Iran’s nuclear program is in shambles as the US embargo tightens on the conflict

In the four months and three weeks since the war with Iran began, the United States has lost 17 or 18 of its soldiers (three or four were killed last weekend), and more than 420 others have been injured.

Sixty Israelites were killed. More than 100 Iraqis have died as a result of this conflict. Our partners in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have all lost their lives and all countries in the region have suffered significant damage to their infrastructure.

Iran has faced military deaths in the thousands and hundreds of civilians killed. The cost of the country’s infrastructure is huge – far greater than that incurred by its neighbors in the region – with estimates as high as hundreds of billions of dollars. Iran’s regular army has been crushed. Its missiles and drones are heavily damaged or destroyed. However, it is still far from being out of the way to threaten shipping in the Strait of Hormuz or its neighbors.

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Iran has refrained from striking Israel during the last 10 days of fighting as it fears a reaction from the Israel Defense Forces. That ban has been restored. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard is afraid of attacking the Jewish State. Now it must be afraid to shoot at the Americans or their Arab neighbors or international ships.

The rump regime still looks like a military dictatorship led by the 68-year-old Commander-in-Chief of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Ahmad Vahidi, who came out of retirement to lead the military dictatorship after an opening strike by Iran’s leaders killed dozens of the country’s leading officials.

The “official” successor to the slain Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is his son Mostafa Khomeini, who has not been seen in public since the conflict began. Khamenei 2.0 is believed to have been seriously injured in the opening strikes and has recently been reported to have been evacuated from the country.

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Iran’s economy is in critical condition as the exchange rate of Iranian rials against US dollars is approaching two million to one. The United States Navy’s blockade of Iranian vessels applies entirely to shipping, so Iran is also denied a basic and important source of income from the sale of oil through the seas. Its imports must be from land or air.

The conflict could drag on for months or even years as the US embargo drives Iran’s economy deeper into a hole that will take decades to climb out of once the war is over. The country’s nuclear program has virtually disappeared, and while the deep tunnels and caves of Pickaxe Mountain remain a mystery to the US the IRGC’s ability to “break out” of a nuclear weapon has been crushed. (The US has not mastered the Pickaxe, and may not be able to damage its depth.)

Measured in weeks, Iran is now years and years away from a nuclear weapon even if oil exports resumed in the future and the rump regime dedicated all that revenue from oil sales to the pursuit of nuclear weapons again.

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Oil prices are hovering above $80 a barrel globally, 30% higher than when the war began but well below the $126 a barrel price reached in April. Pipeline operations and the use of the southern shipping route across the Strait near Oman have kept oil prices high, and global production has increased due to the closure and closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

Whether President Donald Trump decides to escalate strikes on Iran to include the destruction of power plants and dual-purpose bridges involving the Iranian military and the IRGC (legal targets under the laws of war) will be revealed in the coming days.

Every deadly attack on Americans brings punishment from the United States to Iran. The cost to American families bearing that family loss is immeasurable and the US is paying the price after every deadly blow by the Iranians in an ongoing effort to deter supporters.

Iran’s economy is in trouble as the exchange rate of Iranian rials against US dollars approaches two million to one.

That may be an impossible goal given the theocracy’s vision of martyrdom, but the Islamic Republic’s original dictator, Ayatollah Khomeini, drank from the “cup of poison” in 1988 and accepted what amounted to defeat in the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-1988.

Vahidi is a veteran of that war. Perhaps the dictator will follow the example of the original supreme leader, as well as the advice of his civilian advisors, and the public face of Iran who is believed by some to hold the level of Iran’s defeat. The President of Iran, Masoud Pezeshkian, and the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Seyed Abbas Araghchi, have almost no control over the dictator and his army with guns that killed tens of thousands of Iranian citizens in January. But the citizens have revealed the reality of a fragmented country, and the crushed proxy forces in Gaza and Lebanon must measure up to Vahidi. Do you want the IRGC to go the way of Hamas and Hezbollah?

Iran could have a weapons freeze within hours if it stopped firing on the ship and agreed to small steps such as a full inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency of its known nuclear weapons development sites and Mount Pickaxe.

It makes no sense for the state to continue to take the pounding it receives, and the fact that Israel has not been targeted in the past 10 days shows that Vahidi has grasped the truth of his situation. He has been prevented from ordering a strike against Israel. The nightfall by the United States gives Vahidi only bad choices that are meant to stop him from his current course.

Whatever he calculated about the cost to the world in oil prices or to Trump in political damage in November, he was not only wrong, but very wrong. Do you have the ability to see that as clearly as Khomeini did in 1988?

About 7.5 million Americans saw Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey” this weekend. A cinematic reflection on the cost of war – a retelling of a story that has been going down for more than 2,700 years – still has the power to remind every viewer of the infinite cost of war to those who lose their loved ones in war.

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No American should want this war to drag on a day longer than it has to. Trump certainly doesn’t want to. The destruction of Iran’s military power and its military-industrial complex is nearing completion. Its nuclear program is in ruins. The Iranian people will face a very weak regime when they next stand up for freedom from the extremists.

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But as every member of the army will tell you, the enemy gets the word out when the fighting is over. The decisive victory of the US military will not be completed until Iran stops the international naval attacks. It may not happen for a long time yet. The “cup of poison” is not something Vahidi wants to accept or the state’s speakers want to admit. But President Trump is pursuing the right strategy to make its withdrawal impossible.

America must honor its fallen and take care of their families and the wounded and their families. But we pray that this spring and summer of war will be over before autumn comes. It was a necessary war, and further destruction of Iran is not something the president or any American should want, but that choice is for Vahidi.

Hugh Hewitt is a Fox News contributor and host of “The Hugh Hewitt Show“Hear weekday afternoons from 3 PM to 6 PM ET on the Salem Radio Network, and simulcast on the Salem News Channel. Hugh calls Americans home on the East Coast and lunch on the West Coast to more than 400 embassies across the country, and on every broadcast platform where SNC can be seen. He is a regular guest on Fox News Channel on the Brett news program at 6 pm. Ohio and graduation from Harvard College and the University of Michigan Law School, Hewitt has been a Professor of Law at Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law since 1996 where he teaches Constitutional Law. of television, MSN has also written for MSN television writers and moderated Republican debate scores, most recently the November 2023 Republican presidential debate in Miami and four Republican presidential debates in 2015-16 Hewitt focuses his radio show and column on the Constitution, national security, American politics and the Cleveland Browns and Guardians on and tens of thousands of Trump Republicans and Donald Bush’s 40 years in broadcasting.

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