The short answer: Yahya Sinwar. The long answer? That's more complicated ... but also more predictable.
Since Sinwar kicked off the Great Regional War on Israel with Hamas' orgy of atrocities on October 7, Iran has seen its entire power structure and regional strategy collapse. Israel may not have prepared itself for the initial attacks -- accountability for which will come at some point -- but the Israelis had hardened themselves through decades of existential fights to remain alive. When Hamas started a war that clarified the stakes, it set off a chain reaction that is now rolling into Tehran both day and night.
The New York Times wonders what happened to the country that looked every bit like a regional hegemon, especially during periods when American administrations nearly conceded that status:
Iran is often portrayed as one of the world’s most dangerous villains, a rogue state whose growing nuclear program and shadowy military capabilities threaten Israel, the United States and beyond.
But the country has suffered blow after blow since war erupted between Israel and Hamas in October 2023, soon drawing in Hezbollah and then Iran itself.
An airstrike on an Iranian Embassy building in Syria last year that killed several senior Iranian commanders. The assassination three months later of one of Iran’s top partners while he was visiting Tehran, the Iranian capital. The Israeli bombings of Iranian air defenses in April and October 2024. The systematic decimation or defeat of Iran’s strongest allies around the Middle East, including the Palestinian militant group Hamas in Gaza, the Lebanese militia Hezbollah and former President Bashar al-Assad in Syria.
Then, on Friday, came the start of an Israeli campaign that has gone after targets across Iran, crippling its air defenses and killing several of its top military commanders and a number of prominent nuclear scientists. The new round of conflict has killed hundreds of people in Iran and at least 24 in Israel.
Earlier attacks and assassinations in Iran humiliated Tehran, causing recriminations among military officials and pushing it to launch retaliatory barrages against Israel. But the renewed fighting has shown, as never before, just how compromised and weak Iranian forces really are.
Never before? Perhaps memories are too short these days, but as I argued over the weekend, we do have a record of Iranian incompetence in war. The Iran-Iraq War lasted eight years and demonstrated the ineptitude of both sides, first Saddam Hussein's and then Ruhollah Khomeini's. The two sides contended for regional dominance and ended up undermining their own claims to it. It ended in a draw, but the Iranians spent the final year falling back and losing any earlier gains they had made.
And even after that, the Western cognoscenti kept insisting that both countries had world-class militaries. Hussein would get rapidly humiliated two years later by an American-led coalition that ejected him from Kuwait, and then twelve years later by another American-led coalition that dismantled his regime within a few months.
The Iranians, however, haven't gone into the field since. Instead, they concentrated on a strategy that projected power through terror proxies embedded in other countries and hiding behind civilians while picking fights. The regime consolidated its power behind Khomeini's successor Ali Khamenei, promoting its military and operational leadership by focusing on theological rigidity and loyalty rather than competence, much as Saddam did and as most tyrannical regimes do. They have spent nearly 40 years gestating a brain-dead elite as a result.
What's more, we should have realized this at least as recently as Operation Grim Beeper. Israel had spent four decades staving off Hezbollah rather than fighting them decisively, mainly under pressure from the West not to antagonize the mullahs in Iran. In the instances where wars did break out, Israel came under pressure to agree to can-kicking cease-fires, which raised the reputation of Hezbollah enormously.
When Israel finally treated it as a war, what happened? They had infiltrated their comms so badly that the Israelis literally blew up almost all of their leadership in a few minutes. A few days later, they took out Hassan Nasrallah, whom the Iranians trusted to manage much of their proxy operations, and then killed off their financial institutions as well. It took just a few weeks from Hezbollah to go from vaunted to haunted, and the implosion was so bad that it forced Iran's most strategic piece -- the Bashar al-Assad regime -- to collapse.
Hezbollah was entirely a creation of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). If Hezbollah was that incompetent a paramilitary organization, why would we be surprised that the IRGC and its regime were just as hopeless when challenged?
The Wall Street Journal seems equally mystified, although they are crediting Israel more than discrediting Iran:
Within 48 hours of starting its war on Iran, Israel said it gained air superiority over the western part of the country, including Tehran. Israeli warplanes began dropping bombs from within Iranian skies instead of relying on expensive long-range missiles.
That is a feat that the giant Russian air force has been unable to achieve in Ukraine in 3½ years of war. This setback is one of the reasons why Moscow’s troops have been bogged down in grinding trench warfare, sustaining staggering losses, ever since they failed to rapidly seize Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, in February 2022. ...
The two wars are very different in many respects—for one, there is no conventional land component to the Israeli campaign in Iran. But the experience of these two conflicts, closely observed by militaries around the world, reinforces what war planners have known for decades: Control over air is everything, if you can get it.
Israel truly has an exceptionally effective military and intelligence apparatus. They have those mainly due to (a) having a system of government that applies accountability and transparency, and (b) the constant existential threats against which they defend. Russia has neither, despite Vladimir Putin's claims, which is why their military performance has been just as bad ever since the end of the Cold War and arguably in Afghanistan in the decade prior to it. Ukraine is fighting for its life, but Putin's stuck because his military still stinks at combined arms, has rotten leadership chosen for personal loyalty rather than military competence, and substandard materiel, training, and morale.
Let's get back to Iran, where this matters in terms of what should happen next. Iran has seen its strategic position implode thanks to a series of blunders, especially in their choice of leadership in their proxies. Their ballistic missile program is getting choked off, and their military leaders couldn't defend Iran's airspace even for a full day. It's the sheer incompetence of this regime that absolutely requires nuclear weapons to defend themselves from the consequences of their own stupidity. The regime understands that much, especially now that the Israelis have utterly humiliated them in record time.
And that is why we should never allow them to even come close to possessing one. This regime should not even be trusted with the reactor at Bushehr. If they get those weapons, they will use them at some point -- because they will continue to provoke others in the region until retaliation becomes inevitable. This regime is that incompetent, and that irrational.
Donald Trump should let Israel finish the job this time. We have a golden opportunity to end the threat from the Iranian regime that has poisoned the region and oppressed its own people for nearly half a century. Don't let the mullahs stall their collapse any longer.
Update: Looks like Trump is not in the mood to reopen negotiations:
JUST IN: From President Trump’s Truth Social — everyone should immediately evacuate Tehran pic.twitter.com/wfvHhOQ1ZJ
— Salem News Channel (@WatchSalemNews) June 16, 2025
Trump also made it clear at the G7 that he wouldn't budge on Iran:
BREAKING: Trump refused to sign the G7 joint statement on the Israel-Iran war, rejecting language calling for only “supervision” of Iran’s nuclear sites.
— Eyal Yakoby (@EYakoby) June 16, 2025
Trump reportedly insisted: Iran must never be allowed to enrich uranium. pic.twitter.com/LDvBLxypVM
President Trump has decided not to sign onto a statement calling for de-escalation between Iran and Israel that is being prepared by the Group of 7 industrialized nations, according to a White House official, the first evidence of an ongoing rift between Mr. Trump and his fellow leaders gathered for a summit in Alberta, Canada.
The official, who asked for anonymity to discuss the joint statement, which has not been released publicly, did not say why the president was opposed to signing. A copy of the draft statement, which was obtained by The New York Times, urges both Israel and Iran to halt attacks on one another that have killed dozens of people in both countries over the past several days.
A G7 official said the draft statement was not final and that discussions about the situation in the Middle East among the leaders, including Mr. Trump, were expected to continue throughout the day on Monday and again on Tuesday. The official requested anonymity to discussed a sensitive diplomatic matter.
The rest of the world would let Iran go nuclear ... which is why we shouldn't bother to listen to them.
