President Donald Trump's decision to launch a full-scale war against Iran in June 2025, based on assurances from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has resulted in a strategic catastrophe. Trump set three explicit goals: topple the Iranian regime, contain its regional influence, and eliminate its nuclear program. After more than a year of conflict, all three objectives have failed, and the situation is worse than before the war began.
Goal One: Regime Change
Trump announced the US-Israeli assault by telling Iranians that this was their opportunity to reclaim their country. The initial strikes killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and top government officials. But the regime did not collapse. Instead, Mojtaba Khamenei, the Supreme Leader's son, assumed power. He lost his wife and teenage son in the bombing, and his deep ties to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) signaled a transition to a more heavily militarized, hard-line, and anti-Western regime.
Trump calls this "regime change." By that logic, Admiral Karl Dönitz succeeding Adolf Hitler as head of the German state near the end of World War II would also constitute regime change. The theocracy survived in an even more militant form. Score: Iran 1, Trump 0.
Goal Two: Contain Iran
Trump boasted that the war would restrain Iran's ability to project power. "We are systematically dismantling the regime's ability to threaten America or project power outside of their borders," he said. The US and Israel destroyed much of Iran's navy, air force, missile facilities, and defense industrial base. Those were tactical successes, but the war itself has been a strategic failure.
Iran responded by attacking neighboring countries and, more troublingly, discovered and deployed a powerful new weapon: blocking the Strait of Hormuz. Despite its decimated navy, Iran now has a chokehold on the global economy. Netanyahu had assured Trump that the regime would be too weakened to block the waterway through which one-fifth of the world's oil flows. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Caine flagged the enormous difficulty of securing the strait, but Trump dismissed the possibility, assuming the regime would capitulate. With oil prices skyrocketing, Trump has created a new problem for the entire world and powerful leverage for Iran. Score: Iran 2, Trump 0.
Goal Three: No Nuclear Weapons
In his June 2025 attack, Trump claimed to have "obliterated" Iran's nuclear facilities. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth went further, saying that not only were the facilities obliterated, but so too were Iran's nuclear ambitions. Trump took repeated victory laps, stating on multiple occasions that Iran's nuclear capability was "obliterated."
However, in defending the launch of the war on February 28, 2026, Trump acknowledged that Iran's nuclear program had not been obliterated after all. Rather, the country was now "right at the doorstep" of having a nuclear bomb. Trump has no strategy for solving that problem either. Bombing won't work. Knowledgeable experts believe that a key Iranian nuclear facility is Pickaxe Mountain, where some of its uranium may be stored. That facility is so far below ground that even America's 30,000-pound bunker-buster bombs cannot reach its inner chamber. Trump talks about "going in" and taking the nuclear material out, but a ground operation would entail tremendous risk with an uncertain outcome. The threat of a nuclear Iran remains. Score: Iran 3, Trump 0.
False Victory Declarations Backfire
Trump's bluster is not working with Iranian leaders. His threats to commit war crimes dominate news cycles but merely reveal to Iran Trump's desperation to extricate himself from the mess he created. As a negotiating strategy, it is counterproductive. Trump's persistent boasts about tactical victories ignore the fundamental strategic fact that he has lost the Iran war. If a deal emerges from discussions between Iran's experienced negotiators and Trump's collection of amateurs, America and the world will pay a big price for a long time.
This debacle has profound implications for the Indo-Pacific. The Hormuz blockade raises stakes ahead of the Trump-Xi summit, as China, Japan, South Korea, and India all depend on oil transiting the strait. The crisis has also drawn parallels to pre-WWI alliances, as Trump's Hormuz blockade raises global tensions. Meanwhile, NATO allies reject Trump's Hormuz blockade as oil prices surge past $100, leaving Asian economies vulnerable to supply disruptions and inflation.
Steven J. Harper is an attorney, adjunct professor at Northwestern University Law School, and author of several books, including "Crossing Hoffa — A Teamster's Story and The Lawyer Bubble — A Profession in Crisis." He has been a regular columnist for Moyers on Democracy, Dan Rather's News and Guts, and The American Lawyer.
