In psychology there is such a thing as the Dunning-Kruger effect.

This phenomenon essentially describes the paradox that people with little skill or knowledge tend to overestimate their own competence and judgment.

The Trump administration is a textbook example of this, writes Hua Bin .

From Trump to Vance, Rubio, and Hegseth, the entire American political leadership responsible for waging war on Iran consists of an ignorant, orange-colored fraud and his incompetent entourage of sycophants.

As described in the Dunning-Kruger effect, this group of the dumbest and least qualified people thought they were smart enough to launch a surprise attack on Iran and win easily.

Things didn't go as they had hoped.

It is difficult to predict the outcome of an ongoing military conflict, given the fog of war and the non-stop propaganda and gaslighting.

But it seems reasonable to conclude that the US and Israel (or USrael for short) failed to achieve their primary war goal: regime change.

Trump and his Jewish advisers gambled on a surprise attack under the guise of sham negotiations, which would spark a domestic uprising to overthrow the Iranian government.

That way, they would achieve a quick victory (4 to 5 days, according to Trump's initial estimate) and avoid serious retaliation.

Reality didn’t quite turn out the way the real estate magnate and “reality” star had hoped.

The Iranians didn't surrender. They fought back. They didn't fragment and revolt against the regime. They united and rallied behind the flag.

In short, the US has just stirred a hornet's nest.

USrael supporters celebrate the assassination of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the extensive bombing of Iranian cities as signs of success.

However, serious observers wonder:

How did killing an 86-year-old cancer patient under the guise of negotiations diminish Iran's capabilities and advance US war aims?

How is the war going for the US after the "success" of the first day?

– How does it work for Israel and its Gulf lackeys?

– Did Iranians rise up to overthrow the government or did they unite to take revenge?

– Can the US bomb Iran into submission, having failed to do so in Gaza?

Of course, Iran will take a hit and will likely suffer heavier losses than the US and its vassals in the region.

The success of a military campaign, however, isn't measured by the number of bombs dropped and the number of people killed. By those standards, the US won the Vietnam War.

True victory is measured by the achievement of political goals.

In this case, the ultimate political goal of the US's war against Iran is regime change. Iran will win as long as it survives and resists the US's war aims.

In other words, Iran doesn't need to win, just not to lose.

As the war spreads to all the Gulf States, it becomes a protracted conflict. In such conflicts, winning isn't just about who has the capacity to inflict pain, but also about who has the stamina to endure it.

Iran is demonstrating its ability to withstand attacks while destroying its enemies.

Let's look at some lessons the world can learn from the war. Specifically, what China has learned so far and how it can help Iran survive the US's existential war.

– There is no low point too low for the US and the Jews.

USrael launched a sneaky attack under the guise of "negotiations" and during Ramadan, the Muslim holy month. They had carried out the same low blow last June.

This is a repeat of the terrorist "decapitation" tactics that USrael has used many times before—with Hamas and Hezbollah negotiators, with Iranian scientists, with Maduro in Venezuela, and with Ebrahim Raisi, the last Iranian president who died in a "helicopter crash" in May 2024.

It is the same tactic that USrael's ally Ukraine has repeatedly used against Russian generals.

Not so long ago, countries at war didn't sink so deeply. Even in World War II, the bloodiest conflict in human history, no significant assassinations of political or military leaders were committed on this scale and with such duplicity.

However, the Jewish state of Israel and its vassal, the US, have been pioneers in this despicable behavior since the Cold War. Now they have sunk to a new low.

The US is also indiscriminately attacking civilians – girls' schools, hospitals, and local coffee shops. This is a large-scale demonstration of Israel's "Dahiya Doctrine," which calls for the use of disproportionate force against civilians to suppress the population.

To the great disappointment of the US, the assassination of Khamenei and the massacre of civilians not only failed to provoke an uprising against the regime, but actually led to unity in the country and the mobilization of Iran for all-out war.

– The negotiations were a sham, intended to gain time and launch surprise attacks.

Steven Witkoff, Trump's chief "negotiator," told Fox News that the US had made four demands of Iran during the "negotiations": complete denuclearization, abandoning all ballistic missiles, ending support for regional allies, and dismantling Iran's navy.

Such maximalist demands are terms of surrender for Iran to disarm. They are not intended to achieve a compromise, but to buy time to prepare the attacks.

Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, affectionately known as Shitkoff and Jarhead by their associates, are the chief American "negotiators" and are both hardened Zionist Jews. They certainly represent the interests of the US, not the Jews (wink).

When you see who Trump is sending to lead this, you know the US has no genuine interest in negotiating.

– American perfidy: Like its imperial predecessor, Britain, the US is a dishonest rogue state that cannot be trusted.

Like "Perfidious Albion," the US has demonstrated habitual bad faith and treachery in its diplomatic efforts. In less than a year, it launched two surprise attacks on Iran under the guise of negotiations.

Like perfidious Britain, the US hides its treacherous foreign policy behind a high-flown moralistic facade of “democracy,” “human rights,” “regional stability,” “rules-based international order,” and “the right to protection.”

It uses this noble-sounding propaganda to incite the Iranian people against their own government and their own interests. The US doesn't care about the lives of ordinary Iranians.

The US is a pawn of the Jews. It's not the tail that's wagging the dog; Israel is the dog's head.

Trump & Co. have once again pulled a bait-and-switch stunt on clueless American voters. MAGA is always MIGA.

Five days after the outbreak of war, the US had already informed the Gulf sheikhdoms that it would not protect them and that only Israel was worthy of deploying US air defense missiles.

The military bases that the Arab states host for the Americans are a target for Iran. Any collateral damage will be borne by the Arabs themselves.

Kissinger was right: being America's enemy is dangerous; being America's "friend" is fatal—except, of course, for Israel and the Jews.

American soldiers should be willing to die for Israel to bring about the “Second Coming,” as Pete Hegseth demands.

Most of the West is a shameless vassal of the US. Their self-righteousness is focused on the victim, not the perpetrators.

As expected, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, NATO, the EU, Australia and Canada have again chosen to side with the aggressors and blame the victims.

Just like they did in the Israeli genocide in Gaza.

Spain was unique in the West in its revolt against the US, just as it did in Gaza. Kudos to Spain, its leaders, and its wonderful people.

Compare Western support for the US with the accusations leveled against Russia for its “unprovoked” invasion of Ukraine.

Most of the West wants to be a weak junior partner to the mafia boss in the "rules-based international order." They want to live on their knees, while Iran is prepared to die standing.

The West's outrage at the US is reserved for when the gun is pointed at its head, as in the Greenland takeover.

Of course, even such transgressions are quickly forgotten and forgiven.

The rest of the world now knows the true nature of the beast.

The Western ruling class resorts to foreign wars to distract its bewildered and ignorant public from domestic scandals and corrupt governance. And it works every time.

Since the war began, the Epstein Files have been forgotten. No one talks about the ICE murders in Minnesota or the Supreme Court ruling on Trump's illegal tariffs anymore.

The sheep are easy to control. You just have to show them a new shiny object.

– The most important thing is that USrael's military power is a mirage.

Aside from the underhanded assassination of Khamenei and the criminal murder of nearly 200 schoolgirls, the USrael attacks have yielded few clear victories.

The Iranians are retaliating with missiles and drones; Israel and all its regional vassals have been hit; and the Iranians have closed the Strait of Hormuz.

On March 2nd, three F-15Es were shot down in a single morning. The US claims they were shot down by "friendly fire," which, in my opinion, doesn't make it any less embarrassing.

The last time such “friendly fire” occurred was when the USS Gettysburg shot down an F/A-18F Super Hornet in Yemen in December 2024, as the “world’s largest military” was in a standoff with the Houthis.

Three multi-million dollar fighter jets shot down in a single morning by “friendly fire” has to be a world record worthy of a gold trophy.

The lie sounds less plausible to people who have heard of the Identification of Friend or Foe (IFF) system used by every military in the world.

A $1.1 billion AN/FPS-132 Upgraded Early Warning Radar (UEWR) at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar was blown to pieces by a $10,000 Iranian suicide drone.

According to Al Jazeera, three Patriot and THAAD air defense systems were destroyed in the region.

US aircraft carriers and warships have been attacked and forced to withdraw hundreds of miles to stay out of range of Iranian missiles.

Iran has used ballistic missiles equipped with cluster bombs to attack Israeli targets. Hezbollah has fired multiple salvos of missiles into Israel.

Videos on social media clearly show most of the Iranian missiles and drones penetrating air defenses and hitting targets in Tel Aviv, Dubai, Doha, and Bahrain.

The famous Iron Dome, Patriot, David Sling, and THAAD systems have failed spectacularly. Perhaps their interceptors are running out of ammunition and are saving ammunition for higher-value targets. 

Most US bases in the region are now closed, and GIs have been withdrawn to shelter elsewhere. US embassies, CIA stations, Israeli military and government facilities, and hotels housing USrael personnel have been hit.

Moreover, the cost-benefit ratio is terrible for USrael: they fire two or three interceptors that each cost between $2 and $4 million to shoot down one Iranian missile or drone that costs less than 5 or 10% of each interceptor.

When you compare Iran's firepower to its military budget, the fight so far has simply been lopsided in Iran's favor.

Iran's 2025 military budget is $7.9 billion, less than half that of Singapore's ($17 billion), while Israel spends $47 billion a year on top of US aid.

Saudi Arabia's military expenditures amount to $80 billion, while the US spends over $900 billion. Nearly all Gulf Arab states spend more than Iran.

However, Iran has not only resisted US attacks but has also taken on the entire region.

The US's enormous military might simply hasn't delivered a knockout blow to a weaker adversary. Instead, Iran is striking back hard.

While it is too early to say which side will prevail, it is clear that this war will last longer than 4 or 5 days.

The day before yesterday, Trump changed his schedule to 4 or 5 weeks.

Yesterday, Trump angrily denied that the US is running out of ammunition and claimed the US has the weapons to "fight forever." Is this now a new "forever" war?

There is an old Chinese proverb that applies exactly to such occasions: (don't look, there is no silver buried here).

Implications for China and how it will support Iran

I wrote about the Chinese perspective on the Middle East conflict last June, when Iran was attacked in the 12-day war.

Beijing's position remains largely unchanged, although there is now a greater need for China to help Iran resist the US and thwart its war aims.

The key difference is that the 12-day war was primarily about Iran's nuclear capabilities, while the goal of the current US aggression is regime change.

Iran is a crucial node in the multipolar global order envisioned by China. It also lies in a crucial geostrategic region on which the world depends for its energy security.

Beijing's position on the war appears to be centered around a number of pillars, based on an analysis of official statements, think tank analyses, and social media commentary.

First, China will continue to provide Iran with diplomatic and economic support. Roughly 20% of the Iranian economy depends on trade with China, which also helps Iran circumvent Western sanctions and dollar restrictions.

Second, China is deepening intelligence sharing and supplying key technologies to Iran.

Chinese companies such as MizarVision provide and publish high-definition satellite imagery of US military deployments in the Middle East.

Beijing has provided Iran with the BeiDou navigation and guidance system, which has greatly improved the accuracy of Iranian missile attacks, as the US cannot disable or jam the BeiDou signals as it can the GPS system.

Space intelligence is a crucial component of high-tech warfare, yet unattainable for most. Such support could represent a step forward in improving the lethality of Iranian attacks.

China has accelerated the delivery of parts and components for the production of Iranian missiles and drones, including propellant for Iranian ballistic missiles.

China is also providing AI-driven surveillance technology to help Iranian security forces track and capture spies and infiltrators in Iran.

Despite Beijing's traditional stance of not supplying kinetic weapons to countries at war (including Russia), it is accelerating military cooperation with Iran and is likely to transfer both defensive and offensive weapons in the future.

Third, the US is indeed a "paper tiger." It is physically incapable of waging a protracted war with high casualties, despite its stance.

The American military-industrial complex faces the same problem as the rest of the financialized economy. It isn't optimized for delivering weapons on a large scale and at low cost to win wars. It's optimized for profit maximization.

The MIC is driven by just-in-time efficiency and zero-surge capacity to maximize returns on capital, rather than resilience to large-scale conflict.

The high-tech, over-designed weapons in the US arsenal can easily be depleted and, once depleted, are nearly impossible to replenish.

Just five days of intense conflict with Iran have shown its vulnerability.

The US is simply not capable of a war of attrition with China, with its inexhaustible industrial capacity (called “surplus capacity” by the West) and national resilience.

Given its ever-increasing power relative to the US, China can afford a long-term strategy and strategic patience to wait for the inevitable decline and implosion of American power.

Fourth, Beijing is well aware of the need for caution in navigating the murky waters of Middle Eastern politics.

The war has shown that the Gulf monarchies are still very much vassals of the US and Israel.

According to the Washington Post, Mohammed bin Salman heavily lobbied Trump to attack Iran.

This is despite the rapprochement that Beijing brokered between Iran and Saudi Arabia in 2023. It is clear that the sheiks cannot be trusted.

Turkish President Erdoğan is a two-headed snake who has publicly condemned Israel's genocide in Gaza, while supplying Israel with oil, its lifeblood.

He stabbed Russia in the back by treacherously conspiring with the Jews in Syria to overthrow Bashar Assad.

The Middle East will become a camel country again once oil and gas are depleted or become irrelevant as a result of the green energy revolution that China is driving.

For now, China is managing its energy vulnerability by building up strategic stockpiles and diversifying its supply away from the Middle East to countries like Russia, Brazil, and Angola.

Fifth, the war with Iran proves that US military bases in the Persian Gulf are not strategic assets, but rather pose a risk and are easy prey.

If Iran can breach the defenses of these bases with its missiles and drones, China could attack the US bases in the First Island Chain with much larger salvos.

US air defense doctrine is simply not technically and financially sustainable against super-fast saturation attacks.

The states hosting US assets, including Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines, are targets with a target on their backs. They will suffer the same fate as the Gulf States hosting US bases.

Finally, Beijing is fully aware of American perfidy. The US is a rogue state unworthy of trust.

By launching an unprovoked war against Iran, the US is acting like an invader that thinks it can fundamentally alter the cultural and political course of a 5,000-year-old civilization through airpower.

And it started the war under the guise of “negotiations” – the behavior of a “barbaric” state.

It's clear that the US is willing to destabilize an entire region to maintain its hegemony. It's a state that believes power is a substitute for legitimacy.

The US actions serve as a stark warning to small and middle powers that if international law can be suspended to remove the leadership of a country as important as Iran (the most populous country in the Middle East), no country's sovereignty is truly secure.

Besides the US, the collective West is a hypercritical and angry actor.

By supporting the US's illegal war against Iran while simultaneously condemning Russia's war in Ukraine as "unprovoked," the West has exposed its ugly double standards and its total subservience to the US and Israel.

There is an old Chinese saying: “Though a state may be great, it will fall if it is warlike; though the world may be at peace, it will be in danger if it forgets war.”

In the West, similar expressions include “He who lives by the sword will die by the sword” and “He who sows the wind will reap the whirlwind.”

US belligerent behavior will eventually boomerang and harm itself.

Beijing understands that wars are easy to start, but hard to stop. It's delighted to see the US step into another self-made bear trap.

By exercising strategic patience, Beijing is waiting for Washington's inevitable implosion.

What we see today

At the height of its global power, US military interventions over the past two decades cost trillions of dollars and caused millions of civilian casualties.

These interventions have completely failed to achieve their intended geopolitical goals and have significantly weakened US strength and legitimacy.

With the US already in a weakened state, these interventions pale in comparison to the likely new disaster awaiting the US, as Iran is far more powerful than Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, or Syria.

As the proverb warns, if even the most powerful nation overextends itself strategically, it faces resource depletion and national decline.

The Trump regime, like its predecessors, has failed to understand that military superiority does not equate to strategic success.

With Operation Epic Fury, the US has abandoned the pretense of a "rules-based order." It now openly acts as a hegemon using violence to reform an ancient civilization, on behalf of the Zionist Jews.

The fact that Iran immediately retaliated by attacking US and Israeli targets in the Gulf suggests that the Iranian state will not collapse even with the death of its leaders.

What we see is that a 5,000-year-old civilization, even when wounded and destabilized, is more resilient than an intrusive state that relies on the “appearance” of temporary military dominance.