Six months after the war on Iran that US President Donald Trump promised would be swift and decisive, the United States is confronting a reality that sharply contradicts the image of “victory” he sought to establish.
A war expected to end within weeks has turned into an open-ended confrontation with no clear conclusion. The Iranian system remains in place, the Strait of Hormuz has not returned to normal traffic, and Iran’s nuclear programme has been damaged but not destroyed. Meanwhile, US weapons stockpiles are being depleted and the political and economic costs of the war continue to rise.
Major US media outlets, particularly The New York Times, The Washington Post and Axios, converge on one central conclusion despite their differing angles: Trump has been unable either to secure a clear military victory or produce a viable peace agreement.
Instead, he is caught in a war suspended between the two, increasingly attempting to transform it from a military confrontation into a prolonged campaign of economic pressure in search of an outcome that can still be presented as a victory.
The New York Times: Trump entered the war expecting a rapid military campaign, but six months later he is wavering between resuming large-scale bombardment and reaching an agreement that ends the war on terms he can accept.
A Short War Becomes a Long Stalemate
Peter Baker, chief White House correspondent for The New York Times, paints a bleak picture of the situation.
He argues that Trump’s war against Iran, which reached the six-month mark on Friday, has become “a quagmire of the president’s own making”, with no clear objectives, defined strategy or visible end.
Baker notes that Trump, who entered office criticising “endless wars”, has now found himself leading one of his own.
The president entered the war on 28 February expecting a rapid military campaign. Six months later, he remains torn between resuming large-scale bombing and reaching an agreement capable of ending the war on terms he can accept.
Trump has repeatedly declared that the United States has “already won”. In June, he even announced that the war was over after a ceasefire was reached, but the agreement did not last.
In one of the latest ironies highlighted by Baker, Trump posted an image of himself on social media standing alongside an aircraft carrier, warplanes and American flags with the words “Mission Accomplished 2026”.
The image appeared to echo, deliberately or otherwise, former President George W. Bush’s infamous “Mission Accomplished” declaration after the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
Yet the reality on the ground does not support such a claim of victory.
Among the experts cited by The New York Times, Richard Haass, former director of policy planning at the US State Department, described the war as a “colossal failure”.
Haass argued that Iran has emerged as the strategic beneficiary both of the earlier Iraq War and the current conflict because of its ability to choke global energy markets.
That assessment is echoed by Senator Jack Reed, the senior Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, who said Trump had drawn the country into a historically consequential failed policy that had not achieved a single objective and had weakened Washington’s international position.
Supporters of the war offer a different assessment.
Mark Dubowitz, chief executive of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, argues that Trump is applying intense pressure that has left the Iranian system weaker than at any point in the past 47 years.
He says the US administration has found an ideal pressure zone between direct fighting and negotiations.
Victor Davis Hanson, a fellow at the Hoover Institution, similarly argues that Trump is applying an “anaconda strategy”, gradually constricting Iran economically and militarily at a lower human and financial cost than the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Stephen Cook of the Council on Foreign Relations offers a more balanced assessment through The New York Times.
He argues that Operation Epic Fury reflects Trump’s bold but poorly prepared and insufficiently cautious style. If the United States ultimately wins, Cook says, it will be because America is “a strong country” despite the president’s mistakes and because the Iranians are “relatively weak”, not because the administration is executing an effective strategy.
The Iranian System Survived, and the Objectives Were Not Achieved
One of the most striking contradictions of the war is that a central objective, changing the political equation inside Iran, has not been achieved.
Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was killed in the opening strikes, but the system did not collapse. His son Mojtaba succeeded him, while the governing structure in Tehran remained intact and capable of responding.
The New York Times reports that Iran’s military capabilities suffered serious damage, particularly its air force and navy, while Tehran’s ability to support regional proxies was also reduced.
But those losses did not eliminate Iran’s capacity to strike US bases and Washington’s allies across the region.
Iran’s nuclear programme also sustained heavy damage, but it did not disappear.
According to the newspaper’s analysis, Tehran continues to refuse to abandon the programme, while analysts believe parts of it could be rebuilt.
Haass goes further, arguing that Iran strategically benefited from both major US wars in the region.
In Iraq, the overthrow of Saddam Hussein strengthened Iranian influence. In the current war, Tehran has demonstrated its ability to affect global energy markets by disrupting navigation through the Strait of Hormuz.
Hormuz: The Clearest Test of Washington’s Failure to Force a Decision
The three US outlets converge most clearly on the Strait of Hormuz.
Trump says the strait is open and that the United States is increasingly moving oil through it, but that claim is not sufficiently supported by available evidence.
According to The Washington Post, more than 100 vessels crossed the Strait of Hormuz each day before the war. On one day this week, just five vessels passed through, according to data from commodity and shipping tracker Kpler.
The New York Times provides another striking figure, reporting that average daily crossings have fallen to around 12 vessels, compared with 130 before the war.
The strait has therefore become one of the clearest indicators of the US predicament.
Washington has been unable to restore commercial traffic to previous levels, while at the same time seeking to avoid a more dangerous escalation that could require broader military operations.
The consequences are being felt directly by Americans.
According to figures cited by The New York Times, the average US petrol price has reached around US$4.09 per gallon, an increase of US$1.10 compared with the beginning of the war.
The Economic Option: A Way Out or an Admission of the Limits of Force?
After military efforts stalled and negotiations failed, Trump began moving towards a third strategy: imposing economic sanctions designed to force Iran into submission.
In August, the US president announced what he described as the “largest crushing economic operation ever taken against any country”.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent described it as an “economic D-Day” against Iran and threatened sanctions on countries and companies that continued dealing with Tehran.
The Washington Post, however, identified a central contradiction in this approach.
At the same time that Bessent issued those threats, he softened them by saying sanctions would not be imposed immediately, asking: “Why would I go and destroy the global financial system?”
The newspaper quoted Richard Nephew, one of the architects of Iran sanctions under former President Barack Obama, as saying that the message to Tehran was clear: there are limits to what Washington is prepared to do.
Nephew said the deeper concern is that the war may have exposed the limits of both military and economic pressure, encouraging Iran to conclude that it can withstand both.
That is the core dilemma.
If neither military force nor economic sanctions can compel Tehran to surrender, Washington risks losing the effectiveness of the pressure tools on which it has long relied.
US Attrition Extends Beyond Iran
The cost of the war is not limited to energy prices or human losses.
The Washington Post reports that Pentagon stockpiles of some advanced weapons have been severely depleted.
The United States has lost around a quarter of its Reaper drones, while its Patriot missile stocks have fallen sharply.
The New York Times reports that the number of Patriot interceptors remaining in the US arsenal may have dropped from around 2,330 to no more than 759 as of a month ago, according to estimates from the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
This depletion is beginning to affect Washington’s allies.
Some countries have become more cautious about providing military assistance to Ukraine or Arab states, fearing they may themselves need those weapons if the United States becomes less capable of supplying them.
Former officials cited by The Washington Post warn that US allies in the Middle East have begun “hedging”, and that the American military presence once regarded as a source of protection has, during the war, become a reason for them to be targeted.
Inside the United States, the war is no longer merely a foreign policy issue.
Rising fuel and consumer prices have begun weighing on Trump’s popularity as the midterm elections approach.
According to a Reuters-Ipsos poll cited by The New York Times, Trump’s approval rating has fallen to 33 per cent.
Only 31 per cent of Americans support the war, while 63 per cent oppose it.
These numbers leave Trump facing a difficult equation.
The longer the war continues, the greater the political cost. The more he escalates militarily, the greater the economic and strategic risks.
Six Months and Six Changing Exit Strategies
Axios offers perhaps the clearest summary of how Trump’s strategy has shifted through his own public statements.
The outlet notes that the war began with clear military objectives: destroying Iran’s missile capabilities, eliminating its navy, preventing it from acquiring a nuclear weapon, and ending its ability to support armed groups outside its borders.
In April, Trump declared that the United States had achieved “almost all military objectives” and that a long-term peace agreement was close.
In June, he announced that a deal had been reached with Iran that “achieves everything we sought to achieve”.
But the memorandum of understanding, which included a cessation of hostilities, the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz and 60 days of nuclear negotiations, later collapsed, Axios reported.
In July, Trump said he no longer wanted to deal with Iran, before returning to two options: continuing the war or reaching a deal.
Then, in August, a third option emerged: open-ended economic warfare.
As Axios concludes, a war initially expected to last four or five weeks has turned into a six-month conflict, while the proposed path out of it continues to change.
The clearest consensus between The New York Times, The Washington Post and Axios is not that Iran has won or that the United States has been militarily defeated, but that the war has failed to achieve its declared objectives and has not produced a sustainable peace.
No Victory and No Peace
The analysts cited by the three outlets differ over the scale of the damage inflicted on Iran.
Mark Dubowitz argues that the Islamic Republic is weaker than at any previous point, while others contend that Washington itself has emerged in a weaker position.
But the strongest point of agreement between The New York Times, The Washington Post and Axios is not that Iran has won or that the United States has suffered a military defeat.
It is that the war has failed to achieve its stated objectives and has failed to produce a sustainable peace.
As Brett McGurk, a former adviser to several US presidents, told The New York Times: “Trump is clearly wrong to say that the United States has won, but Iran has not won either.”
