Sometimes, as evidenced by military history, wars are not won by a major battle or knockout blow. It is not a boxing match, where fighters belt the daylights out of each other until one falls down. Strategic patience can wear down an enemy. There is no single decisive engagement, but the enemy retreats suffering the death of a thousand cuts.

The Duke of Wellington was a military genius, but not for the reasons everyone thinks. Yes, the English forces won the battle of Waterloo, defeating Napoleon’s attempted comeback. That battle was nowhere near on the same scale and magnitude as the battles of the Napoleonic era. Its military significance has no doubt been exaggerated by British Empire loyalists.

Be that as it may, Wellington’s genius was proven in a battle that was not a single spectacular engagement, but rather the result of careful planning – the Lines of Torres Vedras. The Duke of Wellington, and his army’s Portuguese allies, fought the powerful French armies of Marshal Massena to a standstill.

Protecting Lisbon from a French takeover, the English-Portuguese coalition decided on strategic patience. Rather than face a superior French force on open ground, they decided to use the terrain around Lisbon, building a series of interlocking defensive fortifications, digging into the mountainous countryside centred on the town of Torres Vedras.

Taking almost a year (from November 1809 to September 1810), the Lines of Torres Vedras consisted of trenches, outposts, redoubts, escarpments and fortifications deep in the mountainous environment. The English and their Portuguese workers constructed dams, controlled flooded areas – a remarkable feat of strategically patient engineering.

Preparing an impenetrable series of defences around Lisbon took skill and resilience. They could inflict losses on the French army, all the while maintaining their positions.

Then they waited for the French.

The latter, with overextended supply lines, facing a hostile population, overreaching its hand, confronted the Lines of Torres Vedras. The British, backed by Portuguese irregulars, harassed and attacked the weary French. The Iberian peninsula was not going to fall easily, and the Anglo-Portuguese forces successfully held off Marshal Massena’s gigantic army.

Hungry, demoralised, facing constant defeats at the Lines of Torres Vedras, Marshal Massena had to accept the inevitable. He failed to take Lisbon. In March 1811, he took the decision he dreaded.

The mighty French armies retreated. The seemingly unstoppable French forces suffered a terrible defeat.

The Peninsular War dragged on, but Napoleonic France never fully subdued the Spanish and Portuguese of the Iberian Peninsula.

Why am I saying all this?

The United States has faced its Torres Vedras in the shape of Iran.

The latter, using strategic patience and quiet strength, has inflicted a military defeat upon the world’s principal imperialist power.

Since 2001, when former US President George W Bush called Iran part of the axis of evil, the Tehran authorities have been preparing for this war. Redefining their military doctrines, adapting to the new technology of drones, building economic alliances which are independent of the US, upgrading its military capabilities – these were all done quietly with long term patience.

The entire network of US military bases in the Gulf states has been destroyed. US military personnel took refuge in hotels in Saudi Arabia. Tehran constructed elaborate decoys to misdirect US and Israeli air strikes. While the Trump-MAGA cult shouted and raged on social media, the Iranian leadership drew upon their knowledge of Western philosophy and computer science to outsmart and out-strategise their American opponents.

The late Ali Larijani, the former chief of Iran’s national security council, was a graduate in mathematics and computer science. He had a PhD in Western philosophy, and wrote books about the philosophy of logic. He was assassinated by the United States, an action which probably constitutes a war crime.

Drones, in and of themselves, do not win wars. However, they have effectively neutralised a long time symbol of US military might, the aircraft carrier. The latter had its time during World War 2, and was a potent symbol of military strength, projecting mobile air power. That function has been successfully countered with the deployment of drones. Tehran used drone warfare to knock out enemy radar stations, tracking bases, as well as hitting American aircraft carriers.

I think that a leadership familiar with Western philosophy, history and politics is better equivalent to handle military strategy rather than the MAGA money-worshipping cultists who have no military background.

Iran has paid an enormous humanitarian and ecological cost for this victory. The US-Israeli bombing exacted a heavy toll in civilian casualties, and toxic air pollution sits atop the residents of Tehran. The Pasteur Institute sustained heavy damage, and Iran public health infrastructure was targeted by the US-Israeli bombing. The World Health Organisation (WHO) expressed its concerns that the cessation of medicine production and damage to medical facilities will result in patient deaths.

The deliberate attack on Iranian schoolchildren, a war crime in and of itself, should have given the supporters of the US-Israeli war pause for thought.

This knowledge alone should make us pause any triumphalist declarations of victory. However, there is no hiding the fact that the US military has suffered a significant defeat.

At the time of writing, there is a ceasefire – only time will tell if this ceasefire will hold. Nevertheless, Tehran has emerged from this conflict in a strengthened position. The Trump-Epstein-MAGA cult failed to carry out regime change in Iran.

There has been regime change; not in Tehran, but on the seas. The maritime regime of the oil industry has been changed irrevocably. Tehran not only stopped the oil traffic for hostile states through the Strait of Hormuz, they are charging a toll for nations to use that maritime route. This selective blocking demonstrates to the world that the petrodollar can be weakened, thus impacting all the nations that rely on fossil fuels.

I am quite certain that more reams of commentary will be forthcoming regarding this conflict in the Middle East. Tehran enters future talks with the US possessing all the cards. Iranian strategic patience and calculation have won out over MAGA muscle-flexing and macho posturing.