Trump, Lost in The Failure of His War, Blinks

Whether or not this is the beginning of the end of the Iran War, now we have to talk about humiliation—and what emerges from it

Edited by Sam Thielman

WHATEVER ELSE HAPPENS now, the reality that the White House will spend this week—at least—obscuring is that Donald Trump lost the war he and Israel started, and lost it the moment Iran checkmated him in the Strait of Hormuz. FOREVER WARS called it last Monday.

If you're reading this, you probably saw that early Monday morning, about halfway through Trump's 48-hour deadline for Iran to open the Strait of Hormuz or face the obliteration of its energy facilities—a war crime; as quaint as international law might currently be, militaries cannot lawfully target civilian infrastructure—Trump backed down. He's claiming there are talks under way with the Iranians who want "to make a deal" and is portraying his climbdown merely as a five-day reprieve.

The Iranians, who have reminded everyone who's asked about a ceasefire that the Americans (and Trump in particular) have violated the diplomatic agreements they worked to forge or to reach, say there are no negotiations, only warnings communicated from Tehran about "the dire consequences of any attack on Iran’s vital infrastructure." They say Trump is engaged in market reassurance and nothing more. At the same time, it would not surprise me if the Iranian position in public is different from one being back-channeled. According to the Financial Times, the U.S. may be trying to retcon/incept a diplomatic channel via Pakistan.

While there is surely ferocious improvisation happening in Washington and regional capitals, to say nothing of a narrative war still coalescing—one whose centers of gravity include Wall Street and global energy markets—the realities of the war are that the U.S. is checkmated. Trump cannot open the Strait of Hormuz without a wider military commitment that has minimal public support and even less likelihood of success. The Strait was open the day Trump started the war, so even the arduous nature of resolving the closure of a pivotal commercial waterway was not going to gain him victory of any of his already-erratic wartime aims. He, not Iran, is looking for the exits, and the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) hasn't even arrived in-theater yet.

The United States of America lost one war to Iran, via proxies. That was the 2003-2011 occupation of Iraq. Now it has lost a war to Iran in the open field. Let that sink in. Do these losses feel like humiliation? If so, that's residual American Exceptionalism nesting within your soul. After all, what about the U.S. experience in the Middle East for the last 25 years has given you reason to think that the U.S. would have prevailed in destroying the Islamic Republic of Iran? Doesn't that history, when examined outside the funhouse of American Exception, instead tell an alternative story of the U.S. launching wars it doesn't understand how to win? Especially since this war is on Iranian soil, launched by the Islamic Republic's principal adversaries, with the stakes existential for the regime? 

That should be the humiliation. That the U.S., having learned absolutely nothing from the War on Terror, did this again, and on a far larger scale, where the impact to the global economy is concerned. (And then lost.) Whether Trump resumes the war again on Friday—or whether he attacks military targets before then—and for whatever duration it lasts, that won't change. 

I know what I am about to say next is not how American politics works. But: may this humiliation be the pivot for the United States to begin the overdue process of fundamentally reexamining its posture of permanent war and extraction in the Middle East. We will be right back here in a matter of time if we do not. It is important that this humiliation sting, for the United States is the arsonist, with Israel its junior partner and, for people on the right like Tucker Carlson and Joe Kent, its alibi. Like I said, I know that this is not how American politics works, certainly not at elite levels, where any uncomfortable reality about the bellicosity and exploitation of American hegemony gets ignored or explained away. But if we don't confront it, we will be back here again soon, and it will be worse. I've been saying that for nearly two years, and each time, frankly, I've been vindicated.

That's because the Islamic Republic has won. First it won by surviving. Then it won by regaining the strategic initiative, first by countering U.S. escalation dominance, and then by resetting the terms of the conflict to close off an economically vital chokepoint. 

TRUMP REPRESENTS only the superficial layer of failure here. The American Way of War should come into question. I've been to West Point symposia. I've been to the Combined Arms Center at Fort Campbell. For literally decades, I've been on military fora where the intricacies of professional military education get debated and the military congratulates itself on being an adaptive organization. And the fact of the matter is neither professional military education nor its civilian counterparts are producing leaders who understand that adversary nations leverage the U.S.' weaknesses off the battlefield to produce victory. The U.S. military is not pinning adversaries on the horns of a dilemma, let alone trapping them in their own contradictions. Quite the reverse.

Look at this interview with the former JSOC and CENTCOM commander Joe Votel. It's filled with nonsense like "[the Houthis] took a pretty serious beat down during our counter-Houthi operations some months ago." Uh, no they didn't—the U.S. backed down after a year of not being able to stop them from threatening Red Sea shipping, something the U.S. could have obtained by stopping Israel's genocide, the entire point of the Houthi operation. And Votel thought the U.S. was going to beat Iran?  

Votel says that his greatest fear is "the regime remains in power." That's a wild choice considering the options for "greatest fear" include state collapse, civil war and humanitarian emergency for a country of 90 million people; and that's before we get into the prospect of a nightmarish and bloody U.S. ground operation within Iran. But Votel shares that fear with Israel, which is decidedly not stopping its bombing of Tehran. That's yet another thing I wrote would happen.

Votel’s fear of regime entrenchment makes a certain kind sense from another angle. Mojtaba Khamanei is now the supreme leader of Iran after the U.S. killed his family. By launching their war, the U.S. and Israel, supported by many in Washington who opposed the 2015 Iran deal, have discredited any remaining factions in Iranian politics that advocated dialogue of some sort with the Americans. "The Iranian people demand complete and remorseful punishment of the aggressors," said the speaker of the Parliament, Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf.

Those who remain in power might very well go all out to get a nuclear weapon. After all, Kim Jong-un does not have to worry about an American bombing or regime change operation. What else should the Islamic Republic rely upon to guarantee its safety, now that the U.S. has proven that negotiating with it is worthless? What has this war achieved, except giving Iran a rational choice to go nuclear? I guess one answer, which the U.S. also won't like, is: victory comes from the cone of a missile, so build a whole lot more of them.

News is moving fast, and what I've written above should be considered notes during a shocking but unsurprising moment. I hope this really is the beginning of the end of the war. But since it can easily be a prelude to the next one—as was the period between late June 2025 and late February 2026—it's important we be clear-eyed about how badly the U.S. has lost here.

Another thing I worry about: Donny needs a win. How fucked is Cuba?

THE JERUSALEM POST BEGAN this war running a piece headlined "Purim 2026: History Repeats Itself As Jews Forge Their Fate in Persia." Imagining inviting comparisons to Purim and then losing. Zionism is a hell of a drug. 

Less flippantly, with attention understandably focused on the Iranian battlefield Israel chose, Israel is also seizing Lebanon south of the Litani River. It has quickly displaced an estimated one million people. For context, the Palestinian Nakba of 1948 created 750,000 refugees. The Litani is also a crucial source of fresh water in a region very, very short of it, and where we have just seen desalination plants become military targets. 

The Iran War cannot be considered over without Israel withdrawing from every square inch of Lebanon. If no outside party will force Israel to withdraw, those of us who were alive from 1982 to 2000 know the Lebanese people are more than capable of doing it themselves. 

FINALLY, right before we were set to publish, Jeremy Scahill of Drop Site interviewed an Iranian official. This is really worth reading. They're letting Trump know that they and not him intend to set the terms for how this war ends: 

According to the official, Iran’s conditions for an end to the war include a simultaneous ceasefire in Iran, Lebanon, and Iraq. Iran has consistently said that it will not accept a ceasefire similar to the one requested by Israel and the U.S. that ended the “12-Day War” in June 2025. Tehran has maintained that agreement was exploited to buy time for another U.S.-Israeli war and that Iran will only consider a comprehensive deal.

The war, the official said, created a new dynamic for Iran’s nuclear enrichment. “In light of the violations of international law by the United States, as well as Israel’s extensive attacks on nuclear facilities, Iran will formulate a new doctrine concerning its nuclear industry,” he said. “Under this doctrine, enrichment activities at levels required for national needs will continue, either independently or in cooperation with China and Russia.” Iran had previously insisted on the right to enrich uranium on its soil for purposes of generating energy and medical research.

Iran also wants U.S. sanctions on the procurement of defensive weapons and equipment lifted. Iranian ballistic missiles, the official asserted, represent a deterrent against future aggression that Iran will not abandon. “Given its defensive nature in countering Israel, this program will continue unchanged and with increased intensity in the event of a ceasefire,” he said. “The missile program shall not be subject to negotiation under any prospective talks.”

Elsewhere in the interview, the Iranian official draws no distinction between continued Israeli strikes and those conducted by the United States. Does that sound like a vanquished foe looking for a way out?