The United States, towards a new defeat?

In this conflict, Donald Trump’s statements are all over the place. They give no idea of what is really going on. Hence the assumption that this war is not going as smoothly as Washington and Jerusalem would like. And that the Iranian side seems much more capable of patience and endurance than the American side.

One morning, the president announces that the war’s objectives are “almost achieved,” and that “the regime is evil.” The next day, he says “the war will last as long as it needs to.” He talks about “total destruction of the enemy Iranian’s missile launch capabilities,” while shots continue to hit Israel or the states of the Persian Gulf.

Even interpreting these statements as “propaganda,” which could be decoded for reliable information, is questionable. We are more in the realm of randomness, ranting, and boasts rather than calculated and calibrated statements.

If the fanciful outbursts from the Washington summit provide little information, this may not be the case with what comes from Jerusalem.

Indeed, this war is inspired and led by both Israel and the United States. Without delving into considerations of possible “Trump’s manipulation” by “clever Netanyahu who absolutely desires this war,” one can assume that the evaluations from Jerusalem are closer to reality.

Even if the successive announcements of Iranian leaders’ eliminations may have sparked irrational jubilation and excessive optimism in Israel, last week we heard the Prime Minister consider, for the first time, the possibility of the current regime in Iran surviving and the impossibility of overthrowing it through air strikes: “After all, a regime must collapse from within,” Netanyahu declared.

The security specialist for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, the excellent Amos Harel, goes further. He notes that, since June 2025, over half of the top Iranian leaders have been killed—however, he asks, what benefit have the Israelis derived from this? The analyst writes that “the regime in Tehran shows remarkable resilience and a willingness to continue the fight.”

This regime could even, if it is still in place in a few weeks, and simply by surviving, claim victory in an absolutely “horizontal and asymmetrical” war, which it had apparently planned well, around the chokepoint of the Strait of Hormuz. “The hope of toppling the regime relied on excessive optimism; Israel is forced to lower its expectations,” concludes Harel.

Since the end of World War II, excluding several intermittent military interventions (or “shadow operations” by intelligence services), the United States has participated in five major wars—almost all lost. Neither in Korea (1950-1953), nor in Vietnam (1955-1975), nor in Afghanistan (2001-2021), nor in Iraq (2003-2011) did the American behemoth achieve its goals.

The first ended in an armistice without changing the balance of power. Kim Jong-un, heir to the indomitable North Korean communist dictatorship, is proof of this. In the other conflicts, the United States had to withdraw more or less humiliatingly.

Only the first Gulf War (1990-1991), launched by George H.W. Bush to end the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, can be considered a clear success.

But Washington later deemed the mission unfinished, and Bush Jr. attacked Iraq in 2003 to overthrow Saddam Hussein’s regime. The immediate objective was achieved, but the country then became embroiled in a horrific war, ending with a withdrawal in 2011. Without stabilizing Iraq or making it a reliable ally.

Economically (in terms of oil), China was the delayed winner of this war, while the Iranian ayatollahs largely benefited to expand their influence in Baghdad.

It is worth dwelling for a moment on the 1991 war, the first true American intervention in the Middle East. To drive the Iraqi army out of Kuwait, the United States did not improvise.

They first formed a vast international coalition of about forty countries—from Europe to the Arab states (even Syria). And then obtained a vote in the UN Security Council to “restore Kuwait’s borders.”

The operation went smoothly, although at the cost of the massacre of tens of thousands of Iraqi soldiers. After Saddam Hussein’s army’s defeat, some would have liked to continue the offensive to Baghdad. Wisely, Bush Sr. stopped at the border, where the United Nations’ legal mandate ended.

By contrast, the subsequent deployments (Afghanistan, Iraq II, Iran) show a gradual deterioration of American military actions, whether in terms of legitimacy, legality, and (we will probably see in 2026) effectiveness.

After September 11, the United States garnered broad support from a sympathetic international community in Washington. Even though there was no UN vote authorizing the use of force, NATO invoked Article 5 in solidarity with the United States, and this intervention to drive out the Taliban, al-Qaeda’s accomplices, seemed largely legitimate.

This did not prevent, after 20 years of unequal reconstruction in the country, the return of the Taliban to power. The ultimate humiliation for the United States, prepared by a hasty and haphazard agreement signed by Donald Trump in 2020.

Iraq in 2003 and Iran today are wars triggered by imaginary, variable, or unknown reasons. Widely contested legitimacy, with random effectiveness. The near future will tell us whether this American-Israeli war in Iran can be interpreted as a sort of culmination of this process of decomposition.

(To contact the author: francobrousso@hotmail.com)