The Iranian War: Panel Discussion

Below is a roundtable of opinions on the war in Iran, gathered by talk radio host James Edwards. The ten participants, listed alphabetically, were asked to share their reactions to the escalating conflict in the Middle East, focusing on what stands out to them. As a result, a wide variety of diverse perspectives were submitted, covering topics such as military tactics, the potential impact on Trump’s legacy and the U.S. midterm elections, possible global geopolitical shifts and realignments, Israel’s role, likely outcomes, and much more.

* * *

Charles Bausman, editor and publisher of Russia Insider: I am in Moscow now, and my Russian political contacts tell me that the political elites here are on the verge of losing any faith they once had in Trump and his administration. They see a series of betrayals. First and foremost, what they see as a betrayal is the promise to negotiate an end to the Ukraine war, which was entirely within Trump’s power to do, but which he reneged on. There were also attacks on Russian allies: Syria, Venezuela, and now, most troublingly, the BRICS member, Iran. There is considerable concern surrounding discussions about a possible takeover of Cuba. This is a very sore point with Russia because of the decades-long friendship and cooperation — and personal ties — with Cuba going back 65 years. And add to this the seizure of Russian tankers recently.

There is a growing impression here that Trump might not be completely sane and is certainly not to be trusted — nor are the people around him. There is pressure from public opinion for Russia to take a more assertive stand defending Russian interests, starting with Ukraine and continuing to Iran. The Iranians are seen as heroes by the Russian public, and Israel and the US as the villains. So far, it looks like Iran is holding its own, and the Russians are watching carefully, but if Iran begins to succumb to the attacks, I believe there is a very real possibility that the Russians will enter the conflict on Iran’s side. A good way to get a sense of the mood here is to follow the X account of political philosopher Alexander Dugin. It reflects what many Russian political elites are thinking.

Sam Dickson, Esq.: We should view this tragedy through a Machiavellian lens, considering how it affects us. The events of the last year, regarding Jeffrey Epstein and the undeclared war on Iran, vindicate what people like us have said for several generations. The “Far Right”, the “right-wing extremists”, “the haters”, “the bigots” have been proven to have been right all along.

It is sad that it takes something like the war on Iran, coupled with the revelations of the Epstein scandal, to demonstrate that – far from being unsavory extremists – in fact, we are the responsible people, the people who truly care about the well-being of White European core demographic of our county and our critics are unspeakably depraved. Not everyone will learn from events like these, but many people are learning. Two English proverbs come to mind: (1) “Experience is a hard school, but fools will learn in no other.” (2) “The burnt child dreads the stove.” More and more, people are connecting the dots. They are learning from the hard school of experience. Their hands are getting burned. They are learning to mind the stove. We are benefiting from this tragic war.

Brad Griffin, editor-in-chief of Occidental Dissent: Donald Trump’s war with Iran will prove to be the end of his presidency, movement, and coalition, as well as any chance that Vice President J.D. Vance had to become the next president of the United States. Republicans will lose both the House and Senate to Democrats in the 2026 midterms. Assuming a ceasefire is negotiated with Iran, President Trump will be impeached and will spend the remaining two years of his presidency fighting off investigations.

Nick Griffin, former Member of the European Parliament: I guess we all tend to agree on the obvious points, so instead of saying the obvious, I’d draw your attention to two less obvious considerations. The first is that Trump has now established a record of repeatedly lulling adversaries into a false sense of temporary security by engaging in ‘diplomacy’ to mask the final preparations for unprovoked and massive airstrikes. Hence, in the event of future serious tensions with Russia, China, or North Korea, these nuclear powers are perfectly entitled to view proposals for ‘peace talks’ as a declaration of impending war, and to launch their own pre-emptive strikes. It’s a very dangerous lesson to teach opponents with hypersonic missiles.

Ruuben Kaalep, former Member of the Estonian Parliament: Whatever one thinks of the Iranian regime, Israel has zero moral standing to lead what is being marketed as a “humanitarian” intervention. After the scale of mass murder in Gaza since 2023, Israel lacks any authority to claim it stands for regional stability or human rights. There are also no visible indicators of a serious regime-change strategy. Decapitation strikes without ground occupation cannot secure political transformation in a country of nearly 90 million people. Even the United States lacks the capacity, or public mandate, for such an undertaking. The sparing of figures such as President Masoud Pezeshkian suggests that Washington is rather hoping for leverage politics, not “liberation”. The more plausible objective is simply managed weakness: keeping Iran constrained yet intact. Total chaos or an unpredictable successor regime – monarchist, nationalist, or otherwise – would not, in the long term, prove more accommodating to Israeli security interests, since Iran’s hostility toward Israel is rooted less in ideology than in enduring geopolitical imperatives, and in natural reactions to Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians.

For President Donald Trump, participation in this aggression strips his peace rhetoric of any remaining credibility. His second term increasingly reflects raw, impulsive power politics: the betrayal of allied trust through open threats against Denmark was another disgraceful example. This is no longer just a rejection of liberal globalism; it is a repudiation of the far older, foundational White European statecraft tradition – the Westphalian principle of sovereign territorial integrity. If Washington normalizes the doctrine that might alone makes right, what exactly makes American imperialism better than its oppressive rivals in Russia or China? The cost of that shift will not be confined to the Middle East; it will be felt in all corners of the world.

Padraig Martin, former U.S. government contractor: The military action in Iran is a battle that is impossible for the United States to lose, and a war that is impossible for it to win. I mean that literally. The Iranians do not need to “beat” the Americans in the conventional sense. They are unlikely to knock out the US military. They may still strike a US naval vessel, but that is becoming less likely. Still, as I have said before, Iran is built to bend, not break. Even if the US manages to knock out every possible offensive weapon that the Iranians hold, Iran will not be conquered. It will still go on to lead the Shi’ite world. The next leader will be the Grand Ayatollah of 10% of the world’s Islamic population. The Iranian governing and communal structures are so deeply interwoven and resilient that simple leadership changes cannot break the society. The system has endured millennia. Any attempt to change that structure will fail – be it from Kurds, secular Iranian urbanites, or American operatives from the diaspora community. It may lead to a prolonged period of civil unrest, but in the end, the deeply ingrained Shi’ite identity of the Iranian people will overcome any attempts to change the people and country. Americans, however, are not so lucky.

Donald Trump has already lost the war. Militarily, the US will achieve the initial objectives set by Israel: kill Khamenei, knock out the primary offensive weapons capabilities, and severely disrupt the internal affairs of Iran, making it ripe for years of civil unrest. In this regard, the Americans won their battle, but the war was lost the moment the first bombing occurred. Domestically, the war is unpopular with the younger elements of the MAGA base. No one under 50 will ever trust a Republican president again. If the Democrats were not so insanely leftist and anti-White, they might crush the Republican Party for good. But here is the problem – and the reason that neither Trump nor the GOP will learn a lesson from this until it is too late: years of gerrymandering have ensured that major congressional swings are unlikely. This is why the big blue wave will not happen, much like the big red wave never happened in 2022. Congressional districts have largely become immune to the political fallout from bad decisions at the top. However, 2028 is another story. The resulting increases in gas prices from this unnecessary military action will have an inflationary impact that will remind voters of the Biden years. The Federal Reserve, originally expected to lower interest rates, will have no choice but to hold them steady or even raise them, killing Trump’s hopes of a housing boom during his presidency. Suffering borrowers with mortgages and retirees on fixed incomes will be hurt the most. If the Democrats can successfully suppress their anti-White and LGBT extremism in a candidate, they win the 2028 election. When they do, the gloves will come off in ways we, the dissident right, have never felt before. Internationally, it is far worse.

Geopolitically, the Americans have suffered a major defeat. The Arab world feels betrayed by the American hyperfocus on defending Israel from long-range missiles and drones, while they were left largely defenseless. For years, regional allies have hosted either American troops or sensitive intelligence equipment – when Israel refused to do so. Iran made them pay for it, and the Americans did nothing to stop it. One Saudi official openly complained that the Americans “abandoned” them. That sentiment is felt from Dubai to Manama to Ankara. Meanwhile, the decision to move Tactical High Altitude Aera Defense (THAAD) munitions from South Korea to Israel showed the Chinese and the rest of East Asia that they are less important than Israel, at best. Worse, they showed the world just how badly damaged decades of poor supply chain decision making has devastated the American ability to defend its allies globally, let alone itself. The equally bad decision to defend Ukraine may have depleted the munitions, but Israel’s decision to attack Iran in 2025 and again in 2026 hammered the nail in the coffin. Finally, Europe has seen the weaknesses of American force projection on full display. Our NATO allies will be affected by the oil and LNG shortfalls caused by the critically shuttered Straits of Hormuz. That is bad enough. But the inability of the Americans to source alternatives to the British-held Diego Garcia or regional alternatives that are independent of vulnerable Arab allies showed NATO that the Americans need them more than we previously knew. At the moment, the US Navy has no regional source of supply beyond Djibouti. Politically, attacking Iran was unpopular in Europe before the fuel shortfalls take effect. It will be even less popular when the US has no choice but to forcibly take Greenland to gain access to the crucial rare-earth elements of the Kvanefjeld deposits. Trump just lost the world for Israel.

Note: Mr. Martin has worked in 78 countries, spending the majority of his time in the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, Sub-Saharan Africa, and the Middle East. He holds two master’s degrees, including one in Islamic Studies.

José Niño, commentator and journalist: Trump’s strikes on Iran risk dragging the United States into yet another Middle Eastern war fought primarily for Israel’s strategic benefit. For decades, Israeli planners and the broader Jewish lobby have pursued the elimination of Iranian power through regime change, territorial fragmentation, or outright state collapse. That ambition has now shifted toward a more brutal goal: degrading Iran into a weakened rump state, since the regime change option has become politically and militarily untenable.

The immediate military stakes are significant. More than 50,000 American troops are stationed across West Asia, and an escalation could put a substantial number of them in the crosshairs of Iranian retaliation. A protracted war would carry a severe energy dimension, with oil prices spiking to levels that would hammer American consumers and ripple through energy markets across North America. And for Europe, an unmitigated energy disaster.

Should the conflict become a strategic disaster, the United States could find its military footprint in West Asia significantly curtailed. Iran may take it upon itself to rewrite the security architecture of the Middle East. If it absorbs enough punishment while inflicting enough damage in return, Washington may be compelled to draw down its regional presence, a humiliation that would further erode American credibility worldwide.

In the war’s aftermath, Iran would almost certainly deepen its alignment with Russia and China under the Shanghai Cooperation Organization framework, severing what little diplomatic contact remains with Washington and Brussels. Even the Gulf monarchies sheltering under America’s security umbrella would accelerate their hedging strategies, their faith in U.S. protection permanently damaged after watching Washington strip air defense assets from their skies and redirect them to Israel during the Iranian missile salvos.

The political fallout at home would be severe. Trump ran on keeping America out of new wars. A bloody, expensive, and inconclusive conflict in Iran would betray that promise on its most fundamental terms. Rising energy costs and a mounting casualty count would guarantee poor Republican performance in the midterms. The House would almost certainly flip. The Senate remains competitive due to geography, polarization, and a map that currently favors Republicans, but historical precedent is not encouraging: in well over 90 percent of midterm elections since the Civil War, the president’s party has suffered net seat losses in Congress.

Whatever the Senate outcome, divided government becomes the most likely result, and with it the death of any serious immigration legislation. Trump’s restrictionist agenda is already stalled by thin House margins and a bloc of moderate Republicans capable of sinking measures like immigration moratoriums and the elimination of chain migration. A war in Iran finishes that agenda entirely.

Europe stands to lose the most. Already drained by arms transfers to Ukraine and hollowed out by catastrophically misguided energy policies, European nations would absorb yet another energy shock that further impoverishes their populations and deepens their dependency on the United States for both fuel and military protection, the very definition of vassal-state status. The United States itself would emerge weaker: its military-industrial base further depleted, its debt load worsened, its young men spent on a conflict that served no genuine American interest, and its reputation as a reliable partner shattered. From this point forward, Washington would be seen globally as an agreement-incapable actor.

China, meanwhile, benefits simply by staying out. By cultivating trade relationships across the board and refusing to be drawn into destructive conflicts, Beijing gains in credibility what Washington loses in blood and treasure. Turkey is another winner by virtue of it staying out from direct interventions in the region. It will come out as the leading military power and will be in a good position to forget military partnerships with Arab countries that burned by the United States.

For Israel, the calculus is less clear than it appears. The strikes look advantageous on paper, but absent actual regime change, territorial fragmentation, or a decisive degradation of Iranian military capacity, the operation could still register as a strategic loss. Key Israeli population centers, Haifa and Tel Aviv among them, have already absorbed massive strikes. And Israel’s conduct from October 7 through the present has ignited a global wave of hostility that the Iran campaign will only intensify, with the Gaza genocide and indiscriminate bombing campaigns now fused in the international imagination into a single, ongoing atrocity.

The Iran war has not only derailed the immigration restriction agenda, it has discredited the broader nationalist-populist project by associating it with a failed administration whose actual governing priorities are neoconservative and transparently judeo-accelerationist. That association will take years to overcome. These circles need to seriously consider alternative approaches: single-issue political organizations, local civil society institutions, efforts to preserve and transmit European cultural heritage, and a deliberate disengagement from federal electoral politics, which the Republican Party has consistently used to absorb dissident energy and redirect it toward projects that serve foreign interests.

I voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020. I sat out in 2024 after an honest accounting of his actual policy record, which simply does not meet the demands of this moment. Genuine nationalist governance requires immigration restriction and non-intervention. The Iran war has confirmed what the first two terms already suggested: this project has run its course. Time to move on.

Mark Weber, director of the Institute for Historical Review: President Trump has launched a war without public support or even a pretense of backing from Congress. He has sought to justify the attack with demonstrably false claims: that Iran is close to developing nuclear weapons, that it poses an “imminent” military threat, and more. This war is also illegal and unconstitutional. In launching it, Trump betrayed the “America First” principles he has repeatedly proclaimed, thereby breaking faith with the American people and especially his own supporters.

As he has throughout his career, Trump is once again putting Jewish-Zionist interests ahead of what’s best for Americans and the world. The US is waging this war together with Israel, which for years has pressed for just such an assault against a country that resolutely rejects Zionist oppression and expansionism. The allied Israeli government is headed by a man whose record of brutal oppression of Palestinians is well known, and who is wanted by the International Criminal Court as a war criminal. Trump’s attack against Iran will be remembered as a war for Israel.

Given the dismal record of America’s “regime change” efforts in the past, and Trump’s lack of any coherent and realistic plan for a successful conclusion to this new war, it’s all the more likely to be another destructive and costly fiasco.

Note: Mr. Weber is exceptionally well-informed about Iranian relations with other countries, including the United States, as well as twentieth-century Iranian history. During his three visits to Iran, Weber met and spoke with a wide range of people, including ordinary citizens, writers, scholars, activists, and government officials. He has addressed meetings in Tehran, including a lecture to hundreds of young Iranian university students, and spoke at a conference of government leaders, where the country’s president also spoke.

David Zsutty, former U.S. Air Force staff sergeant: The Iran War shows that MAGA is shockingly superficial. People in the administration say things without seemingly considering the implications. For example, Stephen Miller said, “We live in a world, in the real world, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world that have existed since the beginning of time.” Does he not realize that this cuts both ways? And that neither the US nor Israel are outside of cyclical history, no matter how much they would like to be?

And Pete Hegseth talked about how personnel is policy and the “1990 test,” under which any change after 1990 should be scrutinized. It’s going to take more than a year of superficially “putting the woke away” to undo thirty-five years of steady decline in the US military. And that’s on top of deprecated doctrine and weapons. For all their talk of war and power, you would think they would study it harder. We certainly do.

And that’s a major silver lining. Like the Democrats, the Zionist Republicans are suffering from a severe crisis of competence alongside their crisis of legitimacy. Thus, I am optimistic that a non-Zionist Right can replace them, whether that’s through the circulation of elites, a third party, a mobilized voting bloc, or otherwise. It will probably be a combination of strategies.

This article was originally published by American Free Press – America’s last real newspaper! Click here to subscribe today or call 1-888-699-NEWS.

When not interviewing newsmakers, James Edwards has often found himself in the spotlight as a commentator, including many national television appearances. For more than 20 years, his radio work has been featured in hundreds of newspapers and magazines worldwide. Media Matters has listed Edwards as a “right-wing media fixture” and Hillary Clinton personally named him as an “extremist” who would shape our country.