The execution of the February 28 attack was flawless. What has faltered since then is not the sword, but the steady hand that wields it
By Gustavo de Arístegui, as published by Atalayar, 16 August, 2026
The war against Iran is not over. It has been suspended—which is quite a different matter. This suspension is actually being managed by Tehran’s criminal triumvirate: General Ahmed Vahidi, commander of the Revolutionary Guard; General Mohamed Zolghadr, secretary-general of the National Security Council; and General Mohsen Razaei, military advisor to the late revolutionary leader Mojtaba Khamenei.
It is worth recalling how it all began. On February 28, the United States and Israel launched nearly 900 strikes in just twelve hours against Iran’s missiles, air defenses, military infrastructure, and the regime’s leadership, to force regime change, sever the regime’s ties with its terrorist proxies, and dismantle its nuclear and ballistic missile programs. Ali Khamenei was killed in that first wave.
The military planning was successful—even brilliant: well-defined objectives, flawless execution, and unquestionable technological and intelligence superiority. However, none of the geostrategic objectives were achieved.
Few air campaigns have achieved so much in such a short time. It was the second act of the drama that began with the Twelve-Day War of June 2025; this time, the Forty-Day War. Tehran responded by attacking U.S. bases in the region, Israel, and several neighboring countries; it closed the Strait of Hormuz; and Hezbollah terrorists opened fire from Lebanon. The entire region was engulfed in the flames of war. What has failed since then is not the sword, but the steady hand that wields it.
Time and again, just as the mounting pressure was beginning to yield strategic results, operations were halted with the same excuse: “Talks are underway.” Let’s review the sequence of events. On April 8, hours before President Trump’s ultimatum expired, Pakistan brokered a two-week ceasefire. On April 21, the truce was extended indefinitely. On May 1, the White House declared hostilities over, with the Strait of Hormuz still closed and a naval blockade in place that has already diverted 35 merchant ships. On May 7, the U.S. resumed bombing. In June, a memorandum of understanding was signed, opening a 60-day negotiation period. And two weeks ago, yet another repetition of the cycle: the largest military operation planned since World War II—as the president himself described it—was announced and canceled within 48 hours, at the request of Oman, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar. Others, including the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, and Bahrain, insisted that the work already begun must be completed.
Threats of unprecedented severity, followed by cancellations within a few hours: that is the image the world’s leading power projects today. The outcome of all this diplomacy is disheartening. Not a single verifiable commitment, not a single irreversible concession, not a single gesture that justifies the price paid for each pause. When Vice President Vance sat down in Islamabad with the Iranian negotiators, Trump acknowledged that almost everything had been agreed upon except “the one point that mattered: the nuclear issue.”
Tehran, meanwhile, has been driving up the price: guarantees against future aggression, recognition of its “legitimate rights over the Strait of Hormuz,” war reparations, and the warning that its ballistic missile program is non-negotiable. And in recent days we have witnessed the final act: the president announces an “imminent” agreement and negotiations for Monday; Tehran denies that any negotiations are taking place and takes the liberty of mocking the White House; Trump responds by calling Iranian leaders “incredibly deceitful” and grants them a “last chance,” only to announce once again that an agreement is imminent. It’s the “Trumpian” Scottish shower.
Most likely because they were never actual talks. They were stratagems by the regime’s hardliners to use truces to buy what they could not win on the battlefield. First: to rearm. To rebuild the devastated air defenses and missile arsenals—also through China, as Reuters has documented. Second: to restructure. To reorganize decimated command structures, shore up a contested succession, and tighten the repressive apparatus that drowned the protests in blood last January: 7,000 dead, according to human rights organizations. Third: to divide, dilute, and disrupt the peace and unity of the West and its allies in the Middle East.
For Tehran, every ceasefire has been a tactical truce; every negotiating table, yet another theater of operations and a step toward consolidating the extortion-toll that will fill the coffers of the Revolutionary Guard and sow the seeds of a new conflict ten times more virulent.
None of this should surprise us. Kissinger taught us that revolutionary powers (and I would add criminal states) do not negotiate to reach agreements, but to buy time and gain legitimacy while continuing to pursue their objectives unabated: for them,the negotiating table is not an alternative to war, but its continuation by other means. And the very history of the Islamic Republic confirms this: Khomeini only drank from the “cup of poison”—as he himself called it—of the 1988 ceasefire with Iraq when the country was exhausted and in ruins. The regime does not stop when offered an honorable way out; it stops when it has no other alternative.
Each unilateral suspension has led Tehran to believe the opposite of what was intended: that apparent U.S. resolve was merely a facade, that everything was negotiable, and that time is on its side. And why? Because the clock that truly matters is the U.S. election calendar. We are moving dangerously close to the start of the real, tough, and intense campaign for the November 3 midterm elections. One-third of the Senate and the entire House of Representatives are up for election. Several Republican senators are facing serious challenges in retaining their seats.
In Maine, Susan Collins is fighting the toughest battle of her long career. According to leading analysts, North Carolina’s Senate seat was tilting toward the Democrats as recently as this week. In Ohio, Senator-designate Jon Husted faces a challenge from veteran Senator Sherrod Brown. Iowa has been left without a candidate following Joni Ernst’s withdrawal, and even Texas is no longer a safe bet. Republican majorities are now very slim: 53-47 in the Senate and just a handful of seats in the House. The Democrats need just four seats to take control of the Senate and a slight tailwind to take the House.
In the House, strategists from both parties expect a seat-by-seat battle. And American electoral history adds a devastating statistic: the president’s party almost always loses the midterm elections. The risk of losing one of the two chambers—or both—is very serious. We know that President Trump is ineligible for reelection: the Twenty-Second Amendment prevents it.
Consequently, the future of his vice president—and possibly that of his secretary of state as a potential running mate in the next election—is not among his primary concerns. His focus lies elsewhere: reaching January 2029 with his agenda fulfilled and his legacy intact. His calculation is personal, not dynastic. And that is where the real risk lies.
It would only take one of the two chambers to fall into Democratic hands for the likelihood of an impeachment proceeding—the third against Trump—to become very high. It is worth clarifying the terms. The House of Representatives can approve impeachment by a simple majority; conviction and removal from office require a two-thirds majority in the Senate. Even if one were to factor in the overt hostility of some Republican representatives and the occasional senator, that threshold would not be reached, so acquittal would be the most likely outcome.
But that would be little consolation. The final two years of the term would be completely hijacked by debate, controversy, and the exhausting process of refuting—or corroborating—the evidence presented. Subpoenas, investigative committees, leaks, witnesses, televised hearings. That is corrosive to any administration: it was for Clinton in 1998 and for Trump himself during his first term.
No president subjected to such an ordeal has retained his capacity for initiative intact. Congress has already rejected nine initiatives to force an end to hostilities with Iran under the War Powers Resolution; this is merely a taste of what is to come. If that were to happen, the Trump administration would, in effect, be sidelined for its final two years; its agenda, compromised forever and surely left unfinished.
And this is where the two halves of this analysis converge. Tehran is reading the U.S. electoral calendar more closely and in greater detail than most in Washington. It knows that every week gained brings closer the day when the superpower’s foreign policy will be held hostage by its domestic politics. It knows that a president under siege on Capitol Hill is unlikely to order high-risk military campaigns. And it knows, in short, that the window for continuing the brilliant planning of February 28 is closing before our very eyes. Meanwhile, the allies are showing signs of fatigue: the Gulf monarchies are mediating to stem every blow, Oman is haggling over the future of the strait, and Israel remains bogged down on the Lebanese front. These lulls have not been neutral: they have had a beneficiary, and it has not been the West.
Reagan summed it up in three words: peace through strength. That maxim won the Cold War without firing a single missile at Moscow. But force only deters if it is credible, and it is only credible when the one who wields it demonstrates the will to see it through to the end. Wars are not won by those who start them best, but by those who know how to end them. Those who leave a war half-finished end up having to redouble their efforts and accept its dire consequences—including those related to domestic politics, which are the only ones that truly matter to the mediocre political class of the 21st century.
Gustavo de Arístegui y San Román. Diplomat / Former Spanish Ambassador / Writer / Geopolitical Analyst