Victor Davis Hanson: Iran Isn’t Winning—They’re Just Surviving (And Trump Knows It)

The Daily Signal

News, Daily News, Politics, Government

4.8 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 23 April 2026

⏱️ 10 minutes

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Summary

We’re 60 days into the conflict, and President Donald Trump has left the Iranian regime with three options: The non-hard-liners could agree to the United States’ terms and surrender. The regime could continue to try and win token victories—send out small PT boats and drones to attack freighters in the Strait of Hormuz. Delay negotiations in the hopes that a more friendly Democratic administration comes to power in 2028, offering the theocrats more favorable terms, predicts Victor Davis Hanson on today’s edition of “Victor Davis Hanson: In a Few Words.” 👉 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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0:30.9	Hello, this is Victor Davis-Hansson for the Daily Signal.
0:35.9	We're about at 60 days in the Iran War, and we're getting a lot of mixed signals from the media,
0:43.0	from the administration, from the Iranians, of course, who have no real government.
0:49.5	There's nothing more than a series of competing factions of which we're not sure who has the power in Tehran.
0:58.9	But we should review very quickly what the options are.
1:02.5	So what is Iran's options?
1:04.7	Because people have made a fundamental logical error that survival, survival, is the same as victory or advantage it's not Iran's
1:17.4	survival hinges on the United States what it what it prefers to do whether militarily
1:22.5	politically morally ethically but just because a nation survives doesn't mean that it's winning.
1:30.3	Nazi Germany was flattened, but it survived.
1:34.3	Japan was flattened, but it survived.
1:37.3	So just because Iran now is talking loudly and boastfully does not mean it has not been soundly defeated.
1:46.8	The next question is, will it survive, the regime at least?
1:50.3	And they have three options.
1:51.6	The first is they could, the non-hardliners or the soft power people could come in.
1:58.5	The parliamentary elected officials, such as they are in Iran,
2:02.6	consist capitulate. They wouldn't capitulate and say we give up. They would say, we meet your
2:07.4	demands, and they would be international inspections, the surrender of enriched uranium, and
	...

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