If you listen to some people these days, Washington should start planning victory parades. “We won. Iran lost. Period,” says CNN’s Scott Jennings. Hugh Hewitt concurs, and the Wall Street Journal editorial page agrees the tide is turning — and they all have a point. The American military is getting oil flowing through the Strait of Hormuz from the United States’ Gulf allies, while choking off Iran’s exports. This is a remarkable display of military ingenuity. But it does not make the war a success.
The U.S. can’t win in Iran until Trump makes a decision
To get out of this quagmire, Washington must determine what it wants.
The Washington Post, October 9, 2026
Remember how it got here. In June 2025, the U.S. and Israel massively bombed Iran’s nuclear facilities, and Trump declared its nuclear program “obliterated.” Eight months later, in February, they went to war again, with far bigger ambitions. They attacked Iran’s leadership, killing its supreme leader and many senior officials. Trump urged Iranians to overthrow their government. The objective was clear: regime change.
But the Islamic republic survived, closed ranks around hard-line generals, installed a new supreme leader and unleashed the weapon it had long threatened to use: closing the Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly one-fifth of the world’s oil passes. After more than seven months of war, the U.S. is now engaged in a vast campaign to force Iran to stop blocking a waterway that was open before the war began. Washington has mounted this operation to restore the status quo — and is calling its progress victory.
Consider the costs just to get back to where things were. According to the Pentagon, the tab has reached $45 billion, and the Congressional Budget Office estimates that even a low-intensity conflict will cost another $2 billion monthly. At least 19 American service members have died. The U.S. has likely used between half and two-thirds of its inventory of certain sophisticated missile-defense interceptors. Replacing them could take more than five years, and these are weapons the U.S. would need against China. By the end of June, at least six American warships had been diverted from the Pacific to the Middle East.
Since the war began, Brent crude oil prices have averaged around $100 a barrel, roughly 40 percent higher than before the war. Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, estimated that the war’s cost to the average household as of July was more than $1,200 in higher prices, interest payments and military spending. Americans have paid about $130 billion extra for gasoline and diesel alone. Higher diesel prices have jacked up the cost of trucking, farming and food. Families heating their homes with oil could face bills 50 percent higher this winter.
The damage abroad is staggering. Gulf states have seen their trust in Washington shattered. In addition, they face soaring shipping costs and collapsing tourism. Dubai’s hotel occupancy plunged from nearly 85 percent in February to 23 percent in March. Governments must spend billions repairing infrastructure and building alternative routes around Hormuz. Energy-importing countries, which means most of the world, have struggled paying the bills.
During the Vietnam War, the U.S. would regularly detail the massive damage it had done to the enemy, from weapons destroyed to body counts of enemy soldiers dead. But the test of success is whether that damage makes the adversary cry uncle. So far Iran has not surrendered, and there are reasons to think more bombing will not change that reality.
The fundamental problem with Trump’s approach is that he cannot decide whether he wants to change Iran’s policies or its government. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent illustrated the contradiction in September when he said the message to other countries was: “This is the end of the regime.” Yet in the same interview, he insisted the goal was not necessarily to collapse the government but to pressure it into negotiations.
Addressing the United Nations last month, Trump wondered whether he should make a deal allowing Iran to rebuild into a greater country — or “annihilate the Islamic republic and do it quickly.” Meanwhile, his envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, were negotiating with Iranian officials. Washington was threatening to destroy the government while asking it to negotiate seriously.
If Iran’s leaders believe Washington intends to destroy them regardless of what they do, why would they make concessions? Their incentive would be to resist, inflict costs and outlast the U.S. In Foreign Affairs, Stephen Biddle and his co-authors argue that wars ultimately end through political bargains. Military force can improve the terms of those bargains but cannot substitute for them. The U.S. has repeatedly forgotten this lesson, from Vietnam to Afghanistan to Iraq, demonstrating extraordinary skill at destroying armies but much less at translating battlefield achievements into lasting political outcomes.
The Trump administration must decide what it wants. If the goal is policy change — reopening Hormuz, constraining Iran’s nuclear program and curbing its regional aggression — it must define achievable terms and pressure Iran to accept them. If the goal is regime change, it must plan for a bloody struggle, probably with more regional spillover. Until Washington resolves that contradiction, the country will remain stuck in its latest Middle Eastern quagmire.