A failing grade for the US and Israel in Iran

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President Trump now says he never intended regime change in Iran. On the day he launched the war, he told the Iranian people they would soon have their country back.

That reversal is the clearest illustration of a strategic blunder, which is ending with a raw deal — a deal that strengthens the mafia running Iran and exposes the limits of American power.

This happened despite the decapitation of Iran’s leadership early on and the brutalization of Iran’s security apparatus. But whereas the U.S. and Israel planned effectively for the opening phase, there was no preparation for the economic and geopolitical consequences that followed, once Iran shifted the battlefield into asymmetric disruption and global economic coercion.

Trump will claim victory, but a fair scorecard reveals wreckage and failure.

The reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, for example, is being presented as an achievement. Yet the strait had always been open before. The war allowed Iran to prove it can generate global economic panic through cheap drones and rockets. Iran appears to have promised little beyond the reopening, and it even seems to want a role in administering passage. This will be negotiated in the 60 days of talks. Before the war, the danger of Iran economically blackmailing the world existed only in theory; now it is a demonstrated reality. Iranian official Ali Akbar Velayati brazenly declared they’d do it again, even extending the disruption to the Red Sea via the Houthis.

In short, America’s credibility as guarantor of maritime commerce has been erased.

Meanwhile, the emerging agreement appears nowhere close to dismantling Iran’s nuclear infrastructure as promised. Iran has not explicitly agreed to surrender all highly enriched uranium or to destroy its enrichment facilities.

Iran promises not to pursue nukes — and that outcome is ironic because Trumpworld had ridiculed President Obama’s 2015 nuclear deal, insisting that Iran cannot be trusted. It seems the best-case scenario now is a new version of the deal Trump foolishly tore up in 2018.

The war also transformed perceptions of Iran’s missile capabilities and the vulnerability of the Gulf monarchies. The Gulf states built their economic models around stability that can attract expatriate populations. Iran’s missiles upended that.

Early in the war, Gulf governments hoped for regime change. But having concluded that the U.S. could not deliver that, they moved from hawkish enthusiasm to desperation for de-escalation. Reports that the United Arab Emirates and others may have offered financial inducements to Iran in exchange for restraint reveal the scale of the panic. So Iran emerged from military punishment having strengthened its deterrent position in the Gulf — with the U.S. looking like it cannot protect its allies.

Trump has also walked away from trying to dismantle Iran’s network of proxies. Hezbollah, although weakened by Israel, remains dominant in Lebanon. Hamas and Islamic Jihad continue poisoning any prospect of Israeli-Palestinian coexistence through terrorism. The Houthis can continue disrupting maritime trade and devastating Egyptian Suez Canal revenues at Iran’s command.

Indeed, the emerging framework may strengthen Iran’s leverage by constraining Israeli military freedom of action in Lebanon. Iran appears to have maneuvered itself into a position where Hezbollah gains additional protection through the world’s fear of economic disruption.

As for handing Iran back to its people, it looks like the U.S. will instead hand their oppressors tens of billions of dollars. Trump appears to be demanding no reforms or even a promise not to massacre protests again. Iran is poised to receive enormous sanctions relief, access to frozen assets, renewed trade opportunities, and long-term financial recovery potentially worth hundreds of billions of dollars.

That will strengthen the regime and its repression machinery. Some funds will flow to the proxies, and others will reinforce the security structures responsible for crushing dissent inside Iran. For the Iranian opposition, it’s devastating, which might temper near-term chances of renewed protest. The Iranian people — once told “help is on its way” — have been abandoned.

Finally, Netanyahu spent years tying Israel to the American right and Trump. Meanwhile, relations with Europe deteriorated and support for Israel among U.S. Democrats has collapsed. That left Israel dependent on one unstable political figure.

After the latest Israeli strike in Beirut endangered the talks, Trump exploded at Netanyahu. Other American presidents have pressured Israel privately, but they usually avoid publicly framing Israel as a vassal. That will weaken Israel and make America seem untrustworthy.

For all these reasons, this war became one of the great strategic blunders of the modern era. It lacked any plan for Iran’s predictable blocking of Hormuz. Not only was the need to absorb months of pain not convincingly communicated to America’s allies, but Trump had been actively offending them with idiocies like his threat to invade Greenland.

Iran thus transformed a military defeat into a grand strategic win by shifting the conflict into an economic confrontation. Iran had the advantage in this new struggle because, unlike the West, Iran’s leaders don’t care about their own people’s suffering.

America’s interests have been badly battered as a result. Such are the wages of hubris and foolishness.

Dan Perry is the former London-based Europe-Africa editor and Cairo-based Middle East editor for the Associated Press, the former chairman of the Foreign Press Association in Jerusalem and the author of two books.

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