Victor Davis Hanson: Iran Is Breaking Down, and the Ripple Effects Are Just Beginning

The Daily Signal

News, Daily News, Politics, Government

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🗓️ 30 April 2026

⏱️ 11 minutes

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Summary

Despite claims the war is failing, Iran is facing massive economic losses, dwindling oil capacity, and a military that’s effectively been neutralized. “It’s not a military problem… the military problem has been solved.” What remains is a political decision about how far to go. But the bigger story is the ripple effect. From a potential breakdown of OPEC and falling oil prices, to China being deterred and Russia stretched thin, the global balance is already shifting. Even Europe’s response is called into question as the U.S. continues to demonstrate overwhelming strategic leverage. In his words, “Iran is broke,” and the consequences are already spreading far beyond the region, argues Victor Davis Hanson. 👉 The Daily Signal cannot continue to tell stories, like this one, without the support of our viewers: http://dailysignal.com/donate 👉Don’t miss out on Victor’s latest short videos by subscribing to The Daily Signal today. You’ll be notified every time a new piece of content drops: ⁠https://www.youtube.com/dailysignal?sub_confirmation=1⁠ Also on Spotify: https://megaphone.link/THEDAILYSIGNAL9753340027 👉Want more VDH? Watch Victor’s weekly, hour-long podcast, “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words,” now! Subscribe to his YouTube channel, and enable notifications: https://www.youtube.com/@victordavishanson7273?sub_confirmation=1👉More exclusive content is available on Victor’s website: https://victorhanson.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, this is Victor Davis Hansen for The Daily Signal.
0:13.5	We're approaching 60 days of the so-called Iran war, and we're still getting these loud voices that Donald Trump has failed,
0:24.6	that the war is not going well. It's completely non-imperical. It's antithetical to the evidence.
0:33.6	Here we are at 60 days, and Iran is losing about 500 million input per day.
0:40.3	It's running out of storage spaces in a week or two for its daily output of oil, at which point,
0:48.3	they either have to stop pumping or they're going to have, and if they don't stop pumping, the wells will collapse. They either have to stop pumping or they're going to have, and if they don't stop pumping, the wells will collapse.
0:57.9	They either have to stop pumping or they have to build as fast as they can, storage facilities, which will be known to us and we can take out.
1:06.7	So they're at the brink economically. They have no military ability.
1:13.0	The course of the war,
1:18.0	how it ends is entirely in the hands of the United States. It depends on whether you want an unconditional surrender and you want to pay an extra price, maybe another month or two with
1:24.4	economic strangulation, or you want to use air power to take out bridges and
1:28.6	you can do that. But what I'm getting at is it's not a military problem like Afghanistan and
1:35.9	Helmand province or the Marines having to go into Fallujah in Iraq. It's entirely a political
1:43.4	problem. It's not a military. The military problem has been
1:46.8	solved. It's just a question of how much political price does Donald Trump, or risk, I should say,
1:52.9	want to take to get an unconditional surrender and the removal of the regime. He doesn't need to do
1:58.2	that. That was not one of his pre-war agendas. The pre-war
2:02.7	agenda was to neutralize the nuclear proliferation of Iran, the missile and drone force,
2:12.6	to atriot its military so it was not capable of conducting war to stop the subsidies to its terrorist
2:19.2	proxies and to make sure it no longer attacked Americans and our allies as it has for 47 years.
2:26.7	Those have mostly been met, not quite, but mostly.
2:31.4	So what are the ripples strategically? Well, just recently, OPEC has announced, I should say the United Arab Emirates and perhaps Oman as well,
	...

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