And then there's the uranium ...

After 40 days of war, it's reasonable to attempt some sort of assessment of what's been achieved and, indeed, what it was all about in the first place. That's not so easy, because the objectives were never clear, and they have shifted constantly in tempo with Trump's disordered mind.

The disorder happens at the stream-of-consciousnesses level, with Trump sometimes contradicting himself moment by moment, but also over the longer sweep. For example, notice how Trump went from demanding UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER (his caps) in the early days of shock and awe to, at the end, very much wanting to find a way to stop the fighting in order to get oil (not to mention fertilizer, helium, and other commodities) flowing again into the world's markets. Thus did the administration acknowledge that the 10-point ceasefire proposal from Iran was a reasonable framework from which to begin negotiating.

Negotiating? That's a hell of long way from unconditional surrender.

As an indication of Trump's own desperation, we now have reporting that the Trump administration actually got Pakistan to publicly ask Trump to agree to a two week ceasefire. Going along with the "Pakistani" request saved Trump from having to make good, as his deadline approached, on his threat to destroy Iran's "whole civilization" by bombing all its bridges and power plants, which would have been a war crime. Actually the threat itself is a war crime under international law.

Although it's hard to believe the professional military was caught completely off guard, Trump himself seems to have never considered the likelihood of all the nasty outcomes that did in fact transpire, such as Iran attacking its neighbors, or closing the Strait of Hormuz, and creating what the IEA head called the "greatest energy security threat in history."

On that latter difficulty Trump and his administration have bounced around like a ping pong ball. Trump has said variously that the Strait is Europe's problem, and that the U.S. has no need of that oil anyway. He said so even as gasoline prices soared domestically (along with prices generally; U.S. inflation surged in March as a direct consequence of the war), as did the price of the U.S. oil benchmark, West Texas Intermediate crude. The blustering Trump seems to not understand that oil is traded on a global market. Along the way Trump lied that he had actually anticipated the oil shock, and had thought it would be even worse than it turned out. If that is so, you'd think he'd have had a plan to deal with it. Early on energy secretary Chris Wright said that the U.S. military would handle the problem, but soon backtracked and said it would take a while longer, but that the Navy would begin escorting ships through the Strait in the not too distant future, at least by the end of March.

Uh, no. The Navy wasn't willing to do any such thing. It was plenty busy with other matters, and anyway who wants a U.S. warship to become an easy target? And so Trump insisted, indignantly, that Europe and NATO should clean up the mess he himself had made, as if it were their obligation. Trump told them to "go get your own oil." This after never having consulted allies in the first place before starting an ill-conceived war, and after his usual blizzard of insults aimed at the U.S.'s erstwhile friends—friends who by now are seriously souring on the relationship. Trump also seems to have forgotten that NATO is a defensive alliance, not an beck-and-call helper to fix his screwups. Then, bouncing around as always, Trump said the U.S. didn't need the help anyway. What he didn't do is get the oil flowing.

Thus we have a new situation that didn't apply before the war, where a presumptively defeated Iran now has de facto control over shipping through the Strait, and is currently charging a reported 1 to 2 million dollars for each ship it allows to transit. Iran is now asserting that control as its right, even though the Strait is international water governed by international law. This is not how things are supposed to go when you vanquish an enemy that you expect to surrender unconditionally. It's even been reported that Trump wants in on Iran's toll shakedown. Because, apparently, Trump always wants a cut, Mafia-style, of any lucrative action. You can't make this stuff up.

Another possible Trumpian rationale for the war is regime change, but all that was actually achieved was regime decapitation, and that isn't the same thing. Iran has always planned for decapitation. The regime goes on, perhaps more dug in and freshly radicalized (we will have to see) than ever. Trump, who was no doubt high on his own supply, must have thought that Venezuela was a happy and glorious model for what would happen in Iran. (Note that in the end the Venezuela action also had no articulated rationale other than Trump freely admitting that he wanted the country's oil. Any drug justification was nonsense. And there was no meaningful articulation of human rights.)

Anyway, talk about a big reality check. The hard truth is that an air campaign, even one as brutal and sustained as this one, has never, ever, caused a regime to collapse or surrender. It just doesn't work that way. To the contrary, the danger of a tactically successful air campaign is it becomes an "escalation trap," which can be a one-way ratchet to quagmire.

So we're still casting about for rationales. Here's one. Trump lied that an attack by Iran on the U.S. was imminent. That was nonsense at every level. Trump warned that Iran "would soon have had missiles capable of reaching our beautiful America." But U.S. intelligence agencies judge that if Iran chose to develop intercontinental ballistic missiles (which so far it hasn't), it would not have them before 2035. It would also have to figure out how to situate a nuclear warhead atop the missile—no small undertaking. And Iran's purported willingness to attack the U.S.—which would of course be suicidal—is the same kind of absurdity that was used to justify the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Why would attacking the U.S., and thus destroying itself, be the first thing Iran did after acquiring the capability?

Trump has also claimed Iran has or would soon have a nuclear weapon. You might recall that Trump had previously claimed Iran's nuclear program had been "completely and totally obliterated" by a U.S. attack last June. Do not expect him be consistent or say anything that makes sense in light of whatever else he has said. It just doesn't work that way. In any case, U.S. intelligence agencies have judged that Iran has not resumed uranium enrichment, nor has it been working on a nuclear weapon.

So why did the U.S. attack? We are still trying to get a good answer. Trump was no doubt influenced by Bibi Netanyahu, who admits he's wanted all out war with Iran for decades. Finally he got it. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that Israel was about to attack Iran, so the U.S. decided to join in. "We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action," Rubio explained. "We knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces, and we knew that if we didn't preemptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties."

That's why we went to war? Why not just kibosh the Israeli plan rather than assembling a massive force and piling on? The White House later walked back Rubio's remarks over the unseemliness of the U.S. allowing itself to be dragged into war by Israel, and offered a vaguer explanation. Press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that Trump "had a good feeling that the Iranian regime was going to strike the United States' assets and our personnel in the region." A good feeling. Trump's good feeling is why we went to war. Trump also told Fox's Brian Kilmeade that he'd know it was time to end the war "when I feel it. When I feel it in my bones."

We've gotten way too much of Trump's feelings and their unfortunate consequences, and not nearly enough reasoned analysis or careful planning. And no communication at all by way of explanation to Congress or the country, much less anything consistent with the constitutional requirement that Congress, not the president, declares war. No wonder it's all been a mess.

So much for our attempt to understand why. Let's move on to whatever vague metrics for success we might glean from the administration's statements. We've already seen that Iran has not surrendered unconditionally, or even conditionally, so scratch that off the list of achievements. And Trump's early call for the people of Iran to rise up and take back their country was quickly abandoned as unreasonable and unworkable. How would they do such a thing? Among other impediments, they have no weapons. Iran's navy was destroyed, but so what? We went to war to destroy its navy?

We've blown a lot of stuff up, but Iran still has substantial capacity to wage asymmetric war, which was always its most concerning capability. It can still fire missiles at—and hit—regional targets, and it can still launch waves of one-way attack drones, and manufacture them in large numbers.

Defense secretary Pete Hegseth has reveled in the wholesale destruction, including of Iran's missile launchers, but missile diminishment might not be what it seems. An April 3 New York Times story says: "Iranian operatives have been digging out underground missile bunkers and silos struck by American and Israeli bombs, returning them to operation hours after an attack, according to U.S. intelligence reports." There have also been suggestions that Iran has been holding back, husbanding its missile stock amidst concerns that the stocks of U.S. and Gulf country interceptors are being depleted.

Even now some of Iran's missiles and drones are hitting their targets. The interceptors deployed to stop them are expensive, in limited supply, and are slow to be replaced. Some are borrowed from other theaters that have their own security concerns. Should the interceptor balance tip decisively in Iran's favor, it may be increasingly difficult to stop Iran's attacks. A withering air war against Iran will not change that. After all, the U.S. has already claimed to have hit 13,000 Iranian targets, presumably the most obvious and fruitful ones. Yet Iran still has the capacity to manufacture massive numbers of drones, in dispersed, small scale operations that can't be found or attacked from the air. To the extent that they're stopped, cheap drones are being shot down with expensive interceptors. The only way to change this dynamic would be a massive ground invasion and occupation of the country, which would be an undertaking on a scale that's almost impossible to contemplate, and certainly not anything the U.S. has prepared for. It would be an stunning example of the escalation trap mentioned above.

All of which shows why Iran still has a say in what comes next, and why air power alone is never enough. Trump's fevered imaginings of a fast, decisive, frictionless victory were always disconnected from reality. Isn't that what you'd expect?

And we've not yet even talked about the 800 lb. gorilla in the room—Iran's stock of highly enriched uranium—which so far remains in Iranian hands. Any metrics for success would have to include the status of that uranium at the top of the list. Yet amidst all the destruction Hegseth so obviously relishes, the uranium has been scarcely mentioned, much less dealt with. If the war stopped now without this being resolved, it's hard to see how it could be called a success.

Hegseth says we know where the uranium is at, and will go get it if it's not turned over. That remains to be seen. Retrieval by force would be a large and difficult operation. Thus, what is arguably the most profound and important question of all—whether Iran might become a nuclear-armed state—has been strangely underplayed so far in this war. At the very least, it's been lost in all the other incoherent and constantly shifting justifications. That is so despite Trump's claim only he among all presidents has been willing to do what needed to be done.

What this war does demonstrate, at least to Iran, is why having nuclear weapons matters, existentially. If we have pushed Iran into outright determination to acquire one, when there was previously at most ambivalence, then we will have made a grievous mistake. That could be one of the most profound consequences of this war, which could someday count as a monumental failure if Iran does manage to cross the nuclear threshold. We ourselves have seen to it that Iran's incentives have profoundly changed.

Another thing Iran has learned is that negotiating with the United States is a fool's errand, which makes future progress of every sort more difficult. We simply can't be trusted. It's remarkable that the past two U.S. attacks, the current one, and the one last June, both occurred while Iran was actively negotiating with the U.S. Iran should rightly suspect the negotiations were being conducted in bad faith, and were at least in part cover for the U.S. launching surprise attacks. Add to that Trump's 2018 withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), negotiated by the Obama administration, with which Iran had been in compliance until Trump walked away from it. That deal allowed Iran to enrich uranium to just 3.67 percent, and international inspectors confirmed it was abiding by the agreement. Once Trump went back on the deal, Iran expanded its enrichment. The stockpiles mentioned above have been enriched to 60 percent—close to bomb grade. Sadly, the U.S. has shown repeatedly that its word means nothing.

Other consequences of this war include a U.S. burn rate of 1 to 2 billion dollars per day, which by now has added up to real money. They include a large depletion of slow-to-replace weapons including interceptors, and also large numbers of Tomahawk cruise missiles.

There has been significant infrastructure damage in the Gulf region. Among the most noteworthy, Iranian attacks wiped out 17 percent of Qatar's liquified natural gas (LNG) export capacity. The damage could take five years to repair. The Washington Post reports that countries are rethinking their overall reliance on imported fossil fuels generally, which includes U.S. produced LNG. Some countries have already concluded that they'll be more secure if they meet their energy needs with domestic resources. That means a large move toward renewable energy sources, but also to coal.

Russia has been a big winner in this war. The surge in the price of oil, coupled with waived sanctions against Russian oil, have resulted in billions of dollars of additional revenue available to fuel Russia's war in Ukraine. From Russia's standpoint, it couldn't have come at a better time, because its economy has been under increasingly severe strain. And the Pentagon is considering diverting military aid intended for Ukraine to instead use against Iran. Finally, imagine Putin's enormous pleasure at seeing NATO come increasingly unraveled thanks to an unhinged Trump who doesn't value alliances.

Perversely, Iran too is seeing a lot of new revenue, which is pretty impressive for a vanquished enemy. Sanctions against its oil have also been waived, and now it is also charging million dollar tolls for ships to transit the Strait of Hormuz. Iran's control of the Strait is a mind blowing outcome.

So here we are, with no compelling reasons for our adventure, and suspect claims of success. Iran was never a direct or imminent threat to the U.S. Russia and China have been taking notes. A thuggish U.S. has become increasingly loathed around the world. Some smaller Asian countries have been profoundly harmed by severe energy shortages. Our relationships with our allies have come under even more strain than before, which is saying something. It's all quite an accomplishment for a president who was elected, first and foremost, to bring down prices.

Copyright (C) 2026 James Michael Brennan, All Rights Reserved

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