U.S. President Donald Trump gestures as he boards Air Force One en route to Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, to attend a world leaders' summit on ending the Gaza war, amid a U.S.-brokered prisoner-hostage swap and ceasefire deal. (REUTERS)
Over the past three months, President Donald Trump has scrambled to justify his decision to launch war on Iran in the face of an overwhelming majority of Americans who say he's failed to explain the administration's goals. Through it all, he’s repeatedly asserted the relative brevity of the war in comparison to the Vietnam, Iraq and other past conflicts, insisting that his war has only gone on for a few weeks, and then a few months. Last week, he posted a chart on Truth Social showing the length of previous wars in relation to his, but on Tuesday, a top political scientist pointed out a tragic irony to Trump’s boast.
“Past presidents needed years to lose a war,” noted famed political analyst and author Ian Bremmer over a screenshot of Trump’s chart.
Bremmer is pointing out that, for all Trump’s bragging about the duration of the conflict, he is ignoring how quickly it spiraled into a disastrous outcome. The consequences of the war have been far-reaching and will be long-lasting. It has destabilized the global economy, skyrocketed prices, disrupted supply chains, fractured alliances, shattered regional security, revealed major weaknesses in the U.S. military, entrenched, empowered and potentially enriched an Iranian regime that might end up extracting economic benefits from Hormuz on a continual basis and has killed and injured thousands while displacing countless more.
On top of all that, it has failed to achieve any of Trump’s stated goals, as Bremmer noted to commenters who replied to his post attempting to justify the war.
“Trump stated war goals,” reminded Bremmer: “Rescuing the Iranian people, taking the oil, ending Iranian ballistic missile capabilities, ending Iran’s support for regional proxies, removing Iran’s enriched uranium stockpiles, ending Iran’s nuclear enrichment capabilities.”
None of these aims has been achieved, and the war — now estimated to cost at least $29 billion — continues under a tenuous ceasefire. With Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth arguing that Trump doesn’t need congressional approval to renew strikes against Iran, a second irony to the president’s chart is, of course, that all wars start out short.
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