IN THE FIRST weeks of the latest confrontation between the United States and Iran, headlines have focused on airstrikes, missile exchanges and the destruction of Iranian launch sites. Some commentators have rushed to declare that Tehran is already on the back foot.

That conclusion is dangerously premature.

Iran is not Iraq in 2003, nor Afghanistan in 2001. It is a large, heavily populated state with a formidable military doctrine built around survival, endurance and retaliation. Even after weeks of strikes, Iran retains several advantages that make the idea of a quick victory highly doubtful.

A major factor is the sheer scale of Iran’s military resources. The country possesses one of the largest missile arsenals in the Middle East, with hundreds of ballistic missiles capable of striking targets across the region. Alongside this, Iran has developed a substantial drone programme and a wide range of rockets and cruise missiles designed specifically to overwhelm sophisticated Western air defence systems.

These weapons form part of a layered strategy developed over decades. Iran has constructed underground facilities, often referred to as “missile cities,” where large quantities of drones, missiles and other weapons are stored in tunnels beneath mountains and desert terrain. Even if airstrikes destroy some launchers or storage sites, the system is designed to survive and regenerate.

Geography also makes Iran one of the most difficult countries on earth to invade.

The Zagros Mountains stretch for roughly 1,500 kilometres along Iran’s western frontier — precisely the direction any land invasion from Iraq would likely take. These mountains create narrow passes, chokepoints and defensive high ground that strongly favour defenders and slow mechanised armies.

Iran is also vastly larger than the countries the United States has fought in recent decades. It is almost four times the size of Iraq and has a population of more than eighty million people. Any ground war there would not resemble the rapid march to Baghdad in 2003. It would almost certainly become a grinding and prolonged campaign.

History offers a warning about underestimating Iran’s ability to absorb invasion.

In 1980, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq — backed by many Western and regional powers — launched a full-scale invasion of Iran. The conflict lasted eight brutal years. Despite suffering enormous casualties and economic damage, Iran ultimately survived the war and forced Iraq into a costly stalemate.

That experience shaped Iran’s entire modern military doctrine. The country has built its defence strategy around endurance, attrition and the ability to mobilise large numbers of fighters if necessary.

Iran also holds one of the world’s most powerful economic pressure points: the Strait of Hormuz.

Roughly a fifth of the world’s oil shipments pass through this narrow waterway linking the Persian Gulf to global markets. Iran’s naval strategy focuses on the ability to disrupt or potentially close that route using sea mines, fast attack boats, anti-ship missiles and drones. The geography of the strait, with narrow shipping lanes running close to Iran’s coastline, makes it particularly vulnerable to such tactics.

Even limited disruption to shipping there can push global oil prices sharply higher and trigger wider economic shocks. In other words, Iran does not necessarily need to defeat the United States militarily to inflict serious damage on the world economy.

There is also the wider geopolitical picture to consider.

While Russia and China are unlikely to intervene directly in the conflict, both powers have strategic reasons to see the United States tied down in a prolonged Middle Eastern war. Russia benefits from higher energy prices and from American military attention being diverted elsewhere. China relies heavily on Gulf energy supplies and has developed increasingly close economic ties with Tehran.

Neither country is likely to support a scenario in which Iran is completely defeated or the regional balance shifts decisively in Washington’s favour.

For that reason alone, the conflict is unlikely to remain a simple bilateral confrontation (or trilateral including Israel).

The economic consequences of the conflict could also reshape the political landscape in the United States itself. Rising oil and gas prices are already beginning to feed into inflation and household costs, and history shows that wars which drive up energy prices rarely remain popular for long. If disruption in the Strait of Hormuz continues, American motorists and businesses will feel the effects within weeks.

With mid-term elections approaching, the political pressure on Washington could grow rapidly. Voters are already asking two simple questions: why are we fighting this war, and what exactly is the endgame?

Military technology may give the United States overwhelming air superiority, but wars are not won from the air alone. Iran’s strategy has never been about defeating the United States in a conventional battlefield clash. Instead, it is about making victory so costly — economically, politically and militarily — that outside powers eventually conclude the war is not worth continuing.

That strategy helped Iran survive the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s.

It may yet shape the outcome of this conflict as well.

For now, the early headlines suggesting Iran is already beaten say far more about wishful thinking than about the realities of war. The uncomfortable truth is that this conflict may only just be beginning — and the question facing the world is no longer how it started, but how it ends.

After a fire destroyed the village school, rebuilding was described as the “preferred option”. Three years later, councillors have voted to close it instead.

WHEN Manorbier Church in Wales VC School was devastated by fire in October 2022, the community did what communities always do in the face of adversity: it rallied.

Teachers carried on teaching.
Parents carried on supporting.
Children carried on learning.

Classes moved into temporary accommodation at Jameston Community Hall and, despite the upheaval, the school community stayed together.

And crucially, the council itself appeared to signal that this was only temporary.

In March 2023 Pembrokeshire County Council announced it had backed what it described as “positive steps towards rebuilding” the school. Council documents went further, describing full reinstatement as the “preferred option.”

Pupils would continue learning in temporary accommodation while rebuilding work took place.

Those words mattered. They created hope.

Not unrealistic hope. Not wishful thinking.

Hope based on what the council itself was saying.

So the community carried on.

Parents campaigned to save the school.
A petition was launched.
The Diocese of St Davids objected to the closure proposals.
Bishop Dorrien Davies visited the school community in their temporary classrooms.

Through all of it, the assumption remained the same: the school would eventually return.

But this week that hope was extinguished.

Despite a consultation in which more than 90 per cent of responses opposed closure, councillors voted to proceed with plans to discontinue the school.

The explanation offered is that the insurance settlement following the fire fell far below the cost of rebuilding the school, while falling pupil numbers and surplus places in nearby schools mean the facility is no longer considered viable.

Those may be the financial and strategic realities the council now faces.

But they do not erase the uncomfortable truth at the centre of this story.

For three years a community was allowed to believe its school would be rebuilt.

Then, quietly, the direction of travel changed.

To be fair, the council now insists that no promise was ever made. The decision in 2023, it says, was simply to commission a feasibility study and explore options.

Technically, that may well be correct.

But leadership is not just about technicalities. It is about clarity, honesty and managing expectations.

If rebuilding was unlikely, the community should have been told that plainly from the start.

Instead, hopeful language about reinstatement allowed a very different belief to take hold — that Manorbier School would one day reopen.

Even Cabinet Member for Education Cllr Guy Woodham acknowledged during Thursday’s debate that those expectations existed.

“There may have been a general perception that a decision had been made to reinstate the school,” he told councillors.

That perception did not appear out of thin air.

It came from the words the council itself chose to use.

The result is a decision that now feels, to many residents, less like an unavoidable policy choice and more like a betrayal.

Manorbier is not simply losing a building. It is losing a village school, a community hub and a Church in Wales education provision that has served generations.

Rural schools across Wales face difficult challenges. Falling pupil numbers and financial pressures are real issues.

But when communities are asked to accept painful decisions, they deserve something in return: honesty.

Communities can cope with difficult truths.

What they struggle to accept is the feeling that they were allowed to hope for something that was never really going to happen.

For the children who continued learning in a community hall after the fire, and for the parents who believed their school would return, that hope has now gone.

And many in Manorbier will be left asking the same question:

Why were we led to believe otherwise?

Cllr Huw Murphy said in the council chamber in December: “If there ever was a template written on how not to deal with a catastrophic incident at a school, we have written it here.”

He’s right.

For more than a decade, services at Withybush have been reduced while promises of improvement remain unfulfilled — and public trust is wearing thin

THERE is a growing sense across Pembrokeshire that no matter what promises are made, healthcare services here only ever seem to move in one direction — backwards.

This week’s decision by Hywel Dda University Health Board on February 19, 2026, to remove emergency general surgery from Withybush Hospital is not an isolated event. It is the latest chapter in a story residents know all too well.

For more than a decade, people in this county have watched services gradually disappear: consultant-led maternity, the Special Care Baby Unit, inpatient children’s services — and now emergency surgery.

Each decision has been presented as necessary. Each one justified on grounds of safety, staffing shortages or sustainability.

And yet the outcome is always the same: Pembrokeshire loses something.

At The Herald, we do not make that statement lightly. Since 2014, we have reported on every development — the protests, the packed public meetings, the consultations, the board decisions. We have interviewed senior clinicians, chief executives and health board members.

We know what promises were made. And we have seen what followed.

That long view reveals something individual announcements often obscure. Residents are told changes will improve care or lead to better outcomes. But from the perspective of patients and families, things rarely feel improved.

Travel distances get longer. Waiting times remain difficult. Ambulance pressures continue. Anxiety about access grows — especially for those in remote communities facing poor roads, winter weather, or limited transport. For elderly residents without cars, and for families with young children, the strain is real. During tourism peaks, pressures only increase.

Trust, once lost, is hard to rebuild.

One of the deepest frustrations is that assurances of future improvement never quite materialise. The long-discussed new hospital remains years away at best. Recruitment challenges persist. Temporary measures quietly become permanent realities.

What begins as reassurance often ends as another reduction.

None of this denies the genuine challenges facing the NHS. Workforce shortages are real. Rural healthcare is difficult to sustain. Clinical standards must come first.

But fairness matters too.

Pembrokeshire is a large rural county with unique geographic challenges, seasonal pressures and communities that deserve confidence in local services.

People understand healthcare must evolve. What they struggle to accept is a situation where change repeatedly means less provision here.

Local MSs Paul Davies and Samuel Kurtz had warned ahead of the vote that undermining Withybush would cross a “red line.” Paul Davies described the outcome as “appalling but not surprising.” Plaid Cymru’s Kerry Ferguson urged the board to reconsider.

Yet here we are — another acute service shifted away, primarily to Glangwili.

That reality now shapes public confidence. And confidence matters. Healthcare relies not only on clinical outcomes but on public trust. When communities feel decisions are predetermined, consultation loses meaning. When residents believe their county is continually losing out, resentment grows.

The danger is not just political anger. It is disengagement — the belief that nothing will change no matter what people say or do.

Pembrokeshire deserves better than that.

It deserves clarity about the long-term vision for healthcare in the county. Honesty about what can and cannot be delivered locally. Genuine effort to protect services wherever possible.

Withybush still provides a 24-hour emergency department, midwife-led maternity and vital outpatient care. But each loss chips away at confidence in its future.

The people of this county are resilient, pragmatic and realistic. But patience is not unlimited.

When every few years brings another reduction, the question becomes unavoidable:

When do things finally start getting better?