Trump and the US have lost the Iran war and we need keep pointing it out

US president Donald Trump doesn’t appear to have any idea what he is doing over the Iran war. Trump has claimed victory several times, while also pledging to keep bombing. He’s told reporters that the war will end with or without a deal now.

Trump cannot tell the truth that this war is lost. The US has been humiliated. Pointing this out must be at the centre of any anti-war politics going forward.

Trump is finished

The Financial Times reported on 31 March that Trump told journalists:

We’ll leave whether we have a deal or not. It’s irrelevant.

The US and Israel attacked Iran first on 28 February without provocation. Iran was offering unprecedented concessions in negotiations at the time. The Pentagon has since stated there was no imminent threat from Iran. And the UN’s atomic watchdog, the IAEA, has said there is no evidence Iran was developing a nuclear weapon.

The Iranian government remains intact after over a month of intensive US and Israeli attacks. The US-Israeli attack’s main achievement seems to be a global energy crisis after Iran predictably closed the straits of Hormuz, a vital oil channel.

The FT also reported on 31 March that Trump indicated he wanted to:

knock out every single thing there.

Adding:

They don’t have to make a deal with me when we feel that they are . . . put into the Stone Ages” without being able to “come up with a nuclear weapon”.

Despite this erratic and belligerent rhetoric, there’s a strong sense that the war is lost in everything but name.

It’s over

Author and journalist Spencer Ackerman wrote on 31 March:

IT’S WEEK FIVE of the Iran War—past the point Donald Trump initially forecasted it would be over—and the Trump administration has a new line: The Strait of Hormuz doesn’t matter.

He referred to an interview on 30 March in which secretary of state Marco Rubio tried vaguely to save face for the US. Rubio did this by, among other things, trying to:

convince an audience that the aims of the war were limited, achievable and consistent.

Ackerman went on:

Here we have the foreign minister of a belligerent power—the regnant superpower, no less—insisting that if the U.S. ceases fighting with the Strait of Hormuz closed, it’s still victory by the original terms the U.S. set out, no matter how thoroughly Iran has obviated those terms.

Adding:

That’s not just a lost war. That’s a humiliation.

The warmongers can’t be allowed to get away with their ridiculous assertion that the US, which has achieved none of its goals, has in any way won:

A narrative that the 2026 War was a success will hasten both that return and to the deeper catastrophes it will unlock.

He warned that we must tell the truth of the US defeat or:

We will be right back here if the architects, the profiteers, the propagandists and the forerunners of this war get away with their evasions once again.

One of the reasons we still got an Iran war after the disasters of Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq and others is that no proverbial heads rolled. On Iran, they have to. Failure in this area guarantees the next war – and the one after that.

Featured image via the Canary