A towering figure in American neoconservative thought and a decades-long pro-Israel hardliner has delivered a devastating assessment of U.S. policy toward Iran, warning that Washington is on track to suffer an irreversible “total defeat” that will reshape global power dynamics for generations. Robert Kagan, a co-founder of the influential neoconservative think tank Project for the New American Century, laid out his bleak prognosis in a recent essay for *The Atlantic*, arguing that the damage accumulated over years of confrontation with Tehran cannot be undone.
Kagan’s warning carries unique weight because of his central role in shaping modern American interventionist foreign policy. In 1997, he helped launch the Project for the New American Century, a movement that pushed successive U.S. administrations to project American military power across the globe to advance U.S. strategic interests. This ideological framework ultimately culminated in the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, and deeply shaped the foreign policy agenda of President George W. Bush’s administration. Kagan remains deeply embedded in the U.S. foreign policy establishment: his wife, Victoria Nuland, served as a top foreign policy advisor to iconic neoconservative Vice President Dick Cheney. For decades, Kagan has been one of the most vocal advocates of aggressive U.S. global intervention, making his unsparing criticism of current Iran policy all the more striking.
At the core of Kagan’s analysis is a dramatic shift in control over the Strait of Hormuz, the strategic chokepoint through which nearly 20% of the world’s daily oil supplies pass. Kagan argues that Tehran’s growing influence over the strait has fundamentally upended the regional balance of power. “With control of the strait, Iran emerges as the key player in the region and one of the key players in the world,” he wrote. “Defeat for the United States, therefore, is not only possible but likely.”
Beyond shifting regional power, Kagan says the long-running confrontation with Iran has strengthened global rivals of the U.S., including China and Russia, while severely eroding American credibility and standing across the globe. “Far from demonstrating American prowess, as supporters of the war have repeatedly claimed, the conflict has revealed an America that is unreliable and incapable of finishing what it started,” he argued. “That is going to set off a chain reaction around the world as friends and foes adjust to America’s failure.”
Kagan warned that former U.S. President Donald Trump had extremely limited options to reassert American control over the Strait of Hormuz, noting that Washington had effectively exhausted all meaningful leverage over Tehran. He compared the magnitude of the current strategic setback to the darkest moments in modern American military history, including the 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the final collapse of the U.S. war effort in Vietnam. Unlike those crises, however, Kagan argued that the U.S. may not be able to rebuild and recover from the consequences of an Iranian defeat this time.
Tehran’s ability to withstand relentless U.S. pressure leaves Washington with almost no viable paths forward that would not trigger catastrophic damage to Gulf state economies and the broader global energy system, Kagan added. “If this isn’t checkmate, it’s close,” he said.
He also stressed that Tehran has no incentive to give up its control over the strait, which serves as one of its most powerful strategic leverage points against the West. “Iran cannot afford to let the strait go, no matter how good a deal it thought it could get. For one thing, how reliable is any deal with Trump?” he asked.
In a separate interview with PBS, Kagan extended his warning to Israel, Washington’s closest regional ally, arguing that the confrontation with Iran could backfire spectacularly for the Jewish state. “This war has the potential of ending in a very disastrous way for Israel precisely because the leverage in the region and the influence in the region is going to shift away from the United States and Israel and toward Iran and its supporters,” he explained.