Trump 'the biggest loser' as Iran 'revealed deep problems' for US military: analysis

President Donald Trump delivers an address to the nation about the Iran war at the White House in Washington, D.C., April 1, 2026. Alex Brandon/Pool via REUTERS

President Donald Trump might be attempting to call his ceasefire with Iran "a great victory," but according to a scathing new takedown from The Economist, he has in fact been "the biggest loser" of the war, which has "revealed the shallowness of his vision for a new way of wielding American power" and greatly exposed the limitations of the country's military might.

"Not all wars have a winner. But every war has at least one loser and if — a big if — the ceasefire marks the end of the war in Iran, the biggest loser will be Donald Trump," the piece explained. "The conflict has set back his chief war aims and revealed the shallowness of his vision for a new way of wielding American power. The peace is desperately fragile. America and Iran cannot agree on whether it covers Lebanon, being attacked so hard by Israel that the threat to the broader ceasefire seems intentional. They dispute how Iran should open the Strait of Hormuz, an American precondition for talks. And their negotiating positions are so far apart that they cannot agree even on what plan they are to discuss in Islamabad at the weekend."

Breaking it down further, the analysis, published Thursday, argued that despite the fragility of the supposed ceasefire, Trump himself will probably be keen to avoid a return to the conflict, largely because it is now glaringly obvious to him that he should never have started it with Israel. Renewing the strikes would reignite "panic" in the global markets that he is so concerned about, and risk making him look like a "fool." While Iran has its own motivations for avoiding more conflict, the piece argued that the war will most likely restart if the country "overplays its hand" while holding out for the best possible concessions in peace talks.

"Mr. Trump is calling that a great victory," the Economist continued. "It doesn’t look like one alongside his scant progress in fulfilling the war’s three most persuasive aims: to make the Middle East safer and more prosperous by taming Iran; to topple the regime; and to stop Iran becoming a nuclear power once and for all."

Indeed, the war has seen Iran move away from each of these goals, with instability escalating all across the Middle East, a younger new leader installed atop the regime and its nuclear capabilities unchanged. In fact, having to weather such aggression from the U.S. and Israel has almost certainly escalated the risk of nuclear threats from Iran.

On a deeper level, The Economist argued that the U.S. "has even more to reflect on" as it grapples with how badly Trump's war has gone.

"The country used to derive its power by marrying military strength with moral authority," the piece explained. "But when this president threatens to wipe out the Iranian civilisation — a genocide by any other name — he treats morality as if it were a source of weakness. His vision is that might is right, but the war has shown that this is not just a desecration of decades of foreign policy, but that it can be self-defeating, too. Although America’s military superiority was on full display in Iran — integrating artificial intelligence into operations, rescuing downed pilots, achieving supremacy at low cost — it also revealed deep problems."

The piece continued: "The war has shown that the value of America’s might is easy to overestimate. Its factories cannot resupply its armed forces fast enough, whereas Iran fought an asymmetric war with limited weapons. Too much testosterone leads to wretched judgments that confuse lethality with winning. Overwhelming firepower without a strategy saps American strength."

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