Trump Says He's Winning His War Against Iran - But This Doesn't Look Like Winning

The following is part of a post by Dan Rather: 

It would be easy to say the president grossly miscalculated the Iranians’ ability to withstand war, but that assumes he calculated anything at all. This is a war executed on a whim, and Donald Trump could lose it.

The United States and Iran are playing an extraordinarily expensive game of chicken, and right now Iran is winning.

Trump may eventually retreat while claiming “victory,” but the hardliners in Tehran remain in control. They will demand concessions from the president before they stop attacks across the Middle East and allow ships to pass through the Strait of Hormuz, that narrow stretch of ocean that has a chokehold on the world economy.

While the White House doesn’t seem to have a coherent plan to fight this war, or how to end it, Iran does: inflict economic, political, and military pain until Trump utters “uncle.” They are doing a good job of it so far.

The Americans and Israelis continue to bomb Iran with no articulated endgame.

On Thursday, we awoke to images of two Iraqi tankers set ablaze by Iran in the Persian Gulf. For those of us who have watched and covered the region for years, it was a nightmare long feared, and it now means Iran and its radical clerics are calling the shots.

Don’t think so?

As we near the two-week mark, Iran has shut down the oil industry in the Gulf, causing global economic panic. On Thursday, we heard from the new ayatollah, Mojtaba Khamenei, son of the slain leader, who conceded nothing. In a statement, he vowed to keep the Strait of Hormuz closed, through which 20 percent of the world’s oil passes, as well as a host of petroleum-based products like plastics and fertilizer.

Iran is also reportedly mining the strait with explosives while successfully firing on U.S. warships and regional oil tankers. Seventeen U.S. military installations have been hit, as well as embassies in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Dubai.

“Get ready for oil to be $200 a barrel, because the oil price depends on regional security, which you have destabilized,” Iran’s military commander Ebrahim Zolfaqari said, ostensibly to Trump.

The International Energy Agency (IEA), a 32-country coalition including the United States, called this “the largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market.” Even after the IEA agreed to release 400 million barrels of crude oil, prices continue to rise.

Analysts aren’t buying Trump’s assertion that prices will “drop very rapidly when this is over.”

Diane Swonk, Chief Economist for professional services firm, KPMG, told Bloomberg News that even if the war ends in a month, disruptions to the supply chain will take far longer to resolve. She described the situation as “similar in scope, not as bad, but similar to what we saw during the pandemic when everything shut down.”

While targeting the Gulf’s energy infrastructure, Iran is also engaging in cyber warfare. An Iranian hacker group took responsibility for a cyberattack on a medical tech company based in Michigan.

Trump is trying back-channel diplomacy, but two offers for a ceasefire from U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff have been rejected by Iran.

Iran’s current leadership remains intact and not at risk of imminent demise, according to Reuters. The Iranian military may have been severely damaged but has not been stopped by days of bombardment by the U.S. and Israeli militaries. None of this sounds like “winning.”

What about Trump’s plan? Pod Save America’s headline Thursday perfectly encapsulates his schizophrenic objectives: “Trump Says War Over, Vows to Keep Fighting.”