Has Trump Made 'Forever War' Impossible?

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By Conrad Black
March 02, 2026
Has Trump Made 'Forever War' Impossible?
AP

The long buildup to the U.S.-Israeli attack upon Iran produced an almost unprecedented amount of fatuous comment. Many warned of a potential “forever war” and a morass reminiscent of Iraq and Afghanistan. President Trump, though, has devised a new method for dealing with sponsors of terrorism and guerrilla activity, and promised that if military action were required there would be no American occupation of Iran.

In such circumstances a “forever war” is impossible and U.S. casualties are minimal. The fact that between 75 percent and 90 percent of Iranians detest the Islamic Republic will mean that any war conducted within Iran will be between Iranians and the Islamic Republic will have little ultimate chance of survival. The fact that the last massacres of protesters by the regime had to be conducted by Iraqis indicates the Revolutionary Guard can no longer be relied on to fire live ammunition at civilians, the traditional litmus test of a crumbling despotism.

The United States and Israel have effectively made Iran a no-fly zone to the rest of the world and have closed Iran’s ports and are isolating that country completely. They have sufficient airpower in-theater to subject Iran to over 3,000 precisely targeted air and missile and drone strikes per day, a level of assault that no country can endure indefinitely. This would ensure that every target in Iran of any conceivable military or enforcement use to the regime will be destroyed within a few days.

Iran cannot long sustain such a war. It is alleged to have 3,000 long-range and 3,000 short range missiles of which it fired rather more than 300 on the first day of this action. A significant number were also destroyed in their stockpiles and so were many of their launchers although most of them are mobile. The great majority of the missiles that Iran did launch were shot down by the ground-to-air defense systems in the targeted countries.

In attacking many of the nearby Arab countries, Iran instantly increased the ranks of its enemies for no fathomable reason. The correlation of forces between the two sides is so overwhelming against Iran and the severe decapitation of the senior leadership of the Islamic Republic both ensure that this war cannot possibly continue for more than about ten days, though internecine strife within Iran could continue for some time. The almost certain end of the Islamic Republic of Iran soon will be the most important day in the geopolitical evolution of the world since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1991.

The international balance of power is about to be altered in favor of the West. The world’s foremost terrorism-sponsoring state is about to cease to exist, and the war on terror that was unofficially launched on September 11, 2001, in the ashes of the World Trade Center, will substantially be won. All support for Hamas and Hezbollah is about to dry up, and Israel will no longer have on its borders heavily armed states and organizations that cannot tolerate Israel’s existence as a Jewish state. Israel is now close to the first period of secure peace in its history of over 4,000 years.

Iran is about to cease to be a supplier of cheap oil to China and will instead supply Europe, along with Venezuela, and the detachment of India as an oil customer of Russia, will all suddenly make it much more difficult for Russia to finance its war in Ukraine. The virulent militancy of militant Islamic minorities around the West will no longer be sustainable. In general, unevenly but comprehensively, given the resurrection of sensible immigration policies in the principal Western countries, the abrasions between Islam and the West should enter a time of prolonged decline.

Incidental to this repression of the Iranian nuclear military program is the revival of the concept of nuclear non-proliferation. Although the nuclear powers have a

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