This is a provocative piece from Policy Tensor suggesting that Iran should now be considered a Great Power for handing the United States and Israel a strategic defeat in this war. Most of the piece is paywalled, but I did want to make a few comments on the broader significance of the war, especially now that Trump is about to have his "Mission Accomplished" moment a la Bush.

Let me begin here: I agree that the US is heading towards strategic defeat, an assessment now shared by numerous international relations experts, including Mearsheimer. Iran has a chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz and no one can break it. The Iranian strategy of forcing pain on the global economy after the US-Israeli attack worked very effectively, pushing NATO allies away from the US and leaving Trump with few good options. And let's face it, this war has been an absolute fiasco from the American perspective. It was poorly planned, poorly executed, and poorly organized. The decisions to kill Khamenei and Larijani were short-sighted and idiotic, as they allowed military hardliners and commanders to take charge of Iranian government policy, and these factions were far more supportive of pursuing unrestricted aggression and scorched earth tactics all over the Middle East, especially against the Persian Gulf states. The war therefore escalated to levels that US military strategists at the Pentagon did not anticipate. At least a dozen American planes have been damaged or destroyed, including two F-35s (Iran probably got a few advanced UHF radars from China). The Gerald Ford had to leave the region on March 23 because of repeated mishaps, indicating this thing was an expensive boondoggle with defective parts that cannot function in a protracted conflict. NATO troops were forced to leave Iraq, and most US forces followed suit. Israel wasted who knows how many missiles hitting leadership compounds, government offices, airports, apartment buildings, and universities in Tehran, pretty much all targets that have absolutely zero military value. Iranian missile and drone capabilities are still strong, as Israel keeps getting attacked multiple times a day, along with the Persian Gulf countries. The fact that Iran is still in this fight a month after it started is indeed an unexpected development, and underscores the dangers of underestimating your opponent (something Putin also found out the hard way with Ukraine).

At the same time, I don't know that I would compare this war to the Russo-Japanese War in 1905, as Policy Tensor does at the outset. In that war, Japan overpowered and defeated the Russians on the battlefield, epitomized by the historic victory at Tsushima. Iran has done no such thing. And it's materially much weaker after this war. Nor can it really guarantee that it won't face further attacks in the near future, so its fundamental security problems haven't really been resolved. Lasting a long time in a fight against a Great Power doesn't automatically make you one yourself, otherwise the Afghans would have made the cut just because they outlasted the British in the 19th century, and same for Vietnam in the 20th century after holding off both the French and the Americans. Mearsheimer's definition is thus highly myopic and ignorant of the complex array of capabilities that powerful nations have at their disposal, including the ways that economic power interacts with military power to shape or coerce behavior among nations. Furthermore, Great Powers typically have spheres of influence that others won't dare breach. Iran doesn't have that. The US does. China does. Russia does, to a lesser extent. So I don't know that I would call Iran a Great Power at this point, though it's certainly a regional power.

But at some level, the labels don't matter. Trump is about to throw in the towel on this war with not much to show for it, as far major US objectives go. Iran might be battered and bruised, but it managed to hold off the United States and Israel combined, with relatively little direct aid from outside powers. In that result it was aided enormously by the geography of the region, since the Strait of Hormuz carries enormous economic significance and is very narrow, making it easier to cover with low-tech drones and missiles. Iran has exploited the one big leverage it has over the global economy, thereby frustrating the US war effort. And rather than leading to the government's overthrow the way Israel and the US wanted, the war has actually reinforced the domestic power and standing of the Iranian government. All in all, another imperialist fiasco.