Since the beginning of its failed war against Iran, the Trump administration has boasted about the massive destruction inflicted by US-Israeli strikes, proclaiming the decimation of Iran’s military over and over again.

“We’ve knocked out their Navy, their Air Force,” Trump said on March 20, “we’ve knocked out their anti-aircraft. We’ve knocked out everything. We’re roaming free … from a military standpoint, they’re finished.”

Six days later, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth offered his verdict on the war: “Never in recorded history has a nation’s military been so quickly and effectively neutralized.”

Behind this roaring bravado lies a great deal of insecurity.

Iran war reveals American decay

For years, Marxists have been charting the decline of American imperialism. Now, it is plain for everyone to see.

Last month, pro-imperialist media outlets began, in a limited way, to expose Trump and Hegseth’s lies. The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and CNN published extensive analyses revealing the extent of American imperialism’s failure. To summarize:

• Satellite images show that at least 228 US military structures—including billion-dollar radar systems, missile launchers, command headquarters, oil tanks, and barracks—have been damaged or destroyed. No fewer than 18 military bases in the Middle East sustained direct hits from Iranian missiles and drones.
• At least 39 American aircraft have been destroyed and 10 damaged. This includes strategic assets, such as an E-3 command and control plane destroyed on the ground, as well as billions of dollars worth of strike aircraft and Reaper drones shot down by Iran.
• American spy agencies say Iran retains 75% of its missile launchers and 70% of its pre-war missile stockpile. Meanwhile, the Islamic Republic has regained access to 30 of its 33 missile launch sites along the Persian Gulf.
• The CIA estimates Iran can withstand Trump’s so-called “blockade” for at least three months before they suffer severe economic impacts—at which point, the US will also find itself in deep economic turmoil.
• As of mid-April, the US had used up about half of its total stockpile of missile interceptors, as well as about a third of its critical Tomahawk cruise missiles.

After US imperialism’s abject failures in Iraq and Afghanistan, commanders have become highly sensitive to the political necessity of limiting American casualties as much as possible. The Washington Post speculates that commanders withdrew most of their personnel from US bases prior to the war, knowing it would be impossible to defend them from Iranian counterattacks.

Humiliation

The headline of a recent New York Times editorial summed up the situation in stark terms: “The US Military Was Losing Its Edge. After Iran, Everyone Knows It.” The Times editorial board underscores the tremendous humiliation American imperialism is suffering at the hands of the Islamic Republic:

On paper, the war in Iran should not be much of a contest. The United States spends around $1 trillion a year on its military, more than 100 times as much as Iran. That money buys a vastly larger Air Force and Navy, as well as advanced weapons technologies that Iranian generals can only dream about …

However, the contest looks less one-sided. Iran has taken control of the Strait of Hormuz, and its missiles and drones still threaten America’s allies in the region. While President Trump seems eager for a negotiated truce, Iran’s leaders do not. Somehow, the weaker nation is in the stronger negotiating position.

The American military, which spends more than its next ten competitors combined, finds itself losing a war against a second-rate power. Far from having been destroyed, Iran has been strengthened and emboldened, confidently asserting its demands in negotiations. Terrified of the political and economic consequences of pressing the attack, Trump is flailing as inflation spikes and his approval ratings crumble.

An empire in terminal decline

American imperialism is rapidly losing ground in East Asia, Europe, and, increasingly, the Middle East. The Pentagon has raided its stockpiles of missiles and air-defense systems in East Asia and the Pacific to supply its failing effort against Iran. As NATO wallows in mutual distrust and recriminations, Russia is launching a summer offensive against Ukraine. Meanwhile, Trump announced his intention to pull 5,000 troops out of Germany amid a row with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz.

On the very day Trump landed in Beijing to meet with Xi Jinping, the details of a confidential report by the US Joint Staff’s Intelligence Directorate found their way into the bourgeois press. The report says that Chinese imperialism has advanced against its American competitor on all fronts—diplomatic, economic, military, and technological—during the Iran war. It is emerging as the war’s biggest victor without firing a single shot.

It’s no wonder Trump appeared visibly deflated throughout his two-day summit with Xi. Behind closed doors, the president was no doubt begging his Chinese counterpart to put more pressure on Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

The New York Times summarized the visit this way: “Trump departed Beijing … with almost nothing concrete to show … the summit ended with no major public progress on the Middle East, trade, Taiwan, nuclear proliferation, artificial intelligence, or any of the other myriad issues that are sources of friction between the world’s two superpowers.”

The US military remains adept at generating death and carnage, but its ability to impose the will of American capitalism on the world is clearly blunted. Of the six major wars it has fought since 1945—in Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf, Afghanistan, Iraq, and now Iran—US imperialism has failed, or is failing, to win five of them.

Trump’s Iran debacle is just another chapter in this decline. What distinguishes the current period is the deep crisis American capitalism faces today: unsustainable debt, collapsing confidence in its leadership and institutions, a shriveling profile on the world stage, and the relative dynamism of its competitors.