Disable video tag play

Videos on iOS iPhone use a native player over whose UI I have no control. I am trying to disable the playback of a video tag in a way that would prevent the native player from playing it. It should work even when the native player window is already open.

I tried:

video.addEventListener("play", function() {
    video.pause();
    // I could revert the video to the position
    // before playing it. Which would look a bit
    // glitchy.
});

Is there a better way.