President Donald Trump's war in Iran has long been derided by defense experts for being unsustainable, yet the Republican continues to insist that the war is "small potatoes" and working out in his favor. Yet according to a recent report, the last week alone contained so much bad news from the conflict that it's impossible for Trump to wave it off.
"In this week alone, 13 separate incidents in the Middle East prove this is not the ghost war the president is trying to convince his MAGA base it is," The Daily Beast's David Gardner reported on Sunday. "This isn’t TV reality. It’s the real thing. Trump’s biggest bluff didn’t work. He should have folded. Instead, he twisted. Into knots. And now he is trying to pretend it never happened."
Noting that 18 American soldiers have been killed and 820 have been wounded since the conflict started, Gardner elaborated on just a handful of the violent incidents that have recently occurred which prove the Iran war is a bigger deal than Trump is making it out to be.
"Overnight Iranian attacks on Tuesday also hit the Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan, damaging as many as nine U.S. aircraft," Gardner wrote. "Missiles 'struck the maintenance, preparation, and deployment sites of F-35, F-16, and F-15 fighter jets, as well as their shelters, inflicting heavy damage on the enemy,' claimed the IRGC."
He added, "In Kuwait this week, Iran claimed it attacked America’s Ali Al Salem Air Base with bombs and drones and struck the rooms of a U.S. commander. Off the coast, more details emerged about a 19-year-old sailor who tried to jump to his death from the rusting USS Lincoln as Patriot missile stockpiles were depleted and diesel prices hit an all-time high of $6 a gallon on Friday."
The journalist concluded, "All this in a week that Donald Trump was seeking to convince a midterm convention in Dallas that Iran was handled. We may not like to think about it, but this war is far from over. And it could get a hell of a lot worse."
Trump's invasion of Iran is so controversial that parents of children who died in the conflict are speaking out.
"Jim Khork, along with his wife, Stacey, sat down for an exclusive interview with CBS News to share more about their grief, but also, their frustrations about what they consider is a lack of accountability for military shortcomings ahead of the deadly attack," CBS News' Jonah Kaplan reported on Thursday. "The Army confirmed to the Khorks and CBS News that its probe into the deadly Iranian attack was completed in early July, but they have yet to release it."
In April, an economist outlined the long-term damage the war is causing the US economy.
“I would guess that yes, destruction of Iranian (and some other) energy facilities in the Persian Gulf area will have at least a medium-term effect keeping prices for crude oil and chemical fertilizer high, and that in turn means gasoline prices may come down only slowly,” Dr. Ed Gresser, Vice President and Director for Trade and Global Markets at the Progressive Policy Institute, told AlterNet. “Same for other petroleum-based products such as plastics, skin creams, and so on. The high potential of conflict also adds risk premiums to shipping and other costs.”
He added, “Longer-term, lots of open questions. One is whether the administration will really concede that Iran has a right to close the Strait of Hormuz and assess tolls on shipping passing through it. That would make the smaller Gulf monarchies and to some extent Iraq reliant on Iranian good will for all of their exports. Likewise, Asian countries are the main buyers of Persian Gulf energy, and their supplies would be much less secure.”