Trump’s Iran gamble won’t advance his prospects at home or with China

2026.03.17 12:50 Illustration: Craig Stephens The eminent British military strategist Michael Howard famously said that the purpose of forecasting wars is not to get it right, but to avoid getting it terribly wrong. US President Donald Trump has already got it terribly wrong. No one knows why he launched a war with Israel against Iran. Trump may have been partly correct when he posted on Truth Social that, “Iran’s Navy is gone, their Air Force is gone, missiles, drones and everything else are being decimated, and their leaders have been wiped from the face of the earth”. While clearly exaggerations, the US has inflicted heavy damage. Yet, he was clearly wrong in claiming, “We have unparalleled firepower, unlimited ammunition, and plenty of time.” The US has neither unlimited ammunition nor plenty of time. Less than two weeks into the war with Iran, the Financial Times reported that the US had expended years’ worth of key munitions, including large numbers of Tomahawk cruise missiles. And Trump doesn’t have plenty of time ahead of the coming US midterm elections. He has few options now: even if he did declare victory and wished merely to withdraw, Iran would not allow it. Tehran has little left to lose. Iran can keep striking Israel and US military bases in other countries using drones and missiles it can continuously produce. This war raises a critical question: does the US have a coherent national strategy? The short answer is no. If the war in Afghanistan was one of the US’ “forever wars”, the Middle East is America’s permanent battlefield. Since the 1980s, the US has been involved in at least six wars in the region. Israel is the US’ Achilles’ heel. Given the close US-Israel relationship and the influence of the pro-Israel lobby, successive US administrations have supported Israel, differing only in the degree of support. For the US, withdrawing from the Middle East will be harder than exiting the war in Ukraine. In this sense, Israel’s leverage exceeds that of a

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