The Daily Signal - Victor Davis Hanson: Iran Isn’t Winning—They’re Just Surviving (And Trump Knows It)

Episode Date: April 23, 2026

We’re 60 days into the conflict, and President Donald Trump has left the Iranian regime with three options: The non-hard-liners could agree to the United States’ terms and surrender. The regime could continue to try and win token victories—send out small PT boats and drones to attack freighters in the Strait of Hormuz. Delay negotiations in the hopes that a more friendly Democratic administration comes to power in 2028, offering the theocrats more favorable terms, predicts Victor Davis Hanson on today’s edition of “Victor Davis Hanson: In a Few Words.” 👉 The Daily Signal cannot continue to tell stories, like this one, without the support of our viewers: http://dailysignal.com/donate 👉Don’t miss out on Victor’s latest short videos by subscribing to The Daily Signal today. You’ll be notified every time a new piece of content drops: ⁠https://www.youtube.com/dailysignal?sub_confirmation=1⁠  Also on Spotify: https://megaphone.link/THEDAILYSIGNAL9753340027  👉Want more VDH? Watch Victor’s weekly, hour-long podcast, “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words,” now! Subscribe to his YouTube channel, and enable notifications:  https://www.youtube.com/@victordavishanson7273?sub_confirmation=1👉More exclusive content is available on Victor’s website: https://victorhanson.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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We're about at 60 days in the Iran War, and we're getting a lot of mixed signals from the media, from the administration, from the Iranians, of course, who have no real government. There's nothing more than a series of competing factions, of which we're not sure who has the power in Tehran. But we should review very quickly what the options are. So what is Iran's options? Because people have made a fundamental logical error that survival, survival, is the same as victory or advantage. It's not. Iran's survival hinges on the United States, what it prefers to do, whether militarily, politically, morally, ethically.

But just because a nation survives doesn't mean. that it's winning. Nazi Germany was flattened, but it survived. Japan was flattened, but it survived. So just because Iran now is talking loudly and boastfully does not mean it has not been soundly defeated. The next question is, will it survive, the regime at least? And they have three options. The first is they could, the non-hardliners or the soft power people could come in. the parliamentary elected officials, such as they are in Iran, consist capitulate. They wouldn't capitulate and say we give up. They would say, we meet your demands, and they would be international inspections, the surrender of enriched uranium and inventories of their missile rocket drone program,

and they'd have to give that up. Or, number two, they could continue what they are just starting to do as I speak, that is they could start sending out their PT boats, these small fast craft who have rockets and some light artillery, machine guns, torpedoes, and attack tankers. And then if we were to reply, they could hit the Gulf states, or they could hit tankers, or they could even shoot missiles at our fleet. Or I think their preferred option is delay, delay, delay, the same 47 years.

that we're all accustomed to through seven different presidents. Yes, we want to negotiate. Yes, we will give up our nuclear enrichment. No, we won't today. Yesterday we said we will, but we thought it over. Yes, we will give up our missiles. But why don't you make Hezbollah exempt from the day? Again, like a rug merchant.

Barter, barter, delay, delay. And why are they doing this? They feel that they're only six months away from the midterm elections. And when they hear Democratic senators such as Chris Murphy say that it was awesome that Iran, when they lied and said 12 tankers had broken out of the blockade, it was a complete lie. But when Chris Murphy, a U.S. senator, voiced and amplified that lie and not only did that, but he editorialized and said it was awesome. That gives them hope.

So does Tom Friedman that said, well, I'd like him to lose, but not if it empowers Trump. So does Tim Walts and Chris Murphy going over to a socialist conference in Madrid. So they feel that they can help build opposition. Of course, in Europe and in the United States. One of the ironies is that the Arab Middle East,

at least the Gulf states, are more pro-American right now, and for this war, then there are the American Left. But they think the American Left can put pressure on Donald Trump, get elected in the midterms, control the House and Senate, and then enact the War Powers Act and cut off funding. That's not going to happen, but that's one of their strategies. What is our retaliatory strategy?

We have a lot. Right now we have a blockade, and we're waging economic warfare. We're trying to stop the importation of weapons, and the selling of oil to starve the regime out. The problem we're having with this, even though it's reportedly costing them $420 million a day, is that there are avenues on the Caspian Sea where they can import Russian weapons. They have a rail line through two different countries that goes into China. They can import.

They have mechanisms other than airlifting weapons into. to them. And so we don't really know, and we don't really know to what degree there's Iranian oil tankers all over the world in transit before the blockade. So it might take longer than we think. That's a decision Donald Trump will have to make, and the pressures upon him will be the world economy, the price of gas in the Western world, the midterms coming up, and his polls, and defections among his own mega supporters, etc., etc. But otherwise, we can talk and talk, talk, talk, talk as they do, but the cards are in our hands because they are hemorrhaging money and we're not.

And we don't need their oil, we don't need their natural gas, we don't need their petrochemicals. We only feel the pressure from others who are our friends that do need them. The second thing we can do is if they start to try to break the blockade as they had recently by attacking tankers, we don't have to go back to war. We can just kind of shrug and say, well, I guess you don't want this bridge. And then just announced today, we're going to announce it in advance. We're going to take out this bridge. And tomorrow we'll take out one of the four or five nuclear, excuse me, electrical generation plants.

Not a full-scale war, but just tit for tat. But their tits will be very small, and our tats will be very great. and that will accelerate the economic strangulation. Or if they continue to do this and we feel that the war has gone on too long, then we can hit where 90% of their oil comes from. And I say that because Venezuela is very rapidly making up the difference in Iranian oil, which, by the way, was going mostly to China, 80% of it anyway. But the United States is ramping up production.

Venezuela is ramping up production. The more that we can force this blockade, the more Middle East oil gets out. So we could just say to Karg Island, to the Iranians, they're Karg Island. We're not going to hit your storage facilities. We're not going to destroy the ability to pipe oil to Karg Island and store it. But we are going to destroy the dockworks, the cranes, ports so that you will you can fill up the oil all you want and for the regime that follows you hopefully a democratic or transitional government but you're not

going to be able to export oil even if you get a ship in there and so we can say well if you have one of these Liberian tankers that's masquerading as if it's neutral but it's actually controlled by China it's going in close to the Iranian coast it's going to park at Cargide and it won't be able to get any oil because we can damage from the air without invading. The bottom line is we have a lot of alternatives, and Iran has very few. But remember another thing, defeating soundly an enemy and then demanding unconditional surrender and forcing that government to act.

Are two different things. They're very different. And the latter requires a lot more time, probably boots on the ground. It's not in the agenda. But that does not mean that we can't. strangle this regime and make life go on as usual for the West and our partners. And I think we'll see more of that in the upcoming days. Thank you very much.

This is Victor Davis-Hansson for The Daily Signal. Thank you for tuning in to The Daily Signal. Please like, share, and subscribe to be notified for more content like this. You can also check out my own website at victorhansan.com and subscribe for exclusive features in addition.