There is a simple way to know who is losing a war. Look for who is asking for peace.
Wars have casualties. Truth is usually the first. Dignity follows shortly after, limping behind with a new medal pinned to its chest.
In May 2025, India launched precision strikes on locations linked to proscribed terrorist groups operating from Pakistani soil. Clean. Declared. Done and dusted in a few hours. Concluded on India’s terms. Pakistan retaliated. A surprise, because India had made it abundantly clear it had no interest in a war. Pakistan opened fire nonetheless. India responded. Within days, Pakistan’s air defence grid had been reduced to a memory. The Indian Air Force was picking its targets the way you pick a balloon at the air rifle stall at Nauchandi mela. Leisurely. At will. That is when Pakistan picked up the phone and called Washington. It needed someone to make the pain stop.
India’s position was, as it had been from Day 1, that it did not desire a conflict. So thank you, Washington, but ask the generals to request the same. When Pakistan’s DGMO called India’s DGMO and asked for an end to hostilities, India agreed. A ceasefire was in place. Donald Trump announced it to the world before either country’s defence establishment could clear their throats. He said he had done it. He said he deserved the Nobel Peace Prize.
On cue, Asim Munir declared victory. He took a medal. He awarded himself the designation of Field Marshal, for life. A remarkable achievement for a man whose air defences had turned to rubble and air fields had curious craters. Pakistan’s PR machine went into full swing. PM Shahbaz Sharif beamed and thanked Munir. The Pakistani media was on the megaphone. Everyone was winning. It was the most victorious defeat in subcontinental military history.
India did no such drama. It did not need to. The satellite images were public. The craters did not lie. The radar installations that were supposed to protect Pakistan’s skies were not protecting anything anymore. India simply let the evidence sit there in full view and got on with its day. There is a quiet confidence that comes from knowing you do not need to say a word. India had it. Pakistan had a Field Marshal.
What is now unfolding in the Middle East is Operation Sindoor, the Hollywood version. Recast on a global stage, with a bigger budget, more combustible geography, and a cast of characters that makes Apocalypse Now Redux less dramatic.
On February 28, Israel and the US struck the entire top leadership of Iran in one strike. Eliminated. Gone. Washington believed this would shatter Tehran’s will, break the regime’s back, scatter its command, and bring the matter to a swift and satisfying conclusion. Shock and awe. It had worked Iraq. It would work in Iran. Well, the script had a change.
Iran struck back. With a vengeance.
It hit Israel. It hit American bases across the Middle East. It hit Arab states, nearly all of them, the nations that had quietly aligned themselves with Washington and assumed their geography would protect them.
Iran has lived under American sanctions for decades. Sanctions are supposed to starve a country into submission. What they actually did was teach Iran to be extraordinarily patient, moderately creative, and entirely unimpressed by American threats. When you have absorbed punishment for 40 years, more punishment is simply Tuesday.
The Strait of Hormuz is closed. The rich American-aligned Gulf states are discovering what it means to have that door shut from the inside by the one neighbour they never managed to befriend. Their security guarantor hasn’t been able to secure its bases, and is brag-begging for it all to stop. Iran is not begging. Iran is charging a toll. And the toll is steep.
Guess who is asking for peace.
Trump called Pakistan in March 2026, just as Pakistan had called Trump in May 2025. The roles have simply switched. The desperation has not. The world’s most powerful nation was now requesting a sanctioned, cash-strapped, structurally fragile country to please have a word with Tehran on its behalf. The irony was rich enough to serve at a state dinner. Pakistan said yes, because Pakistan finds itself to be useful to someone. Iran said no. Not to America, not even to Pakistan. Iran was not interested in talking. It had other things to do, like hitting the Arabs where it hurts.
Steve Witkoff flew to Islamabad. Don’s own Damad, Jared Kushner, flew too. Tehran told them to bring someone senior. America then sent Tehran a 15-point proposal, passed through Pakistan like a note in a school test. All rejected as not worth discussing.
Instead, Iran sent some points of its own. Permanent control over Hormuz traffic. Full withdrawal of American military bases from the region. Compensation for damages suffered. A binding guarantee of no future attacks. These are not the demands of a nation on its knees. These are the demands of a nation that has looked at the other side’s hand, examined each card carefully, and found the whole lot empty.
This is the same Trump who told Zelenskyy he had no cards to play. Today, Saudi Arabia has signed a defence deal with Ukraine. The world noticed. Trump’s cards are seen.
Meanwhile, Trump goes in front of cameras and tells America and the world that he is winning too much, that Iran is begging, that the military might of the United States has obliterated Tehran’s capacity to resist. The vocabulary is familiar. The cadence is familiar. It is the same speech Asim Munir gave, translated from Punjabi Urdu into American English and delivered with considerably more production value. Munir had epaulettes and a ceremonial baton. Trump has Truth Social and Caps Lock. The medium differs. The message is identical. We are winning. Please ignore the craters.
The Pakistani PR operation during Sindoor was a masterclass in the genre. Multiple anchors, multiple platforms, multiple claims of Rafales falling from the sky, Pakistani drones hovering over India Gate, Indian cities trembling, great victory being achieved in real time. The wreckage of Pakistani air defence was visible from space. The claims were visible only on Pakistani television. Trump was adding numbers to the fallen jets, 11 as per the last trump count.
Trump has studied this playbook carefully, or perhaps arrived at it independently, because certain instincts transcend borders, languages, and basic military reality.
A broke Pakistan is now presenting itself as a broker in the current conflict. Islamabad is discovering that there is excellent diplomatic mileage and dollars to be extracted from being the only country on speaking terms with both the US and Iran.
Iran has not spoken to America. It says so, repeatedly and publicly, with the particular satisfaction of a nation that has nothing to apologise for and no reason to pretend otherwise. Deterrence requires the other side to be deterred. Iran is not deterred. Iran is inconvenienced. There is a considerable difference between the two.
For America, expensive radars have gone. AWACS planes have gone. Fuel tankers and fighter jets have gone. The bases that were supposed to project deterrence are now projecting vulnerability.
Washington is now considering putting boots on the ground. This is a thought so strategically reckless that it must have taken considerable effort to arrive at. There are murmurs of something darker still, a nuclear even, as though the prospect of annihilation might accomplish what months of bombing, sanctions, shuttle diplomacy, and Damad Kushner have not. The truth is simpler. Everything has failed. The leverage is spent. The strategy is in ruins. Iran has conceded nothing, and it shows no signs of beginning.
Karl Marx said history repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce.
Operation Sindoor repeats itself. First in Pindi. Now in Pars.
The fog of war is generous to the losing side. It permits them to paint pictures. It allows them to schedule victory parades. It lets them hand out medals and designations and Nobel Prize nominations. But fog is temporary. It lifts. And when it does, the craters are still there. The Strait is still closed. Iran has still not picked up the phone.
Donald Trump is looking for an exit, or offramp, as people call it now. Iran is determined to not make it convenient for him. It will extract its pound of flesh, and toll from Hormuz traffic.
Trump has not won this war. He is losing it. Convincingly.
