For University of Chicago political scientist Robert Pape, Iran is winning the war. Never mind the decapitation of its military and political leadership or the destruction of the country’s navy, air force, and nuclear program, and of much of its defense industrial base. Like the Black Knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, all of these military victories are mere flesh wounds for the Islamic Republic. The real story is that when the fighting stops, Iran will emerge as the fourth major world power alongside America, China, and Russia.
This was Pape’s argument in an April 6 op-ed for The New York Times. He writes that Iran does not rival the other great powers economically or militarily. Rather, “its newfound power derives from its control over the most important energy choke point in the global economy, the Strait of Hormuz.”
