The Iran War Undermines U.S. Strategic and Geoeconomic Positions
Like scoring an own goal, Trump can't get out of his own way.
President Trump’s ill-conceived war on Iran is a foreign policy mistake of historic proportions. Apart from being the most unpopular war in recent U.S. history, jeopardizing Republicans’ chances in the mid-terms and creating global energy and economic crises, it has proved to be a self-inflicted strategic and geoeconomic wound that has weakened the position, power, and influence of the United States. The war has exposed critical weaknesses and vulnerabilities, eroded U.S. soft power and credibility, alienated allies, and elevated China’s relative position.
Failure to Prepare for the War and Anticipate the Consequences
Trump and his military advisers overestimated the damage that the U.S. military could inflict on Iranian missile sites, underestimated Iran’s resilience, and failed to anticipate the consequences of the attack, including an Iranian response.
This campaign has distinguished this administration for the utter fiasco of its war planning and set the new standard for inability to anticipate the consequences of a military campaign.
The most baffling oversight is the seeming surprise that Iran chose to block the Strait of Hormuz and attack U.S. allies in the Gulf. The U.S. military has been planning for a conflict with Iran since the Revolution in 1979. Every military planner, intelligence analyst, and diplomat involved in wargaming exercises had highlighted these risks. Failure to prepare or evacuate U.S. citizens in the region also speaks to the serious shortcomings in pre-planning.
The White House also underestimated Iran’s resilience. Despite the undeniably impressive ability of the U.S. to hit targets across Iran, devastate its air defenses, ground its air force, and sink its navy, Iran’s military and its control of the Strait of Hormuz and cause damage in the region have not collapsed.
Failure to Meet Unclear Goals
Before launching U.S.-Israeli strikes against Iran, the president never provided a coherent rationale for the war or explained to Americans why military force against Iran was necessary or justified. He did not brief Congress, let alone seek its blessing for the war. The president did not bother to consult U.S. allies, either in NATO or the Persian Gulf.
The president and his lieutenants, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, offered many contradicting rationales to justify the war, such as averting an imminent Iranian threat, destroying its missile capabilities, preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, and the need to engineer a regime change. No evidence of an imminent threat was provided and none of the multiple goals have been achieved.
Regime (Un)Change. The killing of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei and other senior regime leaders and extensive bombing failed to topple the government or provoke a popular uprising against the regime in Tehran. The war has led to the consolidation of power at all levels of government, and its leadership has become more radical, determined, and increasingly confident they can outlast U.S. political will.
U.S. Intelligence Shows Iran Retains Substantial Missile Capabilities. A new U.S. intelligence assessment contradicts the administration’s assertions that Iran’s military capabilities were decimated, instead finding that Iran retains a sizable missile and drone arsenal. According to the classified report, Iran retains roughly 70 percent of its prewar missile stockpile and has operational access to 30 of its 33 missile sites along the Strait of Hormuz, suggesting that its military remains far stronger than Trump has asserted.
Nuclear Program. Trump and other administration officials have repeatedly said that preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear bomb is a key goal of the war. Never mind that Trump has also said that last June’s Operation Midnight Hammer “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program. (The “Iran’s Nuclear Facilities Have Been Obliterated — and Suggestions Otherwise are Fake News” statement was still on the White House website as of June 10). The war has also failed to destroy or even significantly set back Iran’s nuclear program.
Despite weeks of airstrikes targeting Iran’s nuclear sites, Iran retains the technological expertise and fissile materials necessary to sustain its nuclear program. Furthermore, Tehran is likely to view securing a nuclear weapon more important than ever, perversely incentivized by Trump.
Steep Cost of War and Rapidly Depleting Stockpile of Advanced Weaponry
The cost of the war to the U.S. has been steep: Apart from the war already having cost the United States at least $29 billion as of May 12, the wider economic impact on American households is staggering, with average consumers paying roughly $450 to $750 more on energy and groceries because of war-induced inflation. Since the start of the war on February 28, 13 service members have died and more than 400 troops have suffered injuries.
The war has significantly depleted the Pentagon’s stockpile of sophisticated missiles and exposed the shallowness of American defense industrial production capability. As the New York Times reported, the United States expended roughly 1,100 long-range stealth cruise missiles in the war, close to half of the total U.S. stockpile. The military also fired more than 1,000 Tomahawk missiles out of an estimated prewar inventory of 3,100, and roughly 10 times the number the Pentagon procures in a year. It has used more than 1,300 Patriot interceptor missiles throughout the war, costing over $4 million each, which accounts for more than two years of production.
This has left inventories worryingly low and is already causing shortages in other strategic arenas that could take years to replenish, rendering the U.S. ill-prepared to respond to a crisis elsewhere, including in Taiwan.
Fighting the Last War: Failure to Adapt to the Evolving Nature of Warfare
The war has shown the Pentagon had not adequately adapted to the evolving nature of warfare, particularly the use of one-way attack drones, which it should have learned from observing the war in Ukraine. The U.S. was not prepared to intercept a large number of cheap Iranian drones, except with very expensive advanced systems. They were forced to continuously expend a million-dollar interceptor to take down an Iranian Shahed-136 drone, which only cost a few tens of thousands of dollars.
Satellite images show that Iran has hit far more U.S. military assets than reported. The extent of destruction is far greater than what the Department of Defense has publicly acknowledged. Iranian airstrikes have damaged and destroyed hangars, barracks, fuel depots, aircraft and key radar communications, and air defense equipment at U.S. military sites across the Middle East since the war began, suggesting that the U.S. military underestimated Iran’s targeting abilities, not adapted sufficiently to modern drone warfare, and left some bases under-protected.
Eroding Credibility of the Trump Administration
The incredulous statements by Hegseth and the constantly changing musings of the president have consistently been undermined almost immediately by events. Ten days into the war, Mr. Trump told CBS News that Iran’s missiles “are down to a scatter” and that the country had “nothing left in a military sense.” Secretary Hegseth declared at a Pentagon news conference on April 8 that Operation Epic Fury had “decimated Iran’s military and rendered it combat-ineffective for years to come.” In an April social media post, Trump threatened to end Iranian civilization. He warned that a “whole civilization will die tonight” unless Iran agreed to a deal to end their blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. This has led to crumbling credibility.
Alienating Allies
The U.S.-Iran war has widened the transatlantic rift, straining relations further as European allies face economic fallout and energy disruptions. The European capitals overarchingly consider the war illegal and resent that they were not informed, let alone consulted, in advance. Several European governments limited U.S. use of their bases and airspace and refused to participate in the hostilities. (However much the president dismisses the Europeans, the U.S. war effort and its ability to project power are heavily reliant on its forward airbases and pre-positioned equipment in allied countries.)
European and other allied countries are expanding their defense budgets, but those funds are increasingly spent on European weapons and technologies instead of American. Denmark bought the Franco-Italian SAMP/T air defense system rather than the U.S.-made Patriot, and Portugal dropped plans to acquire the U.S.-made F35 jets to replace its aging F-16 fleet. The Royal Canadian Air Force selected a fleet of Swedish military surveillance aircraft over U.S. alternatives. Canada is also reviewing whether to continue buying F35s from the United States or to shift to the Sweden’s Gripen.
The war has also led Arab partners to re-evaluate their alliances with the U.S., questioning whether the U.S.’s role as their principal security guarantor and the military bases in the region are an asset or a liability and are rethinking their security architecture.
Ceding Strategic Advantage to China
The U.S.-Iran war inadvertently strengthened China’s strategic position vis-à-vis the United States, boosted Beijing’s relative international standing, and provided Beijing an opportunity to drive wedges between America and its traditional partners. China has long sought to undermine the image of the U.S. as a responsible steward of the rules-based international order, and the conflict has allowed China to portray the U.S. as an aggressive unilateralist and a declining power while presenting itself as the responsible guardian of that order.
Furthermore, the conflict opened ways for China to increase its global economic influence. The volatility of fossil fuel prices and supplies hastened the shift to renewable power sources, a boon for Beijing, the global leader in manufacturing capacity for major green technologies. Since the war started, Beijing’s exports of solar and battery products have surged.
And the urgent need for the U.S. to rebuild its depleted stockpile of advanced weaponry is increasing Washington’s dependence on Chinese rare-earth minerals, which are critical for manufacturing state-of-the-art defense systems, providing Beijing with an opportunity to leverage this strategic vulnerability against Washington.
Unparalleled Strategic Blunder: Body Blow to American Power and Global Influence
The botched Iran war has been a devastating body blow to American power and influence. The severe strategic blunder of his own making has left Trump with no good options.
The world’s largest military has failed to prevail over a country that has been devastated by years of sanctions and economic mismanagement and whose military budget is roughly one hundredth of the Pentagon’s. Despite the extensive damage Iran has sustained, Tehran stands to emerge stronger than it was before the war. Trump’s war empowered Iran and handed it asymmetric leverage over the global economy, vulnerable to fragile supply chains and vital choke points. Iran now can disrupt the global economy, raise energy prices, and create enough uncertainty to pressure Western governments already struggling with inflation. The United States will come out weakened with a degraded military, eroded credibility, and a diminished strategic position.
The president painted himself into a corner. He is about to accept a negotiated deal, well short of the JCPOA, which Trump spent years denouncing and walked away from in 2018.
The U.S. has been unable to subdue Iran or achieve its goals through military force, and prolonging what is already an unpopular war would continue to put upward pressure on inflation, risk significant casualties, and be an electoral disaster for Republicans in the midterms.
The deal Trump announced over the weekend includes the opening of a strait that had been open before the war began, lifting of some sanctions, and the release of some frozen Iranian assets. The nuclear issue, including what to do with Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium, is deferred to later negotiations, and the deal fails to even mention Iran’s ballistic missile capabilities.
The decision to start the Iran war has exposed critical U.S. weaknesses, eroded U.S. soft power and credibility, alienated its allies, undermined the U.S global strategic position, and elevated the relative power of China. As a result, it will count as one of history’s greatest foreign policy mistakes, the results of which will haunt the United States for years to come.
Tapio Vaskio is a managing director and co-founder of ERG Partners, an advisory firm focused on the defense and national security sectors. He graduated from Helsinki University, Finland, and has a Master’s degree from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs.