Alan Zendell, April 9, 2026

The silliness over Donald Trump and Iran’s leaders both claiming victory in Trump’s thirty-eight day war masks a more troubling reality. For Iran, “victory” means that the regime still exists, and they still have the power and leverage to disrupt the entire world’s economy. Most important, the alleged trigger for the war, Iran’s nine-hundred pounds of enriched uranium, is still where it was.

Trump claims he proved that America has the most powerful military on Earth, but that’s like saying he proved the sun rises every morning. Everyone knows it does. So Trump got to play with his lethal toys, order around a bunch of generals, and dictate actions to the rest of the world – except, every foreign leader ignored him except the guy who dragged him into this war in the first place, Benjamin Netanyahu.

Trump’s fury at finding himself impotent to influence former allies and adversaries alike is evident in his increasingly bizarre behavior. While bragging about military successes, he fails to mention the blow American prestige has taken around the world. Because all that matters to Donald Trump is ego gratification, he thinks causing Europe, Canada, Australia, Japan, and the Philippines to realize they can no longer count on us to defend them and the world order is a good thing.

The truth is, it’s a very bad thing. It disrupts the relative stability the world has seen, at least in terms of avoiding world wars, since 1945. Moreover, not only has Trump caused the entire world to view America as a declining world power, despite its military prowess, but even some of his allies are being hurt. If Hungary’s Viktor Orban loses Sunday’s election, many political experts believe it will be because of his close ties to Trump.

There’s an opinion piece in today’s New York Times by Steven Erlander that describes the current situation as America’s Suez moment, a reference to 1956 when France and Britain attacked Egypt to force the re-opening of the Suez Canal without coordinating with the United States. President Eisenhower ordered the attack stopped, and both Britain and France withdrew, acknowledging that they were no longer the world powers they once were. Erlander makes a convincing case that Trump’s war has left us in a similar position.

By withdrawing the United States from every initiative that represents a unified approach to a better future, Trump has by definition reduced our influence over world affairs. And watching how over 13,000 airstrikes failed to subdue Iran has simply confirmed what most rational world leaders already knew. Conventional military power alone does not make us a great power. When we lose our moral center and the world sees everything America has stood for being flushed down Trump’s gold commode, we are the losers.

The terrible situation we created in the Middle East is not our military’s fault. They performed brilliantly. But what good tactical brilliance when they’re led by a madman? By telling both our Congress and all of our allies that we’re not interested in their opinions before starting a war that still might explode beyond the boundaries of the Middle East, unilaterally, he violated diplomatic protocol, our Constitution, and international law. Adding insult to injury, demanding that NATO join the fight after it became clear that Trump had badly underestimated Iran’s ability and willingness to absorb punishment and hold the world hostage, created rifts that will likely never heal.

When Trump launched air strikes on Iran, he said there were two objectives: preventing Iran from having a nuclear weapon and enabling the people of Iran to overthrow the regime that he was confident he could bring down. Neither of those goals was achieved. Instead, Trump changed the objective every day, and his threats became more apocalyptic as his frustration at not being able to control the entire world increased. The allegedly huge compromise made by Iran to permit shipping to flow through the Strait of Hormuz in exchange for a cessation of bombing wasn’t even an issue when Trump launched his war. Nor was the bombing by Iran of our Gulf state allies.

On balance, Trump showed the world two things. He is absolutely incompetent at strategic planning, and his vigilante-style war was far more about his ego than Iran’s enriched uranium. It’s likely that the two biggest winners of this war will be Russia and China. Russia is reaping a windfall of oil profits from the war, which, combined with our greatly reduced ability to support Ukraine has Valdimir Putin ecstatic. And China, Iran’s largest oil customer, came out of this being credited with convincing Iran to go along with the ceasefire. No doubt, Xi Jinping is licking his chops awaiting Trump’s visit.

Perhaps worst of all for our near-term future is the depletion of our munitions, especially laser-guided precision weapons. Our stockpiles have been recklessly degraded to the point where we have little left to continue the war if the cease-fire fails, counter aggression by Russia or deter China from overwhelming Taiwan. Considering Venezuela and Iran together, it’s clear from his own words that Trump’s dream was to control the world’s oil supply. He is proving again that greed and delusions of grandeur are not qualities we need in a president.