How the Iran War Is Shaping a Post-American World

Conversations With Matias Spektor and Kishore Mahbubani

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This week’s highlights:

 -Why the Cease-Fire With Iran Will Hold by Gideon Rose

By agreeing to the cease-fire, both the United States and Iran acknowledged, at least tacitly, that they were not going to be able to get everything they wanted from the war. But the category of “a draw” covers a lot of ground between victory and defeat, and so how the endgame plays out is important.

When the dust clears, Iran is likely to retain the potential for some sort of nuclear program, but the United States should be able to gain some restrictions on it. (Whether those restrictions will be more or less than the ones contained in the nuclear deal from which the United States withdrew in 2018 remains to be seen.) Some sanctions on Iran will be lifted; others may continue. The passage of ships through the Strait of Hormuz is likely to be restored, but on new terms that will probably advantage Iran.

The Israel angle will complicate matters significantly, because the Israelis and the Americans do not have identical interests. Iran will seek to have Israel constrained by the settlement, while Israel will seek freedom of action to continue its operations in Lebanon and elsewhere.

– For Iran, Hormuz Is More a Weakness Than a Weapon by Miad Maleki

Within weeks of a blockade, the country could run out of food, as well as space to store unshipped oil, requiring it to decrease or stop production at major oil wells—an act that can damage such infrastructure permanently. By closing the strait, Iran has not established a new, meaningful source of long-term clout. Instead, it has indicated how militaries can decimate the Iranian economy and thus really exert power over the Islamic Republic.

A full blockade will be much more devastating than Iran’s own strait closure was. It will entirely disrupt the distribution of the 1.5 million barrels of oil per day that Iran was previously loading onto tankers, costing the country approximately $276 million per day in lost export revenue and $159 million per day in imports. A blockade chokes off industrial inputs, machinery, and consumer goods.

A blockade also has the potential to damage Iran’s oil infrastructure permanently. The country has 50 million to 55 million barrels’ worth of total onshore oil storage, a capacity that, before the blockade, was already roughly 60 percent full. If the blockade is successful—and the shadow fleet Iran relies on cannot reach terminals, preventing the loading of millions of barrels per day onto tankers—this storage will fill up in a matter of weeks. After that point, Iran must slow the production of its wells.

– How to End the Iran Crisis by Federica Mogherini and Sahil V. Shah

The war may have dealt immense damage to Iran, but it has not erased the country’s underlying nuclear knowledge or its long-term capacity to rebuild the program.

This danger is now more acute politically, even if Iran’s near-term technical capacity has been badly disrupted. The lesson many in Tehran may draw from the war is not that restraint brings security, but that vulnerability invites attack

These results confirm what should have been clear from the start: diplomacy is the only viable way to ensure that Iran’s nuclear energy program is peaceful. It has, after all, worked before. For more than a decade, U.S. diplomats joined their counterparts from China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the European Union to pursue a negotiated agreement with Iran on its program. The result was the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)

– Podcast: Matias Spektor and Kishore Mahbubani on how the Iran war is shaping a post-American world

Washington’s decision to attack Iran is accelerating a process already underway: the receding of both the inspiration and the reality of American power.

Read The World Will Come to Miss Western Hypocrisy (Matias Spektor, Jan 29, 2026)

– The Tech High Ground by Jake Sullivan

– What the Iran War Means for the “Axis of Resistance” by Hamidreza Azizi

–A Test of Wills in Iran by Nate Swanson

Over the weekend, the United States and Iran failed to come to an agreement in Pakistan to end their war. At first glance, the two sides are miles apart. The United States wants Iran to open the Strait of Hormuz, accept significant restrictions on its nuclear program, limit its missile arsenal, and curtail its support for proxies such as the Lebanese militia Hezbollah. Iran, for its part, wants the ability to monetize its control of the strait, full sanctions relief (including the release of frozen assets), a cease-fire in Lebanon, and, most important, lasting assurances that the United States and Israel will not resume their war against Iran.