America is losing Trump’s war of choice on Iran and it may cost him GOP-control of Congress. This war will do lasting harm to the nation.
Donald Trump’s losing war of choice against Iran passed the six-month mark Friday, and the folly of this reckless, costly military adventure has become increasingly ruinous for America. It has done far more harm than good, with the casualties mounting for U.S. service members, a deepening stalemate in the Strait of Hormuz and a wounded global economy.
United States Navy photo
Instead of bringing about regime change or ending the nuclear threat from Tehran, the president ignored wise warnings not to attack and stirred up a dangerous, vengeful Iran. Predictably, his actions now have given the mullahs at least partial control over shipping in a strait where 20 percent of the world’s oil once passed freely.
Disastrously, he has weakened America’s military, alienated U.S. allies and irreparably damaged the nation's reputation and place in the world. This war without end has further isolated this nation abroad and driven prices higher at home from gas to fertilizer, hitting voters’ pocketbooks hard as the cost of food, housing, energy and healthcare are already rising faster than earnings.
Truth is always the first casualty in war, but this president has put falsehoods about the failing conflict on steroids. A war he promised would last only weeks has passed the half-year mark on Friday. It’s not a win, as Trump has claimed. It’s stretching into another forever war. With no clear strategic goals, resolution, or exit strategy in sight, Trump’s is mired in a quagmire of his own making and there are dimming hopes that his path can lead to peace any time soon.
The American public didn’t want another Mideast war, and less than a third support this military action against Iran, polls show. The Pentagon’s vital munitions and interceptors are depleted, its global forces overtaxed and its ability to project power and stability in Europe and Asia dangerously strained.
But Americans are rapidly building toward a vote of no confidence in Trump’s damaging, corrupt and lawless leadership in the coming mid-term elections. It’s not just Democrats and independents who are outraged, but more and more Republicans are moving away from MAGA, or may not vote, to check Trump’s unbridled power.
To be sure, Trump has captured the GOP and now surpassed Ronald Reagan and Abraham Lincoln as the Republican president most admired by GOP voters in one recent poll. But many Republican candidates are worried his policies, low approval ratings and unpopular war have made him a liability and are distancing themselves from him in the coming campaign.
“On issue after issue, from tariffs to the Iran war to the Epstein files, non-MAGA Republicans have broken sharply with the MAGA base, often landing closer to independents and even Democrats than to their fellow partisans,” argued one analysis by the Brookings Institution.
Bolstered by his sycophantic GOP allies in Congress, Trump has managed to run free and harm the nation’s economy, attack friends and foes with mindless tariffs, coddle dictators and threaten the integrity of America’s voting system. The man who claimed he would bring down inflation and end the Ukraine war on day one has done neither. This unnecessary Iran war and its widely foreseen consequences could and should cost Trump his party’s control of Congress, but its long-term effects may be far more devastating for the nation.
Just one example is Trump’s latest unprovoked trade war with Canada, which will further hurt American wallets and workers, and his ridiculous attempt to rename Lake Ontario as Lake America. Like other blunders, this is only the latest wag-the-dog distraction from failing policies.
Especially troubling is the president’s abuse and misuse of the U.S. military. As a young war correspondent for the Chicago Tribune, embedded with the Air Force pool in Saudi Arabia during the Persian Gulf War in 1991, I was able to interview U.S. fighter, bomber and surveillance crews returning from flying missions against Iraqi Republican Guard positions in Kuwait and tell their stories. There were scores of reporters embedded with the U.S. military and Americans got news, insights and ground truth from our coverage of the war and our troops.
At the tip of the spear, America’s fighters are second to none, and with few exceptions they have performed bravely, effectively and admirably in this war. But today’s Pentagon is at war with the 1st Amendment and the press corps and has granted precious few embed opportunities to the media to tell the firsthand accounts of U.S. warriors. This futile and senseless hostility to the press and the truth of the war actually hurts Americans’ knowledge of the conflict and the courageous work of our military.
One tragedy still being investigated is the horrifying, apparently accidental bombing of a girls’ school, next to an active Iranian missile base in Minab, Iran, on the first day of the war in which an estimated 175 children and teachers were killed, according to Iranian officials. The Pentagon is still investigating whether a missile went astray, but a preliminary assessment suggested the U.S. was at fault.
The administration needs to be straight with the American people. Experts accurately dispute Trump’s falsehoods and misleading statements about how the U.S. is winning the war. The war goes on, and the Strait is not yet fully open. Two commercial ships were attacked by Iran two weeks ago. Trump thought Iran would be a relatively easy war to win after his successful though ill-advised military operation in Venezuela. He was wrong. His advisors warned him, but he didn't listen.
He thought Iran would fold and not have the strength to block the critical Strait of Hormuz. He was wrong, again, ignoring warnings about Iran’s ability to choke off that crucial waterway. No other president before him made that foolish and costly mistake. It was widely predicted. Iran is an outlaw state that must be contained, but not by an ill-conceived unnecessary war. Even Vice President JD Vance, a former Marine who served in Iraq, opposed going to war with Iran before Trump decided to attack.
Trump joined Israel and went into the war with hubris and no clear or, as yet, successful tactics to win. His reasons for justifying the conflict changed like the wind, ranging from regime change at the start of the war Feb. 28, to his claims of obliterating Iran’s nuclear capability later on, or his vows to destroy Iran’s ability, along with its proxies, to wage war on U.S. military bases, allies and interests in the region. Iran’s regime is still intact, and its forces are still fighting.
The assassinated Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was replaced by an apparently harder line regime. The U.S. successfully destroyed most of Iran’s naval and air forces, but Iranian forces continue to manage attacks with drones and missiles. While the U.S. did great damage to Iran’s nuclear program, it did not eliminate Iran’s remaining capability to build a bomb and appears to have incentivized the mullahs to try.
The Strait of Hormuz was open when Trump started the war; now it is under fire by Iranian air attacks, and shipping has slowed significantly.
Americans should be proud of their warfighters in and around the Persian Gulf, but their leadership failed them. The Trump administration has been careless about long deployments, reckless in burning through needed interceptors and in denial about reports of hunger, bad plumbing, lost morale and even despair by some family members of sailors on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln and other ships in and around the Persian Gulf.
Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth appear to have lost this war, lost the strait, lost the U.S. public and lost support from many of America’s allies. Iran also had a say in this war and they appear more determined than ever to keep fighting and attacking America and its interests.
“Death to America” has been shouted out in the streets for almost 50 years in Iran, and those shouts ring out still, today, even though the public has been slowly turning against their repressive, murderous and terrorist regime for decades. Iran’s people are worse off today.
Hegseth told Congress recently that so far, the Iran the war has cost the nation at least $37.5 billion in direct military expenditures through mid-July. The conflict has led to led to the deaths of 18 service members and 757 wounded, according to new Pentagon numbers.
The Trump administration asked lawmakers on June 24 for another $86.1 billion in supplemental appropriations this year for various “urgent” funding and activities, including $67.1 billion for Department of Defense military and intelligence activities.
Before Congress approves more funding, it needs to reassert its war powers authority over who is allowed to declare war in this country and force Trump to find a way to cut America’s losses and end this one. For now there is no end in sight.
Storer Rowley