On Sunday, America’s B-2 bombers attacked Iran’s mountain-dug Fordow facility, followed swiftly by raids on Natanz and Isfahan. President Donald Trump hailed the strikes as a spectacular military success. But the euphoria in Washington may be masking a strategic blunder: the United States has inserted itself into what most of the world sees as Israel’s war of preference, not a war of collective security. By choosing force over diplomacy, Trump has mortgaged America’s credibility in the Middle East and beyond.
The official justification—that Iran was “on the cusp” of a bomb—is chillingly reminiscent of the mythical weapons of mass destruction that paved the road to Baghdad in 2003. Then, as now, intelligence was presented as incontrovertible, critics were dismissed as naïve, and domestic dissent was framed as disloyalty. Within hours of the first explosions, opposition Democrats, libertarian Republicans and veterans’ groups questioned the legal basis of the strikes and the absence of congressional authorisation. The parallel with Iraq is not lost on America’s allies in Europe or the Global South; many have already labelled the attack a violation of international law.
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Trump’s diplomatic gift to Beijing, Moscow
If credibility is the coin of great-power politics, Washington has just minted fresh reserves for Beijing and Moscow. Within 48 hours, Presidents Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin choreographed a joint call condemning Israel’s action and urging de-escalation. Foreign Minister Wang Yi, meanwhile, rang both Tehran and Jerusalem to offer China’s constructive role. The optics are unmistakable: while America rains bunker-busters, China offers hotlines and mediation; while US officials talk regime change, Russia warns of Armageddon and counsels restraint. The narrative of a reckless America versus a responsible Eurasian duo is taking root among the Global South.
Nothing undercuts a “pivot to Asia” faster than another Middle-East entanglement. Five months into his second term, Trump has diverted war-fighting assets and political attention away from the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait. Chinese analysts are already calculating the opportunity cost Washington will now bear: Patriot and THAAD missile interceptors expended over Iran are interceptors not stockpiled in Guam; carrier strike groups in the Gulf are carrier strike groups not patrolling the first island chain. A contained conflagration may suit Beijing just fine, allowing it to tighten its grip on the Indo-Pacific while America jousts with the Ayatollahs.
Economic blowback of US attack on Iran
Markets will deliver their verdict on Monday. Brent may breach $100 a barrel soon despite OPEC reassurances, and insurance premia for tankers transiting the Strait of Hormuz may double. The White House insists spare capacity will stabilise prices, but traders remember 2019, when a single drone strike in Abqaiq sent crude up 15% overnight. Higher fuel costs will feed a US inflation rate already stuck above the Fed’s comfort band and shred Trump’s promise of cheap American energy. Meanwhile, Iran’s parliament has threatened to close Hormuz if the US escalates—an asymmetric lever Tehran can pull without firing a single missile.
Domestically, Trump confronts an anti-interventionist base that twice rewarded him for pledging to end endless wars. His own America First rhetoric is now boomeranging: why, voters ask, must Midwestern taxpayers bankroll bunker-busters while bridges at home rust? Congressional hearings on the administration’s legal rationale will be bruising; Senate Republicans facing re-election in purple states are already distancing themselves.
Israel’s tactical win, America’s strategic loss
Israel is the immediate beneficiary. It lacked the ordnance to penetrate Fordow’s 300-foot mountain cocoon; Washington supplied the bomb and with it a public guarantee of iron-clad support. With one strike, Israel degrades Iran’s nuclear timeline and demonstrates unchallenged air superiority. But strategic victories are rarely zero-sum. Every Iranian casualty amplifies Tehran’s resolve to rebuild; every image of US bombs hitting Iranian soil fuels regional radicalism that sees America as the real aggressor. The net result may be to hasten, not halt, Iran’s pursuit of a deterrent.
Outside the NATO bubble, condemnation is visceral. The African Union, the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation and even BRICS partners like Brazil have framed the strikes as neo-imperial overreach. India, normally a quiet strategic partner of Washington, issued an unusually pointed call for dialogue and diplomacy, mindful of eight million expatriate workers and a 60% energy dependence on the Gulf. If New Delhi feels compelled to hedge, smaller states will follow. Soft power is eroded not by propaganda but by pictures of collapsed centrifuge halls and weeping Iranian families.
The law of unintended consequences
History warns that militaries enter conflicts with clear aims but rarely exit on their own terms. Trump enters this war to destroy centrifuges; he may end up defending tankers, embassies and bases from a thousand cuts. Hezbollah rockets in Galilee, Houthi drones over the Red Sea, militia mortars in Baghdad—each will test the threshold for further US escalation. The president may soon face the very quagmire he decried: an open-ended commitment without a definable victory.
What could Washington have done differently? First, invest the diplomatic capital expended on Tehran in repairing the 2015 nuclear accord that Trump’s first term abandoned. Second, enlist European and Asian oil importers—who bear the immediate cost of instability—to co-sponsor a strict inspections regime tied to phased sanctions relief. Third, recognise that regional security is sustainable only when all stakeholders, including Iran and the Gulf monarchies, have a seat at the table. Beijing’s mediation is hardly neutral, yet its activism reveals a vacuum America once filled. Unless Washington rediscovers the art of statecraft, it will cede the mantle of indispensable nation to rivals who wield peace overtures as deftly as they sell drones.
Power is not merely the ability to destroy hardened bunkers; it is the authority that persuades others you are right to do so. In choosing the hammer over the handshake, President Trump has traded tangible influence for fleeting applause. The strikes may delay Iran’s nuclear clock, but they accelerate the countdown on American leadership. What begins as a show of strength could end as a testament to strategic hubris—another costly chapter in the chronicle of wars the United States could win tactically yet lose politically.