Can Israel & the U.S. Sustain Iran’s Military Power? (w/ Alastair Crooke) | The Chris Hedges Report (March 7, 2026)

• Iran’s superior preparation and missile strategy enable prolonged attrition warfare: Iran maintains vast decentralized stocks of missiles (including advanced hypersonics held in reserve), buried silos with autonomous “dead hand” firing capabilities across multiple districts, and uses older systems to exhaust Israeli/U.S. interceptors before escalating, making a long war sustainable for Iran while depleting attackers’ defenses.
• The conflict has already inflicted significant strategic losses on Israel and the U.S.: Israeli interceptor missiles are being rapidly depleted, billion-dollar U.S. radar systems destroyed, and intelligence capabilities crippled; this reflects impulsive escalation driven by hubris, with shifting pretexts from nuclear threats to missile destruction and regime change.
• Iran leverages regional Shia mobilization and symbolic acts for broader escalation: The killing of key figures (including the Supreme Leader) has sparked Shia solidarity, uprisings (e.g., in Bahrain), attacks on U.S. assets, and fatwas for jihad, turning the war into a wider sectarian/regional struggle that spreads beyond Iran’s borders and complicates U.S./Israeli objectives.
• Control of the Strait of Hormuz gives Iran decisive economic leverage: Iran can threaten or close the strait (via mines, missiles, and coastal artillery), endangering global oil/LNG flows (~20-30% of world supply), pressuring energy markets, weakening the dollar, exposing Europe’s vulnerability, and shifting Gulf power dynamics toward Iran while making sustained U.S. naval operations risky or unsustainable.
• U.S. and Israel face unsustainable overreach with no clear path to victory: The war—pushed by Netanyahu’s influence on Trump—lacks contingency plans for energy crises, long-term attrition, heavy civilian casualties (e.g., bombed schools), internal Israeli fractures, or political backlash at home; Iran “wins by surviving,” potentially forcing de-escalation on its terms (sanctions relief, troop withdrawal) amid regional blowback and economic fallout.