In America’s recent experience, the first six months of a war are the best ones. Six months after the invasion of Iraq, the U.S. was setting up a provisional government in Baghdad and hunting down Saddam Hussein. Six months after the invasion of Afghanistan, with the Taliban shattered and Osama bin Laden on the run, combat was winding down. Six months after the 1991 Gulf War, U.S. troops had withdrawn, victorious, from Iraq. Even the Vietnam War looked eminently winnable six months after U.S. Marines landed at Da Nang.
But the war with Iran is different. What began on Feb. 28, a massive joint U.S.-Israeli aerial bombardment coupled with a decapitation strike that killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, may have looked promising at first. But six months in, the spectacle of failure has become dismally obvious. A hardline government in Tehran continues to function and fight. It closed the Strait of Hormuz to shipping. The revolt the Trump administration hoped would topple the mullahs hasn’t happened. U.S. bases in the region have been badly damaged by Iranian missile and drone strikes. Eighteen American service members have been killed and more than 750 have been wounded—a number the Pentagon keeps adjusting upward even during the war’s quieter stretches.
The result is an uneasy stalemate that Donald Trump has found no way to break. He began the war, egged on by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, assuming it would be a simple duplicate of the U.S. strike that toppled Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and installed a puppet government in Caracas. But the Iranian regime is a far more formidable adversary.
Trump now finds himself in a cruel trap of his own making, desperate to find an exit he can call a victory. On Aug. 24, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced a slate of new economic sanctions that he described as “a sustained campaign to collapse every last option for Iran.” Trump called it “an economic D-Day.” But to expect success from imposing economic sanctions on a country that has spent the last 47 years enduring and evading economic sanctions is a triumph of hope over experience. The Wall Street Journal noted, “Unmentioned in Scott Bessent’s speech announcing ‘Operation Economic Outcast’ was the country that has enabled Iran to withstand years of American pressure: China.”
In June, Trump signed a Memorandum of Understanding to begin a ceasefire and end the war, which had at least two conspicuous flaws: it required Iran to open the strait for only 60 days, and it soon disintegrated because its terms were ambiguously worded and unenforceable. After a series of strikes by each side, Trump declared the ceasefire “over” and called Iran’s rulers “scum.” On Sunday, after weeks of inaction on either side, the U.S. struck targets on an island in the Strait of Hormuz, and Iran responded with missile attacks on an air base in Jordan.
Trump has vacillated repeatedly between threats to obliterate Iran and claims that yet another deal to end the war is about to be reached. But no deal has materialized, and Iran hasn’t backed down. On Aug. 8, as The New York Times reported, the regime demanded that the U.S. “lift its naval blockade and sanctions on Iran, withdraw the U.S. military from around Iran, pay war reparations and release frozen Iranian assets, as well as end attacks on Iran’s allies in the region and threats against the country.” Otherwise, it would keep the strait closed.
The fact that no one can decisively establish whether the strait is even open or closed is a sign of how things have gone. If it’s too early to say that the U.S. has lost the war—there is always a chance, however slim, that the Iranian regime will collapse—it is certainly losing. Operation Epic Fury has become Operation Epic Futility. Trump’s ill-considered war has not only failed but backfired.
Trump’s Objectives? Not Met
The administration launched the war with several stated objectives. Not a single one has been achieved.
Denying Iran the means to build a nuclear weapon?
It retains all the enriched uranium it had when the war began, as well as enhanced incentives to pursue the bomb. David Albright, a former inspector for the International Atomic Energy Agency—which carried out regular monitoring of Iran’s nuclear facilities under the deal reached by the Obama administration—says that even after this war, Tehran could probably build a nuclear weapon in a year or so.
The U.S.-Israeli attacks will only strengthen Iran’s incentive to acquire the ultimate deterrent. Likewise with the Trump administration’s agreement to provide Saudi Arabia with a civilian nuclear energy program and possibly facilitate a uranium enrichment facility. The deal creates a real risk of helping Riyadh, a longtime enemy of Iran, to build a nuclear arsenal.
Destroying Iran’s navy and missile capability?
Some 120 Iranian warships have been sunk or put out of service, the White House says, but the regime has speedboats and drones that it has used to harass shippers and strangle traffic through the Strait of Hormuz.
Tehran has also carried out attacks on targets throughout the region using ballistic missiles and drones. The Washington Post reported in May:
Iranian airstrikes have damaged or destroyed at least 228 structures or pieces of equipment at U.S. military sites across the Middle East since the war began, hitting hangars, barracks, fuel depots, aircraft and key radar, communications and air defense equipment, according to a Washington Post analysis of satellite imagery. … The threat of air attacks rendered some of the U.S. bases in the region too dangerous to staff at normal levels, and commanders moved most of the personnel from these sites out of the range of Iranian fire at the start of the war, officials have said.
Ending the threat posed by Iran’s proxy forces, known as the “axis of resistance”?
In recent weeks, the Houthis in Yemen have attacked Saudi tankers in the Red Sea, as well as targets inside Saudi Arabia. Shortly after the war began, Hezbollah launched attacks on Israel. The U.S. and Saudi Arabia also carried out strikes in Iraq against Iran-backed Shiite militias, which had mounted drone attacks on American forces and Saudi infrastructure.
Trump has groped to find a face-saving way out. “For weeks, President Trump had been laying the groundwork to declare victory in the Iran war should Tehran fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz, even floating the idea privately to senior aides that he’s willing to walk away without a nuclear deal, U.S. officials said,” according to the Wall Street Journal.
Orchestrating regime change?
This was always high on Trump’s list of goals. In January, he commended Iranians who were protesting against their government and posted on Truth Social, “HELP IS ON ITS WAY.” On the first day of the war, he urged them to rise up and topple the regime. But no help was on the way. Not only did the regime survive Khamenei’s assassination, it actually entrenched itself further by installing his son, widely seen as even more hardline than his father, as the new Supreme Leader. Meanwhile, the repression has intensified: the government has resumed public executions, now totaling more than two dozen people allegedly tied to the January protests.
The Counterproductive Consequences
The Strait of Hormuz, one of the most important shipping lanes on the planet, remained open and unobstructed through decades of war and upheaval in the Middle East. The most immediate result of Trump’s decision to go to war was to provoke Iran to block passage of ships through the waterway. The cutoff of oil shipments has reduced global supplies, pushing up the price of crude as well as gasoline, which in the U.S. has jumped from a national average of less than $3 per gallon to more than $4. Shipments of such vital commodities as liquid natural gas, helium, urea, and sulfur have likewise gone missing. “The most immediate, long-term economic danger lies not in fuel prices themselves but in rising food costs and disruptions to the production of advanced technology,” says the forecasting service GIS. “The blockades of container vessels and the destruction of energy infrastructure in the Persian Gulf have severed supply lines for materials that modern industry and agriculture take for granted.”
Last week, Iran and neighboring Oman reportedly reached an economic arrangement over the strait (though, officially, Iran’s government insists the strait remains closed). After American military officials said the strait’s waterways were clear of mines, Trump declared: “That sucker is open.” Traffic has in fact resumed, though at only half its pre-war volume.
In launching the war, Trump expected to be able to dictate a more agreeable future for Iran and the Middle East. Instead, he’s been trying to reach a settlement that would merely restore the status quo ante of unrestricted transit through the strait. So far, it’s eluded him. Having proved the potency of this leverage, the Tehran regime can now wield it as needed, putting at risk the economies of its neighbors, the U.S., and the rest of the world.
Before the war, the United States had a network of military installations in such countries as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the UAE, and Oman that gave Washington the capacity to project power throughout the Middle East. But what had been regarded as a strategic asset has become a strategic vulnerability. Says retired Marine Corps General Frank McKenzie, a former commander of U.S. Central Command, “No one in their right mind would ever put the CENTCOM forward headquarters … 100 miles away from Iran, [in Qatar], yet that’s where it is.”
Now the administration faces the choice of repairing these damaged bases, at a cost of $5 billion or more, or abandoning them. “They’ve already pushed us out of the Persian Gulf effectively in terms of usable military power,” said Rosemary Kelanic, director of the Middle East Program at Defense Priorities.
The Damage is Global
But the outcome has been much more than a mere military defeat. It has been a comprehensive debacle, with consequences far beyond the Persian Gulf.
The toll has not been limited to American personnel, assets, and international standing. The bombing campaign has killed Iranian and Lebanese civilians in the thousands. Military losses on all sides—American, Israeli, Iranian, and allied forces participating in the conflict—run even higher.
In the immediate sense, the war has seriously eroded American military might—the simple capacity to fight enemies and support allies in meeting threats. The administration has used up two-thirds of its stockpile of Patriot missiles and half of its Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) ballistic missile interceptors. The dwindling supplies of these and other weapons have reportedly constrained Trump from carrying out attacks. The U.S. Navy has come under severe strain.
Iran is not the only adversary that benefits. The Pentagon “can’t make up this deficit for years,” said Phillips Payson O’Brien, a security scholar at the University of St. Andrews. “So the United States cannot fight China. It simply can’t do it.” Ukraine, on the other hand, is suffering, because Washington can ill afford to send Patriot interceptors at a time when Kyiv has exhausted its arsenal.
National security hawks have often justified U.S. wars as essential to preserve our credibility. But this one has dealt it a devastating blow. Jacqueline Hazelton, a former U.S. Naval War College professor who wrote Bullets Not Ballots, a study of what actually makes U.S. military interventions succeed, told me directly: “It has shown, after Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq, that the United States speaks loudly and carries a little stick.” The war certainly raises questions about how effective the U.S. military would be in coming to the aid of Taiwan, Japan, or NATO countries if they were attacked.
Trump has done his best to alienate our European allies, greatly discouraging cooperation with Washington on matters important to us. In April, after most NATO members declined to join the offensive against Iran, the Trump administration was already discussing withdrawing from the alliance altogether. Officials floated a “naughty list” of countries to punish over this episode. Trump even canceled one long-running military exercise with South Korea and scaled back another, after its government declined to help in the war effort. Don’t think Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping haven’t noticed.
Trump and the Authoritarian Need for Dominance
Why did Trump start the war? Iran has been a fierce and dangerous enemy for decades, and the temptation to eliminate the problem is not new. In his 2002 State of the Union address, the first after 9/11, President George W. Bush portrayed Iran as part of the “axis of evil,” along with Iraq and North Korea. Shortly after the 2003 invasion of Iraq, an anonymous senior administration official was quoted: “Anyone can go to Baghdad. Real men go to Tehran.” But bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan, neither Bush nor his successors had the appetite to attack Iran. President Obama sought to address the danger it posed by forging a historic agreement to block Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons.
Trump, however, disdains the prudence of his predecessors. In his first term, he renounced the nuclear accord, deeming it “a horrible, one-sided deal.” And his rapid takeover of Venezuela fed his always formidable hubris. His grandiose building projects in Washington stem from his insatiable hunger to glorify himself for decades to come. It’s not hard to imagine the glory he anticipated as the president who finally smashed an enemy that had long bedeviled the United States.
But the war also reflects his obsession with demonstrating dominance, which to the authoritarian mind is the key to success. In his second term, Trump has threatened to annex Canada, seize Greenland, and carry out a “friendly takeover” of Cuba. He managed an unfriendly takeover of Venezuela. Secretary of State Marco Rubio “now effectively controls Venezuela’s finances, the distribution of its natural resources and its government,” The New York Times reports.
To put the U.S. in charge of Iran would have been an earthshaking achievement, dramatizing Trump’s power and reach far beyond our shores. To a president bent on controlling everything he possibly can, it must have been an irresistible fantasy. Instead, the war illustrated a chronic weakness of autocrats and would-be autocrats—their inability to get or absorb honest information from subordinates and experts who can point out the hazards of various ambitions. Trump is notorious for his boredom with intelligence briefings. Maybe some aides tried to warn him how a war with Iran could go wrong. But even if they were so bold as to broach the truth, they had to know that he is largely deaf to unwelcome information.
Now, the unwelcome information comes direct from Tehran, and it can’t be ignored. Trump obviously hoped this war would be a monumental event that would define his presidency and cement his legacy. It is—but not in the way he expected.
© The UnPopulist, 2026
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Among Trump's MANY mistakes in this little war of his is his refusing to learn from Putin's mistakes in Ukraine. Including the effectiveness of low-tech drones over high tech and conventional weapons.
I guess dictators are loathe to be told the truth.
By the way - Great to see Steve Chapman here. I wish he'd publish his own Substack!
“On Aug. 8, as The New York Times reported, the regime demanded that the U.S. “lift its naval blockade and sanctions on Iran, withdraw the U.S. military from around Iran, pay war reparations and release frozen Iranian assets, as well as end attacks on Iran’s allies in the region and threats against the country.”
These are not unreasonable “demands” by Iran because all of these items were promised to Iran by the US in the MOU that Trump signed in June. The MOU was NOT ambiguous. It very specifically said that Iran would control the Strait of Hormuz jointly with Oman, and in consultation with the other Gulf states, and that it would only have to keep the Strait open without fees for 60 days while nuclear talks were held. Other paragraphs of the MOU quite clearly said that the US would lift its naval blockade, lift all sanctions, and unfreeze $24 billion of Iranian assets ($12 billion upon signing the MOU, and the other $12 billion after the end of the nuclear talks). The MOU specified that the US would create a $300 billion recovery fund to rebuild/repair the damage caused by our bombing, ie, reparations. The MOU also said we would make Israel stop bombing other countries in the region.
Please stop repeating the narrative that the MOU was ambiguous, and did not promise these things to Iran. It was clear, it was specific, and it made all these promises. The only thing nuclear Iran was obliged to do after 60 days of talks was to “at a minimum, dilute its uranium reserves”. Paragraph 5 even allowed Iran to charge fees on the Strait after 60 days. Vance negotiated it, and Trump signed it. Iran is owed these things.