President Trump lost. The war he waged against Iran promises to conclude in a humbling whimper with the signing of a cease-fire agreement later this week. The United States is left weaker—diminished militarily, strategically, economically, and perhaps morally.
The war, which the United States fought alongside Israel, accomplished none of the goals that Trump named at the outset. Instead, it only empowered the hard-liners in Tehran and arguably emboldened them to someday seek a nuclear weapon. Despite that, the president was so desperate for the war to end that he repeatedly backed off his threats—allowing Iran to call his bluff—and upbraided his close ally Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for responding to attacks in the region in a manner that jeopardized the negotiations.
Trump won’t admit to any of this. He has spent recent days furiously spinning the tentative deal as a clear win, and has seethed at unflattering comparisons with the deal that President Obama struck with Iran more than a decade ago, aides and outside advisers told me. Trump, they said, has privately denounced Iran hawks, some of whom are among his closest allies in the Republican Party, for questioning the strength of the agreement. Within the administration, there is a divide on the deal, but Trump sided with those advocating for the war to wind down, no matter the terms, as fears mount about the economic toll on Americans and the political costs for Republicans in the midterms.
Trump’s own anger masks a desperate desire to find an off-ramp from a conflict that did not go the way he had planned, an outcome that has threatened to leave the United States—and Trump—reduced in the eyes of the world. For a decade, Trump has dominated the global stage and wielded extraordinary executive power. But now he is saddled with low poll numbers and unhappy Republicans, and he may soon have to contend with a Democratic Congress. His evolution into a lame duck is accelerating, and the political world is poised to soon look beyond him and focus on the 2028 contenders hoping to succeed him. World leaders, who were once cowed, have begun to defy him. Trump’s defeat in Iran, and the way he lost, may hasten his irrelevance.
It’s not usually a vote of confidence for your deal when you won’t let anyone else read it. But Trump and his team have threatened to not release the Iran agreement until after it is signed in Geneva on Friday. Officials have said that the deal will extend the cease-fire over the next 60 days and that Iran will reopen the Strait of Hormuz, allowing the U.S. to drop its naval blockade and oil to flow from the region again. Although Iran has agreed to not collect fees on the strait for the next 60 days, it has (according to Iranian state media) left open the door to doing so afterward—and the deal delays addressing Iran’s uranium-enrichment program, despite Trump having cast it as his urgent motivation for war. The president’s lead negotiators, Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, have supported the agreement, as has Vice President Vance, who has been promoting it during preplanned TV appearances to sell his new book. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, and others have expressed quiet reservations with how the deal will be implemented, according to four outside advisers and senior White House officials who, like others, spoke with me on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.
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The deal has also alarmed the GOP’s Iran hawks. Mark Levin, the right-wing radio host who championed the case for war, posted on social media his disbelief that Trump had rebuked Netanyahu and that the agreement remained shrouded in secrecy: “I have asked for days, why can’t we, the people, see the damn MOU?’” Senator Lindsey Graham has also made his reservations known, although he has carefully avoided blaming Trump and tried to pin responsibility on Vance, who was the lead American negotiator in the early stages of the talks. Erick Erickson, a conservative commentator, went so far as to declare that “Trump has surrendered to Iran.” And Marc Thiessen, a former President George W. Bush aide with whom the White House consulted during the war, has been one of many conservative voices warning that Trump’s emerging framework looks a lot like the Obama deal.
That notion has infuriated the president. A longtime Trump confidant told me that Trump “was incensed by the dissent”—particularly the Obama comparison—from once-loyal Republicans. Trump has reflexively tried to tear up anything associated with the former president. He mocked the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which aimed to constrain Iran’s nuclear program, during his first presidential campaign and withdrew from it in his first term. But that decision allowed Iran to work on its enrichment program. That, in turn, prompted Trump, one year ago next week, to authorize a massive bombing campaign that leveled uranium-enrichment facilities. Despite Trump’s claim at the time that Iran’s nuclear stockpiles were obliterated, negotiations resumed early this year over the fate of Tehran’s program—until they were scuttled when the United States and Israel launched a surprise attack on Iran in late February.
In the first days, the strikes, which were pushed by Netanyahu, killed Iran’s supreme leader and inflicted extraordinary damage on its military and artillery. But Iran proved resilient, attacking its neighbors in the Persian Gulf, seizing control of the Strait of Hormuz, and plunging the world into an energy crisis. The price of gas skyrocketed globally, including in the United States. Trump’s poll numbers, already teetering, fell further, and he began looking for a way out. He tried to intimidate Iran into taking a deal, at one point vowing to destroy its “whole civilization,” but walked away from each threat, leaving him open to mockery from Tehran.
As the war dragged on, it became clear that Trump’s goals for the conflict were going unfulfilled. The Iranian navy was damaged, but Tehran’s ballistic-missile capability survived, as did its ties to militia proxy groups such as Hezbollah and the Houthis. The hard-line regime in Tehran appears poised to sell oil again and receive up to $300 billion in funding from Gulf states that it could use to rebuild. Iran has tightened its grip on the Strait of Hormuz and demonstrated that it can close the waterway at will. Although Tehran has promised not to build a nuclear weapon, no enforcement mechanism has been established. And to the shock of some Iran hawks, Trump yesterday seemed to back off his previous pledge to seize the uranium, saying, “You could make the case, ‘Why are you even bothering?’ Because it’s not really valuable.”
Iran has seemingly come out of the conflict with an ability to check Israel’s freedom to strike Lebanon and potentially elsewhere; in recent days, Trump has blasted Netanyahu for endangering the cease-fire and demanded that he call off an attack on Beirut. Trump’s broadsides, including calling the prime minister “a very difficult guy,” threaten to widen a rift between the U.S. and its longtime ally in the Middle East. Despite Trump’s reprimands, Netanyahu has insisted that Israel will continue to authorize attacks that it deems necessary for self-defense.
“The president has made the decision that this is over,” one of the senior administration officials told me. “That’s all that matters now. And Netanyahu will have to listen, period.”
The White House, in defending the deal, has stressed that any financial relief to the Iranians is performance-based, that Tehran will see the funding only if it keeps the strait open and maintains its pledge to not develop a nuclear weapon. Olivia Wales, a White House spokesperson, told me in a statement that “what the President has achieved on the battlefield and at the negotiating table is nothing short of remarkable and will strengthen American security for many years to come.”
The war has cost Trump. It has rattled the nation’s economy. The Pentagon announced that it had spent roughly $25 billion on the conflict by the end of April; it has not updated its estimate since then, but independent experts believe that it has spent tens of billions more. The U.S. military’s munitions supply has been depleted, putting at risk its ability to defend its interests in Asia and Europe. The United States’ failure, despite its overwhelming military might, to bring Iran to its knees could encourage China, Russia, or North Korea to take aggressive action. In the eyes of many, Washington has hurt its moral standing around the globe; promises to help the Iranian people rise up went unfulfilled, and more than 170 people, mostly children, were killed by a U.S. strike on a girls’ school in the war’s first hours. Overall, more than 3,000 people in Iran were killed in the conflict, according to Iranian officials. Thirteen U.S. service members were also killed.
The war’s outcome may usher in a new phase of Trump’s presidency. He is unlikely to abandon his adventurism on the world stage, and aides told me that he is eager to pivot to Cuba soon—looking for regime change, likely through economic pressure, but not ruling out military force—and he may revisit a bid for Greenland. This week at the G7 summit, he also resurfaced his ambition to help end the Russia-Ukraine war. His triumph in Venezuela feels like a distant memory. Leaders in Europe are now standing up to him. China’s president, Xi Jinping, has not given him the trade deal he wants.
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Back home, Trump is still the most powerful figure in politics. But those small acts of Republican defiance are adding up. He has had a series of losses in the courts, including in his efforts to remake the nation’s capital in his own image. Democrats are favored to capture at least one house of Congress this November, which would give them the ability to slow Trump’s agenda and open investigations into his administration. Once the midterms conclude, the race to replace Trump will begin. Although that will further diminish Trump, it is unlikely that he will go out with a whimper.
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