Kyle Anzalone – AntiWar.com Aug 24, 2026
In a new op-ed, Robert Kagan argues that the war started by the US and Israel has resulted in Iran becoming the dominant power in the Middle East.
“As a result, Iran has, with American help, completely reconfigured the power structure of the Middle East and the Persian Gulf,” Kagan wrote in The Atlantic on Sunday. “The dominant power in the region going forward will be Iran, not the US or Israel.”
In 1997, Kagan co-founded Project for the New American Century (PNAC), a neoconservative think tank that lobbied for an aggressive foreign policy and the Iraq War. Kagan is a war hawk who has long falsely claimed that Iran is working to build a nuclear weapon, and Washington must prevent Tehran from obtaining nukes. President Donald Trump has repeatedly stated that he launched the war to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.
Kagan has often argued against military action in favor of causing an uprising of the Iranian people to overthrow the government. The US and Israel attempted to encourage Iranian protesters and rioters in January, but the government in Tehran remained firmly in control.
On Monday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced that the US was beginning a new economic war against Iran. Kagan predicts that attempting to win the war through economic pressure will fail.
“The idea that, having survived both military strikes and sanctions, Iran will now succumb to sanctions alone is deluded,” he wrote.
Kagan goes on to argue that Iran will use its newfound power to build nuclear weapons, but control over the Strait of Hormuz is even more consequential.
“The world has spent decades worrying about what Iran might do if it acquired a nuclear weapon. It should now worry about something even more consequential: an Iran that has defeated the United States, no longer fears American attack, and controls access to the Persian Gulf. Nuclear weapons alone could never have given Iran this kind of power.” He added, “The failed U.S. and Israeli war with Iran has.”
—
If you liked this article, please consider donating to AntiWar.com.
We are 100% readers supported.

MORE ISRAEI TERRORISM
Israel seizes UN facility in East Jerusalem and closes it down
Story by Adam Parsons, Middle East Correspondent
Israeli authorities have sparked another confrontation with the United Nations after seizing a UN facility in East Jerusalem and promising to close it down permanently.
Police entered a training centre run by UNRWA, the agency that supports Palestinian refugees, ordering the staff to leave and take control of the facility, known as the Qalandiya training centre.
They were accompanied by far-right national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who echoed long-standing criticism of the agency. The Israeli government claims that UNRWA had become “riddled” with Hamas members, some of whom took part when Neyanyahu let in Hamas in the October 7 attacks.
Ben-Gvir was filmed sitting behind a desk he said was used previously by the training centre director. “UNRWA is out,” he said. “They must be expelled from every place in the expanding State of Israel.
UNRWA terminated the contracts of nine members of staff accused of involvement in the October 7 attacks, but said Israel has not supplied evidence to substantiate its allegations of widespread infiltration by Hamas.
In a statement, UNRWA said that “it unequivocally condemns” Israel’s seizure of the facility and said that “the entry of armed security forces into a United Nations facility, without the authorisation or consent of the United Nations, is unacceptable”.
A spokesperson for the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said that Israel’s actions were “a terrorist action wholly unacceptable and inconsistent with Israel’s obligations under international law”.
The centre was established more than 70 years ago and has taught professional skills to thousands of Palestinians.
Separately, the UN’s Special Co-ordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, Dr Ramiz Alakbarov, said that the centre should be “inviolable and immune from any form of interference”. He called on the Israeli government to “withdraw from the facility” and to observe “its obligations under international law”.
Under a 1946 UN convention, UN premises are considered “inviolable” while UN property and assets are immune from “search, requisition, confiscation, expropriation and any other form of interference”.
There is no obvious precedent in UN history for a UN member state to take over a functioning UN facility, against the wishes of the UN, to convert the site for its own purposes.
In January, Israeli authorities demolished UNRWA’s headquarters compound in Sheikh Jarrah, in occupied East Jerusalem.
Kagan 🙂 🙂 🙂
You shudda TOOKEN ’em some Biscuits, lol (Cookies my arse)
Robert Kagan: Now the Dominant Power in the 24/7 ‘All you can eat’ buffet
That bloated rabid jackal Kagan should have been dragged through the streets and brutally executed on September 12, 2001, if not strangled to death at birth, along with every other treasonous psychopath involved in PNAC. Never too late for retroactive abortions for that lot, and more than deserving, but the whirled would certainly be much better off if they had all been snuffed at birth.
I suspect this all has to do with the “pivot to the east” that too many of those festering shit-stains have been yammering on about….now that the jew crew has bled the west dry and left it terminally bankrupt…financially, morally, and intellectually….