The Daily Signal - Victor Davis Hanson: They Said ‘Forever War’—Reality Says Trump Just Crushed Iran in 5 Weeks

Episode Date: April 17, 2026

The legacy media, the so-called anti-MAGA Right, and the Democrat grandees in Congress have two things in common: They never wanted the U.S.-Iran war to go in America’s favor. Many of the critiques of Operation Epic Fury were not historically empirical, meaning they didn’t compare the ongoing conflict with Iran to past U.S. wars, such as the bombing campaign in Serbia or even the war in Afghanistan. But the evidence—in five weeks alone, the United States, with the Israeli Air Force, wiped out most of the top echelon of the four ruling cliques in the Iranian nation—was there, argues Victor Davis Hanson on today’s edition of “Victor Davis Hanson: In a Few Words”: “We’ve never taken on a country of 93 million people that had the most fearsome, terrible reputation of being dangerous and unpredictable, and running the Middle East with a ring-of-fire proxies in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Gaza, Lebanon—indomitable. They had terrified seven presidents. And yet, in five weeks, we destroyed its ability to make war.”(00:00) Media and Right-Wing Doom (01:09) Demanding Data, Not Spin (02:18) Iran Leadership in Chaos (05:52) Three-Phase War Strategy (07:29) Hormuz Gambit Backfires (10:27) Endgame and Final Warning  👉 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

Hello, this is Victor Davis-Hanson for The Daily Signal. I know a lot of you have been exasperated by the reaction to the Iran War from the Democratic grandees in the House and Senate, the liberal media, the New York Times, particularly the Washington Post, NPR, PBS, the network, even the Wall Street Journal's news section. And then we have some people on the right who have also looked at the war and said, It was lost. It went south. It was going to World War III, blah, blah, blah. All of them share one thing in common. Excuse me, two things in common. One, they wanted it not to go well. Wanted it not to go well because it would reflect badly on Donald Trump and his administration.

And if you were a Democrat, that would give you some momentum going into the midterms. And if you were a disaffected former supporter, it would prove to the world that you were right all along. and Donald Trump is reckless and got us into a forever unwinnable war. But whatever the particular reason was, both of them were not historical analyses. Both these people never were empirical. They were never historical. Had they looked at America's wars in World War II, Korea, Vietnam, and more importantly, more recently, the bombing campaign in Serbia, or the bombing campaign in Libya, or the first

Gulf War or the Second Gulf War or the Afghan, they would have come up with some data, some information. And then they could have compared this particular engagement and compared it with the others. Or they could have said to themselves, I'm not going to prejudice what happens. I'm going to look exactly what the data is on the ground. How many missiles were destroyed? Who was taken out? Have they taken out the Israeli commander, command and control?

They shot down 45 planes as they did during the first Gulf War, U.S. craft. And then they could have come up with a reason to announce, but they didn't do that. They didn't do that. But the evidence was there. The evidence was there. In the first five weeks, the United States with the Israeli Air Force wiped out most of the top echelon of the four ruling cliques in the Iranian nation. That would be the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the regular army, the theocratic apperat at top, and the elected politicians such as they do have elections.

All four of them were a trite. And right now they would also say to themselves that they are motivated by two or three catalysts that explain everything they say. One, they don't know who is in charge. and they're all grasping for power and they're all terrified. Somebody is in charge that they don't know about. Two, they've seen 30, 40, 50 people taken out and they don't want to identify and be a leader and be dead. Three, they're competing for power.

And that manifests itself in two ways. Number one, they're afraid of the hardliners. So they send out communiques. They freelance, not official all the time, and they want to sound harder than they're other person. So they're not accused of being soft. Usually the theocratic click what's left of it or the Revolutionary Guard, what's left of it accuses the politicians and the army of being too soft. And the final catalyst that explains this crazy stuff that emanates from Iran is they're afraid of the Iranian people. The Iranian people are sick and tired. Before the war even started,

the hyperinflation was strangling them. They could have. afford gas. They couldn't afford food. They can't go out of the country. They couldn't get, and it's ten times worse now. And they're going to be restive, just like during the fall of the Berlin Wall. You didn't see a revolution immediately. It was weeks and months in Eastern Europe in two years in the Soviet Union before it became Russia again. That means in the next two years, I think you're going to see a lot of popular resistance, and these people know it, and they know that if they go down, they're going to be, what, they're going to have a Nuremberg war crimes trial, and the people are going to take it out of them. So they don't know where the nexus of power is.

So it is confused. But people couldn't just accept that. They had to say Donald Trump got us in a forever war, even though we had, tragically, but lost 13 or 14 or 15, depending on the calculus we use soldiers. We never have had a war like that before. We've never taken on a country of 93 million people. that had the most fearsome, terrible reputation of being dangerous and unpredictable and running the Middle East with a ring of fire proxies in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Gaza, Lebanon, indomitable, the terrified seven presidents. And yet, five weeks, we destroyed its ability to make war.

Yes, they have a few drones, a few ballistic missiles. They can cause damage, but not if that damage will be replied to, as Donald Trump has warned them, by the destruction of their oil capacity or their electrical generation, which all presidents had done. We did it to Serbia. We did things to Libya. We did first Gulf War. It being dual use.

We took out bridges. We took out generation. We didn't World War II. We didn't Korea. We didn't Vietnam. Donald Trump's the first president. It hasn't done that in a wide-scale fashion. So what has happened?

It took four or five weeks in the country of that size area and population to find these tunnels, to find these hidden hair fields, to find these silos, to find these people in bunkers. And systematically, we got to the point where their military is almost gone. Then the next stage happened. Trump said to them, we can have a negotiation style if you meet our demands. And that was to, it was self-interested in the sense that he wanted a piece so the prices would go down, oil would be more available, the midterms are coming up, but it was also to let the regime, such as it was, after this main luminaries had been killed, it was to give them a chance and show the world that Trump was not a madman, he was willing to

negotiate. And they, of course, said no. They said no, because they hoped that popular resistance in Europe and popular resistance in the Democratic Party and on the left and on the old some of the MAGA apostates on the right they would so pressure Trump that he would give in to them he didn't so that was obvious he's never given in to anybody he's always done what he thought was right whether you agree with it or not so then we came into the third phase we had the destruction of the military number one number two we had the negotiation cycle and now it's the ultimate and finale to the war, and that is economic strangulation. Iran walked right, put their head right into a noose. They said, we're going to shut down the straight of our moves, and only us,

only us can determine who gets in and who gets out, and they have to be pro-Iranian, and we're not going to let Gulf states sell oil. Ha, ha, ha, we're going to, and everybody said, oh, that was brilliant. The left went crazy. He was delighted. Oh, my gosh, the Pentagon was caught on prepared. The Pentagon had been preparing that for 50 years. Under Reagan, they opened it. They know how to do it. So all that Trump said is, that's a good idea. Shut down the straight and let in the good guys and stop the bad guys. But your bad guys are our good guys. And your good guys are our bad guys. So we're going to take a page out of your book. And we're not going to let in anybody anywhere near Iran.

and we're going to let in everybody else. And the difference between the strategies is not just that we flipped it, but you have no wherewithal. PT boats and a bunch of mines won't stop us. But we have a huge fleet, and that will stop you from stopping us. And if you decide that you want to send the remnants of your missiles into the Gulf or Israel or at our fleet, go ahead, because we haven't even decided to hit dual-use targets yet. we're not like Barack Obama in Libya and taking out television stations and ports.

We're not like Bill Clinton and Serbia that destroyed every bridge on the Danube and took out their grid of a million and a half people. We're not Harry Truman and destroyed all the hydroelectric plants in North Korea. We let you off easy. Well, it doesn't mean there's not an American tradition of hitting dual-use targets. So we're going to hit your electrical and put you in darkness. And we're going to hit Kargigan or take it. Will you take the oil and rob it from you or take it? And what was the result of all that in the last $40?

Ships are coming in that we let, and ships are not coming in that we don't let. And people, economists at the major research universities in Europe, the United States, have now flipped on a dime. And they're actually looking in empirical fashion at last at what this means. And the ranges are absolutely stunning. $400 million and more per day lost economic. to Iran, whether that's lack of oil sales or petrochemical sales or lack of key imported mechanical goods, electrical goods that keep their infrastructure running or food. They're in dire straits. They're losing all of their income from the strait of our moves, and they're losing all

of their income from the petrochemical and oil. And they were broke to begin with, and they can't do anything about it because Trump did it sequentially. Military first, chance of negotiation, second, put the boot on the neck, third. So what is going to happen now? You know, see two things, two things, possibly three. They may decide they want to go down in a blaze of glory and empty their arsenal of remnant ballistic missiles and drones. If they do that, they will be in darkness, and they will have no oil for the next 10 years. So that will see if there's saner heads among them. Number two, they have a choice to agree to negotiations, and this time they're not going to have every click saying 15 here and 10 demands here. No, no, they're

just going to have 10. And if they don't abide by them, the United States can force them to abide by them. Or they can just simply give up, give up. No demands nothing, just say, we're done. And what I meant by give up is the regime gives up. I don't know if it's going to be immediate, but the people take over. All of those are favorable results for us. And so to conclude, I don't think that it's a very wise thing every 24 hours to be glued to. your computer or the television and whatever a pundit on the left or a democratic senator says or a disgruntled person on the right says, then take that as gospel and not look at the data, not look at the evidence that's out there to examine, both, as I said, empirically or historic.

Because if you did do that, you could see there was very, very little chance of winning. There's only one last caveat. Iran is ruined militarily and it's going to be ruined economically if it doesn't give in. And they're now going to negotiate with a different attitude. If you believe that they will abide by a demand that we've given them, no nuclear material for 20 years, whatever it is, then you have to believe that they will never break their word I don't think they've ever kept their word.

And number two, that there will be a president someday like Kamala Harris, Gavin Newsom, Pete Buttigig, Cory Booker, and people of that caliber and mindset would enforce every one of those negotiated demands. And I don't think they will ever tell the truth or honor any of their commitments. and I don't think that the next left-wing or Democratic president would ever force them to, which means we better get them to surrender unconditionally or face economic ruin, which will usher in a regime change. Thank you very much. This is Victor Davis-Hanson for The Daily Signal. Thank you for tuning in to The Daily Signal.

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