Five weeks into President Donald Trump’s war with Iran, bombs have fallen on petrochemical plants and bridges, on missile silos and nuclear facilities, but there is no end in sight. as the White House asked Congress to approve a $1.5 trillion military budget for the 2027 fiscal year, the highest spending level in modern history.
Thirteen American service members are dead. At least 365 have been wounded. The regime in Tehran has not fallen. The Strait of Hormuz remains closed.
The President of the United States stood before the nation on Wednesday night to declare victory while preparing to send 10,000 more troops into a war he said would be over in two weeks.
There is a word for this. It is not a ‘victory’ any more than the 20-year conflict in Afghanistan.
On February 29, 2020, with the signing of the Doha Agreement, Trump struck a secret deal with the Taliban, agreeing to release 5,000 prisoners, surrendering the Afghan government’s sovereignty, and committing President Biden to the withdrawal of all U.S. and coalition forces.
The war began Feb. 28 with a surprise Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear and military targets. The United States joined quickly, launching Operation Epic Fury, a bombing campaign that has now hit more than 10,000 sites across Iran.
The petrochemical plants of Khuzestan are in ruins. Bridges critical to the country’s infrastructure have been destroyed. The Iranian supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, was killed on the first day. His son Mojtaba has not been seen in public since.
And yet the regime endures. It is not just enduring. According to the people who study Iran for a living, the Islamic Republic believes it is winning.
Both President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth threatened to engage in war crimes against Iran, while simultaneously suggesting that the war was ending and expanding.
Suzanne Maloney of the Brookings Institution, who has advised Republican and Democratic administrations alike, put it bluntly: The Islamic Republic sees time as its ally.
Every day the Strait of Hormuz remains closed, global energy prices climb. Fertilizer prices are up. Helium supplies are tightening. The tech industry is watching its supply chains fray. And the American president, who built his political identity on the price of gasoline, is running out of runway.
“We have never had a prolonged closure of the Strait of Hormuz,” Maloney said. “This is completely unprecedented.”
The human cost is mounting. The Iranian government reports at least 2,076 killed by U.S. and Israeli strikes since Feb. 28. That number is almost certainly low.
The American toll is real and rising: 13 dead, 365 wounded, and those numbers do not include the crew of an F-15E Strike Eagle shot down on April 3. The search for one missing airman continues. An A-10 Warthog crashed in the Persian Gulf on Friday.
These are the first American jets shot down by enemy fire in more than 20 years. They are not the only aircraft the United States has lost.
The USS Harry S. Truman has become a floating calamity. In April and May 2025, multiple F/A-18 fighter jets went into the Red Sea — not shot down, but lost to deck accidents during high-speed maneuvers against Houthi missiles. One rolled off the carrier while being towed. Another failed to catch the arresting wire and plunged overboard.
Two crew members ejected safely. The jets, worth more than $60 million each, are gone. The Truman also collided with a merchant vessel near Port Said, Egypt, in February. Earlier, one of its own surface ships shot down another F/A-18.
The Pentagon has not released a comprehensive accounting. It is not likely to.
Then came March 1. Three U.S. F-15E Strike Eagles flying in support of Operation Epic Fury were shot down by Kuwaiti air defenses. Friendly fire. Six crew members ejected and were recovered, but the incident, acknowledged by U.S. Central Command, speaks to the fog that has settled over this war.
“It is difficult to tell which side is winning,” wrote Daniel Byman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, “because the objectives and strategies for victory of the combatants are so different.”
The Trump administration’s objectives have shifted like dunes. First, regime change. Then, the destruction of the nuclear program. Then, the degradation of missile capabilities. Now, simply reopening the Strait of Hormuz would allow defeated Republicans to claim victory.
On Wednesday night, the president told the nation the war is almost over and also said he is preparing to hit Iran “extremely hard over the next two to three weeks.” He said negotiations are going great and that there is no one to talk to. He said Iran must open the Strait and that America does not care if it stays closed.
In the same speech, he told allies who depend on Gulf oil that they should go secure the Strait themselves.
Trump also said the US will bomb Iran “back to the Stone Ages, where they belong,” speaking of the country with 93 million people.
The United States cannot simply walk away.
John Rapley, writing in The Globe and Mail, noted the uncomfortable truth: American refineries are not optimized to process most of the crude the United States produces. The country exports its oil and imports what goes into American cars. Global prices set American prices. And global prices are climbing.
The buffers are drying up. Stockpiles are shrinking. Strategic reserves have been tapped. Oil that left the Persian Gulf before the war is gone. Sanctions on Iranian oil have been lifted, and the regime is selling into a hungry market. The price of gasoline in the United States is the highest it has been since 2022. That is not a coincidence. It is the point.
Iran’s strategy is not to win on the battlefield. It cannot.
The United States and Israel say they have destroyed 90% of Iran’s missile launchers, sunk 90% of its navy, and killed more than 250 of its leaders. The nuclear program is set back. The regime is grievously wounded.
But it is still standing. And it has learned something about the American president who swore he would never start a war.
It has been learned that the Strait of Hormuz is a lever on the global economy that the United States cannot break without a ground invasion. It has been learned that 10,000 troops are not enough to secure that narrow waterway. It has been learned that every day the war continues, the president’s political standing erodes along with the purchasing power of the Americans who elected him.
“The Iranians now believe they have survived this war,” Maloney said. “The regime itself, despite having been grievously wounded, will remain intact.”
What comes next is not victory. It is a choice between bad options.
The president can negotiate a surrender — lifting sanctions, paying reparations, and allowing Iran to turn the Strait of Hormuz into a tollbooth that it controls in perpetuity. That would end the war. It would also leave a battle-hardened regime with more money, more leverage, and a lesson learned: The United States can be endured. It can be outlasted. It can be made to blink.
Or the president can escalate. He can send the 10,000 troops now moving into the region to seize Kharg Island, Qeshm Island, or parts of Iran’s coastline. He can try to force the Strait open by military power.
Experts who have war-gamed this scenario agree: The force the United States is assembling is not large enough to hold territory against Iranian missiles and asymmetric attacks. Escalation would lead to more escalation, more casualties, more months of closed shipping lanes, and a deeper global recession.
“The only options now are a recession or a depression,” Rapley wrote.
The betting markets have taken note.
Vice President JD Vance was the favorite to win the 2028 presidential election before the war. He is no longer the favorite. Democratic California Governor Gavin Newsom now edges him, 19.2% to 19.0%. Marco Rubio’s odds have climbed as Republicans sense that the political ground beneath them is shifting.
The war is not going well. The American people know this because they see it in their gas tanks and their grocery bills. The allies who were not consulted before the bombs fell are being asked to clean up the mess. The Iranians are waiting, and they believe time is on their side.
On Wednesday night, the president told the nation that America is on the cusp of ending Iran’s “sinister threat.” But the people who study Iran for a living see something else coming: an Iran that has learned to weaponize the global economy, that has discovered the limits of American power, that will emerge from this war more dangerous than it began.
A year and a half after vowing to slash prices and stop endless fighting, Trump is a wartime commander watching energy bills spike and an overseas quagmire deepen—exactly the kind of losing hand no Republican wanted to be holding heading into the midterms.
The bombs have fallen. The regime is still there. The Strait is closed. And the president who promised to end forever wars is trapped in one of his own making.