our history, of our intellectual history.

An argument by definition would be that a great power is defined in this way. It is not defined in this way. It is defined in terms of the expectation of putting up a real fight with the strongest state.

The issue is that those are arguments about definitions. I am talking about the test here—how can we tell for sure that a state is a great power? The thing that decides the debate, not the debate itself about whether or not Iran is a great power. What I am informing you that we have always agreed that this was the test, as a fact about our intellectual history.

Losing Hormuz and the gulf is absolutely not a minor defeat. That the US does not have the military means to retake the gulf from Iran is a major and surprising military defeat in a region that American strategic thinkers have always recognized as vital to our interest—as one of three regions of Eurasia whose domination by a single power was recognized from every serious student from Spykman to Pape and Mearsheimer, and by openly by the US in the 1992 DGP as constituting the seat of a great power that could pose the scale of threat formerly posed by the Soviet Union.

It is a question of history. The Iranians are in military control of the Persian Gulf and the US cannot militarily reverse that. Prussia was and is recognized as a great power on winning Silesia; Austria on winning Belgrade. If the Prussians can be recognized as a great power for Silesia, and Austria for Belgrade, Iran must be recognized as a great power for gaining military control of the Persian Gulf.

You should read the full argument.