Rarely has Donald Trump faced such gleeful ridicule from liberal America as he did after his humiliation in the midterm elections. Online memes portrayed the President as toxic waste awaiting disposal, fleeing a wave of Democratic blue and even embarking on a second career as an Indian street vendor.
Even Republicans largely agree on what caused the rout. “The reason we lost is the war,” Vice President J D Vance said. The conflict with Iran has driven petrol prices higher as Tehran’s regime tightens its grip on the world’s oil supply after seizing the Strait of Hormuz.
“We are going to end the war,” Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer declared triumphantly last week. As criticism intensifies, Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth may struggle to remain in his post. There is even talk of impeaching him over his disastrous handling of the war.
Yet nowhere has the celebration been more brazen than among Iran’s murderous mullahs.
Iran’s parliamentary speaker, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, has boasted of personally beating student protesters during the 1999 demonstrations. Last week, he crowed: “Conscience or the cost of living, Americans said no to war, and we endorse this message.”
The world is waiting to see how a chastened Trump responds. So far, he has maintained that Tehran wants a deal while offering a $20 million reward for information about Iran’s nuclear programme.
If he retreats from the conflict—appeasing everyone from American voters alarmed by fuel prices to Tehran’s theocratic rulers—Trump will transform a calamity into a catastrophe capable of reshaping the international order for a generation.
Many people in Britain and the United States will not want to hear this, but however unpopular the war has become, American missiles must pound Iran into submission. I did not support the conflict when it began, but Trump could endanger the West if he turns back now.
Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf has been celebrating Trump’s midterm setback
Seventy years ago, Britain was trapped in the Suez Crisis after Egypt’s Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser seized the canal, threatening another vital artery of the global economy. As the crisis deepened, Prime Minister Anthony Eden withdrew British forces, to the dismay of his predecessor, Winston Churchill. “I should never have dared start [the war],” the old lion reportedly growled. “But I should never have dared stop.”
The retreat destroyed Britain’s remaining status as a great power in the Middle East. Worse, it emboldened Nasser’s anti-Western Arab radicalism. That in turn contributed to the persecution of pro-British groups, including Iraq’s royal family, and helped clear the way for Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship.
Today, mid-Atlantic commentators from Hampstead to the Hamptons are dismissing the Iran War as another Suez-style disgrace. Their historical memories, however, are remarkably short.
Last year, Iran was only months away from producing a nuclear bomb. Its uranium enrichment had gone far beyond what would be required for peaceful purposes and was approaching weapons-grade levels.
At the Parchin military complex, 19 miles south-east of Tehran, Iran was moving dangerously close to producing detonators capable of triggering that uranium. Since Trump launched his campaign in February, Iran’s missile capabilities have been displayed with devastating effect, as its battered Gulf neighbours can testify. Tehran possessed the components for a nuclear warhead, and the world is safer because US and Israeli strikes crippled its capabilities. But that advantage will not last indefinitely. Satellite imagery shows Iran rebuilding missile facilities and suspicious sites linked to its nuclear programme.
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That reconstruction could continue for years if Trump interprets his midterm repudiation as a mandate for international isolationism. Israel will continue fighting, but even a small state with extraordinary military and intelligence capabilities cannot prevail alone—particularly while it remains tied down in Gaza. Only the United States has the defence resources needed to sustain a conflict with an intransigent adversary such as Iran.
Those demanding an end to the war should remember America’s withdrawal from Vietnam. After a decade of brutal fighting, the demand for peace in 1975 was understandable. But many who got their wish ignored the consequences. After Saigon fell to the Communists, genocide and tyranny spread, alongside the flight of one million “boat people”.
The shift in global power following the American retreat allowed the murderous Khmer Rouge to take hold in Cambodia and a repugnant regime to seize power in Ethiopia. It culminated in Iran’s Islamic Revolution in 1979.
Those same blood-soaked ayatollahs are the rulers America is still confronting today. Last January, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard slaughtered thousands of protesters who had demanded change. Some estimates put the death toll as high as 30,000. Commentators have quickly forgotten what a brutal regime Trump has sought to remove.
Although the theocrats deserve a serious defeat, two pressures could bring them to the negotiating table. Iran’s economy is collapsing, while its currency has fallen to 3,000,000 rials against the dollar. Many of the regime’s enforcers are becoming poorer and hungrier. Well-paid thugs will crack heads, but unpaid ones can become remarkably less loyal. Trump could therefore offer economic relief by lifting sanctions if Iran changes course. If it refuses, it should face the full force of America’s huge missile arsenal until it does.
Trump must hold his nerve. He cannot accept an imposed agreement that prevents the mullahs from enriching uranium in any form, writes Mark Almond
Handing victory to the Ayatollah after nine months of declining military involvement would amount to a grotesque capitulation.
Yes, oil prices are climbing, putting pressure on households and industry. Continued strikes could push Western economies into recession as Iran maintains its hold over the Strait of Hormuz and encourages its proxy militia, the Houthis in Yemen, to threaten the Strait of Bab el-Mandeb in the Red Sea.
But the West has confronted this dilemma before, most recently in Ukraine. Russia’s invasion triggered a global energy crisis every bit as painful as the present one. Few people demanded that Kyiv surrender so Vladimir Putin’s forces could overrun the country and the West could resume buying cheap Russian gas.
Iran’s nuclear capability may have been weakened, but its strategic influence has grown. Even Tehran could not have imagined how effective control of Hormuz would become. None of this would have happened if Trump had chosen the path of least resistance. Yet faced with a choice between a nuclear-armed Iran and a constrained global energy supply, I would choose the latter.
Iran can strike at American allies and US forces across the Middle East, but Washington has the capacity to inflict far greater damage.
Trump must stand firm. He cannot accept an imposed agreement that prevents the mullahs from carrying out any uranium enrichment whatsoever.
In his first term as President, he taught America’s adversaries a dangerous lesson by accepting North Korea’s nuclear weapons and praising its dictator, Kim Jong-Un, for writing him “a beautiful letter”. Allowing Iran to act with similar impunity in a region so central to the West’s energy supplies would be a criminal betrayal of the national interest.
Trump has no further polls to contest, while a Democratic-controlled Congress will obstruct his domestic programme. He should therefore devote the final two years of his presidency to resolving the Iranian nuclear crisis. It could still become his defining legacy—and one for which future historians will be grateful.