US President Donald Trump has declared “total and complete victory, 100%” in Iran in several versions, at least 32 times, by NBC News’s conservative count. Yet the war, now in its sixth month, sputters on and on – along with the president’s other empty boasts.
Just this week, after more threats to obliterate the ancient Persian civilization with “the biggest attack since WWII,” he suddenly called the attack off “for the Future benefit of the world.”
He apparently didn’t even inform his Israeli partner, who reportedly learned of the decision the same way the rest of the world did: in a post on Trump’s Truth Social account.
It looked like another case of what has come to be known as TACO, Trump Chickens Out Again. This is not the first – nor likely the last – time he warns of apocalyptic strikes only to back down at the last minute.
The Iranians, along with America’s adversaries and allies, see it as a sign of weakness.
“We have just been asked by Iran, and other Middle Eastern Countries, to hold off any attack,” Trump tweeted. Not true, said the Iranians. So, who really asked? His old friend, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, phoned Trump, urging him to stand down.
He told the president to try more negotiating and less bombing because when the US attacks Iran, it retaliates against its neighbors in the Persian Gulf as well as American installations.
Trump told reporters on the way home from another golf weekend at one of his clubs, “There’s a deal on Hormuz, and then there will be a deal on the nuclear, or you might call it the denuclearization, of Iran.” Don’t hold your breath.
On June 25, 2025, he declared Iran’s nuclear capacity had been “completely and totally obliterated.” However, seven months later, re-obliteration was his rationale for starting a war of choice in partnership with Israel. He did not cite any imminent threat to justify the February 28 surprise attack.
His war agenda included destruction of the country’s ballistic missile capacity and its network of terror proxies plus the hope – minus any preparation or material assistance – that the Iranian people would rise and overthrow the Islamist regime after the US and Israel had killed its Supreme Leader.
Notice what was missing. There was no mention of free passage in the Strait of Hormuz because no one seemed to think it would be a problem. Twenty percent of the world’s oil and gas supply transits that narrow waterway, but by all accounts, neither the United States nor Israel anticipated Iran would weaponize it by closing it and disrupting the global economy.
That’s not all that was missing: Trump apparently had no clear strategy, no support base, or exit plan for his war. Allies were not briefed in advance (although later excoriated for failing to send help when things went south), and he failed to go to the American people at the outset to explain his plan and seek their support.
Iran's probable win
Trump's war of choice is threatening to turn into just what he swore to prevent: another endless war. Military schools will study this for generations about how not to go to war. Trump likes to say, “peace is at hand,” forgetting that was Henry Kissinger’s excuse for prolonging another endless and failed war.
Victory or defeat in this war will be defined by the status of the Strait of Hormuz when the shooting stops. It was freely open to all before February 28.
Neither Trump nor Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or their advisers appear to have thought that Hormuz would prove to be Iran’s most potent weapon, and that it would be wielded so quickly and effectively.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei said this week that “under no circumstance will the Strait of Hormuz return to the situation before the war.” And Iran intends to charge tolls.
Trump once played with the idea of partnering with Iran in collecting those tolls, but as Sen. John Kennedy (R-Louisiana) has said, the president sometimes is simply “thinking out loud” because he “grows anxious when he has an unexpressed thought.”
Oman, however, is negotiating with Iran for such an arrangement, while countries around the Gulf are developing plans for costly new routes to largely bypass Hormuz.
Control of the Strait of Hormuz is potentially worth tens of billions of dollars annually in transit fees for Iran and power over a major portion of the world’s resources.
Iran’s Houthi allies in Yemen have tightened another vise, closing the Bab al-Mandab gateway to the Red Sea and the Suez Canal, accounting for another 8-10% of the world’s petrol traffic, including the bulk of Saudi exports.
Trump frequently says Iran is anxious to end this war, and that’s probably true – but it’s not as anxious as he is. And it shows. As he focuses on guns and glory, voters at home are thinking about gas and groceries and how their taxes are likely to go up to pay for this hundred-billion-dollar war.
By a nearly 2:1 margin, most Americans disapprove of this war; they feel Trump has not clearly explained his objectives and that it is not worth fighting. His own approval rating has plunged to record lows, and the Iran conflict is a major factor, as is the economy, another victim of his war.
Whatever the outcome of this conflict, Trump can be expected to declare he personally achieved a historic and total victory and has saved the world (“Where’s my Nobel prize?”).
History will not be so kind. If the Islamic Republic of Iran still has a nuclear program, an arsenal of ballistic missiles and drones, a network of terrorist proxies, cyberhackers trying to sabotage American infrastructure, and an unpopular and repressive regime run by religious fanatics – in other words, it survives largely intact – it wins.
And if it emerges with the ability to choke the global economy through its control of the formerly wide-open Strait of Hormuz, that is a major victory for the Iranian regime and a humiliating defeat for Trump and the United States.
The writer is a Washington-based journalist, consultant, lobbyist, and former legislative director at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.