Embarrassing leaks reveal just how badly Trump 'lost': expert

More than six and one-half months have passed since U.S. President Donald Trump, with the help of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, launched a war against Iran. Trump's critics, both left and right, fear he has gotten the United States into the type of "forever war" he campaigned against. And according to international relations professor Nicholas Grossman, recent leaks show that the "damage" from the war is even more far-reaching than what has been previously reported.

Grossman gave his grim analysis during an appearance on The New Republic's podcast, "The Daily Blast."

Podcast host Greg Sargent, a former Washington Post columnist, warned, "It's a widespread assumption among political strategists that foreign policy rarely matters in U.S. elections. But what if Donald Trump's failures on this front are so disastrous and destructive that he's about to break this rule too? Trump's Iran fiasco is getting worse, and newly leaked photos show dramatic damage to the U.S. abroad. On Russia and Ukraine, he buffoonishly proclaimed that he'd secured an agreement that neither would attack the other's energy sources, but then, that blew up in his face."

Guest Grossman warned that Trump, with both the Iran war and the ongoing Russia/Ukraine conflict, "has disrupted the international system by removing" the "bedrock idea of American credibility."

Grossman told Sargent, "And another — perhaps the biggest current example of Trump's blown credibility — is the way that the United States has not been providing security to its Middle Eastern allies, to all these different Gulf Arab states, especially Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia has had to deal now with the biggest attacks against it of the war so far, where an Iran-backed militia attacked its east-west pipeline, and they went and asked Trump for help. MBS (Saudi Crown Prince Muhammed bin Salman) reportedly called Trump twice and asked him to get involved in this Yemen conflict and clear it up. And both times, the United States said no."

Grossmann continued, "And the Gulf Arab states are reportedly shocked by this, and it upends the entire Middle East architecture. And Trump just simply isn't there, and also isn't able to stop either the Houthis or the Iranians."

When Sargent asked Grossmann "why the situation's stuck" with Iran, the international relations professor laid out some more reasons why the conflict is so disastrous.

"So, they're both blockading each other, occasionally bombing each other, but largely holding back from full-scale war," Grossmann told Sargent. "So nobody's giving in, and nobody is letting ships go through. The U.S., under Trump, has tried bombing a few more times, but it hasn't really accomplished anything. And the Iranians aren't giving in because their allies are on the march, like against Saudi Arabia — because while they're feeling economic damage from this squeeze, they are also able to impose a lot of economic damage … The United States has bases all throughout the Middle East, and this is the big geopolitical architecture that is changing. Trump has lost the Gulf."

Grossmann added, "He's lost freedom of navigation. It seems like he's losing Saudi Arabia and losing the Middle East. And it's not clear where the chaos of it will go, but it's clear that they do not have a handle on it at all."