The execution of the February 28th attack was flawless. What has failed since is not the sword, but the steady hand that wields it.

By Gustavo de Arístegui, as published by La Razón, 9 August, 2026

Iran’s war is not over. It is suspended, which is a very different thing. The suspension is actually being managed by Tehran’s criminal triumvirate: General Ahmed Vahidi, head of the Revolutionary Guard; General Mohammad Zolghadr, secretary-general of the National Security Council; and General Mohsen Razaei, military advisor to the late leader of the revolution, Mukhta Khamenei.

It’s worth remembering how it all began. On February 28, the United States and Israel launched nearly 900 attacks in just twelve hours against the missiles, air defenses, military infrastructure, and leadership of the Iranian regime, aiming 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 undeniable technological and intelligence superiority. However, none of the geostrategic objectives were achieved.

Few air campaigns have achieved so much in so little time. It was the second act of the drama that began with the twelve-day war of June 2025; this time, a forty-day war. Tehran responded by attacking US bases in the region, Israel, and several neighboring countries, closing the Strait of Hormuz, and Hezbollah terrorists opened fire from Lebanon. The entire region was engulfed in the conflagration of war. What has failed since is not the sword, but the steady hand that wields it.

Time and again, just as the mounting pressure began to have strategic effects, operations have been halted with the same excuse: “Talks are underway.” Review the sequence. 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 US resumed bombing. In June, a memorandum of understanding was signed, opening a 60-day negotiation period. And last week, the umpteenth repetition of the cycle : the largest planned military operation since World War II—as the president himself described it—was announced and then canceled within 48 hours, at the request of Oman, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar. Others demanded that the work begun should be completed: the Emirates, Kuwait, and Bahrain.

Threats of unprecedented force, followed by cancellations within hours: that is the image projected today by the world’s leading power. The outcome of so much diplomacy is dismal. Not a single verifiable commitment, not an irreversible concession, not a single gesture to justify 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 for “the one thing that mattered: nuclear power.”

Tehran, meanwhile, has been raising the price: guarantees against future aggression, recognition of its “legitimate rights over the Strait of Hormuz,” war reparations, and a warning that its ballistic missile program is non-negotiable. And in recent days, we have witnessed the final scene: the president announces an “imminent” agreement and negotiations starting on Monday; Tehran denies that any negotiations are taking place and even mocks the White House; Trump responds by calling the Iranian leaders “unbelievably deceitful” and grants them one “last chance,” only to announce once again that an agreement is imminent. It’s the Trumpian Scottish shower.

Most likely because they were never talks. They were stratagems by the regime’s hardliners to buy with truces what they couldn’t win on the battlefield. First: to rearm. To rebuild the devastated air defenses and missile arsenals , also through Chinese channels, as Reuters has documented. Second: to restructure. To reorganize a decimated command structure, shore up a contested succession, and tighten the repressive apparatus that in January drowned the protests in blood: 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.

Each ceasefire has been a tactical truce for Tehran; each negotiation table, another theater of operations and a step towards consolidating the blackmail-toll that will fill the coffers of the Revolutionary Guard and plant the seed of a new conflict 10 times more virulent.

None of this should surprise us. Kissinger taught us that revolutionary powers (and I would add, criminal states) don’t negotiate to reach agreements, but to buy time and legitimacy while pursuing their objectives intact: for them, the negotiating table is not an alternative to war, but its continuation by other means . And the history of the Islamic Republic itself confirms this: Khomeini only drank the “poison chalice”—as he himself called it—of the ceasefire with Iraq in 1988 when the country was exhausted and in ruins. The regime doesn’t 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 the apparent US 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 on the US election calendar . We are approaching dangerously close to the start of the real, tough, and intense campaign for the November 3rd midterm elections. A third of the Senate and the entire House of Representatives are up for election. Several Republican senators are facing serious difficulties in retaining their seats.

Susan Collins is fighting the toughest battle of her long career in Maine. The North Carolina seat was tilting to the Democrats this week, according to leading analysts. In Ohio, Senator-designate Jon Husted faces a challenge from veteran Sherrod Brown. Iowa has been left without a leader with the retirement of Joni Ernst, and even Texas is no longer safe haven. Republican majorities are now very slim: 53-47 in the Senate and a handful of seats in the House. Democrats need only four seats to win the Senate and a slight advantage to take the House.

In the House, strategists from both parties are assuming a close race. And American electoral history adds a devastating fact: the president’s party almost always loses midterm elections . The risk of losing one or both houses of Congress is very serious. We know that President Trump is ineligible for reelection: the Twenty-Second Amendment prohibits it.

Consequently, the future of his vice president—and possibly that of his secretary of state as a potential successor—is not among his main concerns. His focus is elsewhere: to reach January 2029 with his agenda fulfilled and his legacy intact. His calculation is personal, not dynastic. And therein lies the real risk.

If just one of the two chambers falls into Democratic hands, the probability of impeachment proceedings—the third against Trump—becomes very high. It’s important to clarify the terms. The House of Representatives can approve impeachment by a simple majority; conviction and removal require a two-thirds majority in the Senate. Even with the open hostility of some Republican representatives and a few senators, that threshold wouldn’t be reached, making acquittal the most likely outcome.

But that would be small consolation. The last two years of the term would be completely hijacked by debate, controversy, and the exhausting exercise of refuting—or substantiating—the evidence presented. Subpoenas, investigative committees, leaks, witnesses, televised hearings. That’s corrosive for any administration: it was for Clinton in 1998 and for Trump himself in his first term.

No president subjected to such a predicament has ever retained their 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 this were to happen, the Trump administration would, in effect, be finished in its final two years; its agenda, forever compromised and almost certainly left unfinished.

And here the two halves of this analysis converge. Tehran reads the US election calendar with more attention and 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 besieged in the Capitol is unlikely to order high-risk military campaigns. And it knows, finally, that the window for continuing the brilliant planning of February 28 is closing fast. Meanwhile, the allies are showing signs of fatigue: the Gulf monarchies are mediating to deflect each blow, Oman is haggling over the future of the strait, and Israel remains bogged down on the Lebanese front. These pauses 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 those who wield it demonstrate 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 finish them. Those who abandon a war halfway through end up having to redouble their efforts and accept its disastrous consequences, including those on domestic politics, which are the only ones that truly matter to the mediocre political class of the 21st century.