Trump has been bluffing all along about destroying Iran — Iran has now won.

22 April 2026, by Eric Zuesse. (All of my recent articles can be seen here.)

Unless Trump will now nuke Iran and set off a conflagration that will destroy both sides, Iran has now won America’s war against Iran; America and Israel have lost their conventional war against Iran. Explanation for this is documented at what is surely among the very best (maybe the best of all) sites about the major wars, Simplicius76:

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https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/left-with-nothing-but-gimmicks-trump

https://archive.ph/c1XtV

“Left With Nothing But Gimmicks, Trump Gets Bluff Called Again By Confident Iran”

22 April 2026

As the Iranian talks collapsed, Trump again issued a series of major threats about wiping out all Iranian power plants and the like:

We’re offering a very fair and reasonable DEAL, and I hope they take it because, if they don’t, the United States is going to knock out every single Power Plant, and every single Bridge, in Iran. NO MORE MR. NICE GUY! They’ll come down fast, they’ll come down easy and, if they don’t take the DEAL, it will be my Honor to do what has to be done, which should have been done to Iran, by other Presidents, for the last 47 years.

IT’S TIME FOR THE IRAN KILLING MACHINE TO END!

President DONALD J. TRUMP

In response, Iranian leaders laughed in the blowhard’s face.

Parliamentary speaker Mohammad Ghalibaf’s advisor wrote that the losing side cannot dictate the terms:

The disorganized ‘dance’ this time was an even bigger fiasco than usual—Trump had claimed his “negotiators” were traveling to Islamabad for talks with Iran, while Iran denied even going there. Then news broke that Rubio and co. in fact stayed home and Iran was right: it had never agreed to any talks because its demands have not yet been met—primarily lifting the blockade.

Trump then expectorated an even more unhinged series of ravings, which made little sense. After threatening to blow up the country and kill all Iran’s leaders, Trump suddenly “extended the ceasefire indefinitely”, despite Iran stating they did not even request such an extension and are ready for full resumption of hostilities:

What a gag. Talk about having no cards!

He followed up with this brain-busting entry—most people, at this point, no longer even have the patience nor interest to decipher such jejune gimmickry:

He seems to be inanely implying that Iran only claims the Strait is closed because the US blockaded it. But in fact, the order of events is in reverse: Iran had closed the Strait first, which forced Donny Gimmicks to pretend to “blockade” it to save face, given that the spent and ineffective US military no longer had any cards left to play, particularly after its broken-down carrier groups had shamefully fled the theater. Now they hover outside the Gulf of Oman, seizing Iranian ships as far away as India as a cringe-inducing “show of force”.

Institute for the Study of War

@TheStudyofWar

Maritime Developments: The US Navy’s interdiction of the US-sanctioned Tifani oil tanker in the Bay of Bengal on April 20 and 21 illustrates that US forces can interdict any vessel that violates the US blockade on Iranian ports far beyond the Gulf of Oman. The US Navy interdicted

Institute for the Study of War @TheStudyofWar

NEW: The United States extended its ceasefire with Iran “until such time as [the Iranian] proposal is submitted and discussions are concluded.” Trump confirmed that Washington will maintain its blockade of Iranian ports.

Other Key Takeaways:

Conflicting reports on April 20 and

1:21 AM · Apr 22, 2026 · 13.1K Views

3 Replies · 17 Reposts · 48 Likes

Cenk Ugyur

Trump has extended the deadline for peace negotiations because – there were no negotiations. Now that people realize Trump has been lying all along, economic calamity like we haven’t seen in our lifetimes is at our doorstep.

4:47 PM, Apr 21, 2026 90.4K views

Say it ain’t so.

In fact, CNN confirms the humiliating truth we knew all along: Trump was essentially begging the Iranians for negotiations and received “radio silence” from them; this is what spurred him to “extend the ceasefire” out of desperation and a lack of options (i.e. no cards):

https://www.cnn.com/2026/04/21/politics/iran-trump-negotiations-peace-ceasefire

His ceasefire deadline was nearing its end, and Air Force Two was sitting on the tarmac at Joint Base Andrews ahead of Vice President JD Vance’s scheduled departure to Pakistan for the next round of talks. But the administration was dealing with a conundrum: virtual silence from the Iranians.

In the days prior, the US had sent Iran a list of broad deal points that they wanted the Iranians to agree to in advance of the next round of talks. But days had gone by without the US getting a response…

It’s quite simple: Trump’s bluff was called by the Iranians.

He threatened to destroy their country, they replied: “Come try.”

And that’s all she wrote.

Of course, many still believe the US is gearing up for a major escalation, but Trump knows he has little leverage and more aimless bombing of an increasingly entrenched IRGC structure is not going to accomplish anything. Hitting power plants will only invite a likewise response onto a Gulf region facing crippling economic damage. News continues to pour out that UAE in particular has been hard hit, with its economy allegedly nearing the brink, which is why it’s now begging the US for a lifeline.

But so as not to be accused of one-sidedness by Trump loyalists, let us briefly explore the counter hypothesis suggested by some, that Trump’s plan is in fact “genius” and Iran is the one losing out by this blockade—summarized here:

Maybe the above would be true if the blockade was that effective, but many sources have claimed that dozens of Iranian ships have long passed the blockade, here from Financial Times:

https://www.ft.com/content/21dff2c7-1e27-4f74-81d8-31dcdbe9188e

At least 34 tankers with links to Iran have bypassed the US blockade since it began, according to the cargo tracking group Vortexa, including several carrying Iranian oil — despite US President Donald Trump declaring the barricade a “tremendous success”.

The article states the US nabbed one ship near the Gulf of Oman, the other in the Indo-Pacific area, as shown earlier—but 19 others have successfully broken the blockade by exiting the Gulf, with 15 others entering the Gulf going the opposite way towards Iran after transiting the Arabian Sea.

Again, we go back to the idea that it’s never black or white, with one side totally dominating while suffering no losses. Sure, Iran could take major economic losses soon once the Kharg Island oil shipments fill up and are theoretically unable to leave—though the fact that many ships are successfully breaking the blockade appears to nullify this possibility. But as implied before, the US cannot simply sit at the Strait’s gates with no economic blowback of its own.

To play devil’s advocate:

zerohedge

@zerohedge

Tehran Timeline: Iran Has 15 Days Until Its Oil Industry Begins Full Shut-Ins

zerohedge.com

Tehran Timeline: Iran Has 15 Days Until Its Oil Industry Begins Full Shut-Ins

2:35 AM · Apr 22, 2026 · 8.76K Views

10 Replies · 9 Reposts · 48 Likes

Not only are major strains growing between US and its Gulf allies—most notably now UAE—but oil prices may continue to rise with many experts predicting global economic shocks that will filter down to the US and even more of its allies. On top of which, each day that US squats on the Strait while doing effectively nothing leads to major political and credibility loss for Trump, who is being eaten alive by the press, and whose constituents are growing increasingly tired of his aimless political charades and impotent military adventures.

There’s an argument to be made that Iran can in fact outlast such a blockade while it is the US that will take the more lasting damage overall. That’s not even to mention the monetary costs of imposing the blockade with the current naval forces active in the region.

That leads us to the final topic—CNN’s latest piece releases shocking new figures of the US’s munitions expenditures during the Iran conflict:

https://www.cnn.com/2026/04/21/politics/us-military-missile-stockpile

This defense writer summarizes the main figures:

John M. Donnelly

@johnmdonnelly

Approximate estimates of percentages of U.S. munitions expended in Iran war, per @CNN :

50% THAAD interceptors

50% Patriot interceptors

45% Precision Strike Missiles

30% Tomahawk missiles

20% Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missiles

20% Standard Missiles (SM-3 and SM-6)

Zachary Cohen @ZcohenCNN

New: The US military has significantly depleted its stockpile of key missiles during war with Iran & created “near-term risk” of running out of ammunition in a future conflict should one arise in next few years, per experts & 3 people familiar w/ recent internal Pentagon

7:49 PM · Apr 21, 2026 · 222K Views

64 Replies · 501 Reposts · 1.21K Likes

Directly from the CNN article:

The US military has significantly depleted its stockpile of key missiles during the war with Iran and created a “near-term risk” of running out of ammunition in a future conflict should one arise in the next few years, according to experts and three people familiar with recent internal Defense Department stockpile assessments.

The figures are pulled from a new CSIS (Center for Strategic and International Studies) report, whose key graphic tells the whole story:

https://www.csis.org/analysis/last-rounds-status-key-munitions-iran-war-ceasefire

[“For four of them [“heavily used munitions”], the United States may have expended more than half of the prewar inventory. Rebuilding to prewar levels for the seven munitions will take from one to four years as missiles in the pipeline are delivered. These missiles will also be critical for a potential Western Pacific conflict. Even before the Iran war, stockpiles were deemed insufficient for a peer competitor fight. That shortfall is now even more acute, and building stockpiles to levels adequate for a war with China will take additional time.”]

As you can see, in only a couple short weeks the US fired thousands of its rarest and most valuable munitions, which are only produced at a trickle of a few dozen per year each. This is why, as we had just written about in the last piece, the Pentagon is apparently in talks with major US automakers like Ford, GM, Oshkosh, etc., about converting their production lines into munitions production.

During the hot phase of the recent conflict, a shot-down US JASSM cruise missile was found in Iran which had the manufacturing date of May 2025 written on it, which led many weapons experts and commentators to conclude that the US had depleted old stock and was down to its most recently produced batches:

Babak Taghvaee – The Crisis Watch

@BabakTaghvaee1

Wreckage of an AGM-158B JASSM ER was found in Iran. Most likely employed by the US Navy, it was manufactured in May 2025.

#OperationLionsRoar #OperationEpicFury

12:41 PM · Apr 4, 2026 · 54.1K Views

6 Replies · 58 Reposts · 292 Likes

What can we ourselves conclude from that?

That it can’t possibly be Iran that “folds first” because, at a production rate of only a few dozen per year, the US simply cannot afford to prolong the conflict much longer, lest it run its magazines completely dry and becomes exposed for all time. This is why we can only assume that Trump’s gasbag lecturing is nothing but inert bluffery meant to frighten an increasingly unvexed Iran into making concessions.

Latest footage from Tehran showed massive crowds taking to the streets in celebration of the ceasefire’s expiration:

At the same time, the IRGC released a new video of their underground missile and drone production sites, claiming that—as I had suggested just in the previous report—that they are producing and updating their munitions even faster now during the “ceasefire” than they were pre-war:

A video of underground tunnels, in which Iranian missiles and drones are produced and stored, was published by the Iranian War Message Centre.

The centre states that the Iranians are ready for the next stage of the war.

“During the lull, our speed in updating missile and drone launch platforms is even higher than before the war. The enemy is unable to create similar conditions and is forced to transport ammunition drop by drop from the other side of the world. They have lost this stage of the war,” the statement said.

Well, looks like the ball’s back in Gimmick Don’s court now

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.