Why Trump Will Lose The Iran War
Unless he quits
First I’d like to say that I don’t believe the Iranians are capable of militarily defeating the Israeli-American armada and it will not be a military defeat for the United States, although if the United States decides to put its ships in the Strait of Hormuz or even attempt a naval invasion into Iran proper, there will be huge casualties from FPV and other drones.
My main thesis is that Trump and not necessarily the United States is going to lose this war due to a series of economic, political and reputational casualties that he’s going to suffer.
But before I go over it, I also would like to make it very clear that the economic and humanitarian damages that Iran is going to suffer will be much greater in volume. That is obvious, but at the same time, the tolerance for pain and suffering there is much higher than it is in the United States, especially when they are necessary for their own survival.
Special Military Operation gone wrong
It does appear that the initial objective was to try to achieve a Venezuela style coup, to decapitate the Iranian leadership and then have Masoud Pezeshkian or some other moderate take the position of power and re-negotiate from a weaker position.
I don’t know for sure if this was the plan, but circumstantial evidence of the most amount of strikes occurring in the first few days of the war, sparing of Pazeshkian, Venezuela experience and appearing discomforted when the Iranian regime didn’t fell makes me conclude it was their plan A.
Plan B as we now learn is a prolonged war, done for the purposes of completely degrading Iranian military and “nuclear” capabilities and also likely attacking civilian infrastructure like they already have.
Evidence that we’re operating on plan B came up in early March, when US officials admitted that the operation may drag until September and may involve deploying US troops on the ground, using the Kurds as expandable meat or continuing to bomb Iran into oblivion without a ground invasion.
If the goal is regime change, you need to deploy the troops, if it’s about destroying Iranian military capacity, you can get away with it without the troops, but there is no evidence that the Iranians are willing to capitulate when they’re offered the US taking their oil, like with Venezuela for peace.
Charlie Kirk predicted what Iran’s response will be after the US took out its leadership and killed many of its civilians. Just as he said, Iran attacked every US ally in the middle east and caused as much chaos as possible, despite huge humanitarian costs to themselves.
Iran has upped their game to a significant degree, not just by blocking the strait of Hormuz, causing the oil prices to rise above 100 dollars a barrel, but also by attacking oil, military and economic objectives in the Gulf states for which the United States was clearly not prepared.
The United States and Israel have likewise promised death and destruction for the Iranians and are now exploring the possibilities of using Kurdish separatists to destroy the country. Most crucially, Donald Trump has refused to give legitimacy to Reza Pahlavi, the leader of the Iranian opposition and the self-proclaimed King, which is to say that Trump doesn’t know exactly what he’s doing but he certainly is trying to up the game.
And when you up your game, it is hard to de-escalate especially when you are facing an existential war like Iran does right now. This is to say that there are no real incentives for the Iranian regime to de-escalate or sign a peace treaty with the United States. First they can’t trust the United States and Israel, second the United States and Israel kill their leaders, they killed civilians and finally there doesn’t appear to be any non-humiliating peace agreements for Iran.
And so when you combine this with the inability to destroy the Iranian regime militarily without a costly ground invasion you are left with a “forever war” and a forever war is going to be economically, politically and reputationally costly.
The Economic Cost of the War
The direct cost of the war is probably not as big for the American budget. 9 days of war costed up to 5 billion dollars which is not especially expensive, but it’s not cheap either. If we assume the war will go on for another year and its cost will remain constant it’s an expense of 200 billion US dollars or about as much as the US aid to Ukraine and Israel combined since 2022.
But if the United States decides to do a ground invasion and suffers casualties in the process, the cost will likely be worse than the Iraq war.
But right now that’s not even the most important part, the direct costs now are economical, oil and gas prices have increased by over 40% since the war started and they will remain high for as long as Iran is able to sink ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz which may be for months.
We also don’t know what’s the cap price for oil and WSJ predicts the price could be as high as 200 dollars a barrel. Besides the price of gas increasing, this can unleash a chain of unintended consequences and cause an economic collapse on a scale of 2008 if not worse. And this economic crisis will be much worse than whatever the US might have spent for a ground invasion in Iran.
Likewise, the more the Gulf States are getting bombed, the less likely they are to invest in US businesses, but that’s just a side note.
Reputational Costs
Besides proving once again that the international rule of law does not exist and Israel with the United States can do whatever they want, these actions undermine the confidence of key US allies in the middle east. Why would Qatar or UAE want to do business with the United States or provide territory for US bases if that will come at a cost to their own nation’s wealth and prestige because most importantly, the United States is not able to protect them as well as it is able to protect Israel.
This is essentially going to be the crux of my argument, Trump and Rubio have exposed to the world how business is done in America. Israel is in the driving seat, Trump’s administration merely responds to the decisions already made in Tel-Aviv.
This might be fine if you’re Jewish or indifferent to maintaining an American empire, but it also signals to other US allies that the surest way to secure good relations with Washington is to win Israel’s approval first.
Some countries like Turkiye (a NATO state) won’t be able to do that and so eventually the United States will begin losing allies in best case scenario or in the worse case scenario attack them jointly with Israel.
Qatar was already attacked by Israel and the United States couldn’t do nothing to stop the Israelis.
If you’re an Arab state or any state anywhere in the world and seeing this, you either pull an Argentina, and join the United States in serving Israel or you decide you want nothing to do with any of it.
Trump has already called NATO countries for help, but it seems to be ignored thus far because they understand how ridiculous all of this is.
Political Costs
Finally the most important part of it is going to be the political cost of this adventure.
What sets this war apart from other wars the US engaged in, namely the Iraq war and the Afghanistan war is that this war has a major partisan divide. The Republicans are supportive of the war whereas the Democrats are not.
But, we all know that public opinion doesn’t matter as much as official opinion. True, but here the situation for Republicans is even worse:
While the previous two wars enjoyed a broad legal consensus in both the house and the senate, what sets this war apart from other ones, besides launching it without congress approval is the fact that almost all Democrats have voted against it.
That is to say, this is a war of Trump, the Republican Party and the Jewish oligarchs against the American and Iranian people who are currently represented by the Democratic Party.
And guess what, the Democrats want to impeach Trump, they failed before, but right now given how unpopular the war is already, and given that there will be even more US casualties in the war, especially with the event of a ground invasion, the Democrats will likely sweep the government and do what they’ve always wanted and it will be perfectly legal because Trump bypassed the Congress when he “decided” to Iran.
The mechanism works as follows:
The war pisses off a lot of people ← already passed that stage
Midterms defeat
Impeachment
Even if Trump does “win” the war somehow, a lot of people will still get pissed, vote for the Democrats and if they control both the House and the Senate, they will impeach his ass out of office.
It’s a lose-lose scenario for Trump. If the Democrats get both the house and the senate and the probability that they will is very high and even if they don’t there are at least two Republican congressmen who will vote for impeaching Trump.
What’s certain is that right before the war Trump had about 40% approval rating and it appears that he lost a few points since the war began. But that is just the beginning, the more war drags (and it will, unless Trump cucksout) the worse will be the chances of the Republicans not to lose both the House and the Senate.
More US casualties, increased inflation and gas prices are going to finish the Republicans off in the midterms. And notice, that will do the damage just enough without suffering a major military defeat like losing a couple of ships, or not being able to advance beyond 200 kilometers into Iran.
But now imagine, if the US does suffer a major military defeat (which is not unlikely if there will be a ground invasion), then there will be a complete blue wave like we’ve never seen before.
What’s important to remember about this war, is that most Americans don’t see it as an American-Iranian war. They see it as a war of choice of Trump and the Israelis. There is not going to be a rallying around the flag effect like happened in Iran whose regime they want to topple. So the Republican Party is going to be attacked from every direction, from the far-right, America First, independents, non-aligned, liberals and leftists and these attacks are going to sway the public opinion into the direction even more unfavorable than is now the case.
At the same time, Trump could pull-out from the war at any moment, like he did with the Houthis, but that of course, assumes the United States is a sovereign nation. Latest news confirm that ending the war will have to be a mutual Israeli-American decision and there is no evidence that the Israelis want peace. Ending the war will be highly unpopular in Israel with just 4.5% of Israeli Jews opposing the war.
Likewise, at home the situation isn’t much better. Jews are the only ethnic group in the United States to be overwhelmingly supportive of the Iran war and so there will be a lot of pressure from the Jewish oligarchs and AIPAC to continue waging it, irrespective of economic, political and reputational losses that the United States will suffer.
That is why I am confident that the Trump regime, but not the United States are going to lose this war irrespective of what happens on the battlefield, though I am also quite confident that the Americans are not going to conquer Iran before the midterms.
Pulling from the war would require damaging relations for Israel and I don’t think Trump possesses enough political capital to do this. Best he could do is to bomb Iran for another month and hope they eventually peace out, but I’m not sure how viable this is. Certainly not when Trump is demanding a total surrender and is bombing their schools. For a peace to be made, it must also appeal to Iranians.
If Gaza went through a genocide and Hamas is still around, there is a case to be made that the Iranians will not capitulate either. If Trump and the Israelis go nuclear or attempt to pull a Gaza 2.0, then Trump’s regime may be put on trial for war crimes by the United States government headed by the Democrats and if Trump attempts to institute a dictatorship in an attempt to save his ass that will be “it” for the United States democracy. Arguably the worst imaginable result that will send waves of chaos all across the globe.
