In War, There Is No Substitute for Victory |
Foreign Policy > Iran War
In War, There Is No Substitute for Victory
It is time to bring closure and victory to our conflict with Iran.
Scott S. Powell | May 16, 2026
The fog of war is a universal description of confusion that typically accompanies the early stages of most warfare. From the outset of the U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran commencing on February 28, 2026 that launched airstrikes on military and government targets, Iran responded in what appeared to be erratic ways by striking back on countries that were not part of the hostilities -- countries called the “Gulf States” that included Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Oman, Kuwait, Quatar, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
Missile and drone strikes against the Gulf States continued into late March. But upon deeper quantitative analysis, the targeting of one particular nation, the UAE, with 537 ballistic missile and 2,256 drone, and 26 cruise missile attacks, was more than four times greater than the attacks on other Gulf States. In fact, Iran bombed the UAE more than it bombed Israel. Why?
According to a leading international and geopolitical analyst, Martin Amstrong, the likely reason for Iran’s intense targeting of the UAE was to precipitate a financial debt crisis. What most do not know, is that the UAE became the “Switzerland” of the Middle East after the outbreak of the Ukraine War in 2022 when the Swiss abandoned their longstanding neutrality, and began favoring Ukraine and discriminating against the Russians. With UAE’s pledge to maintain neutrality, enormous sums of money was moved out of Swiss institutions and into the banks and financial........