Trump's Iran war has gone wrong

There is no doubt that President Doanld Trump's Iran war has gone wrong. That this is happening matters for Pakistan for several reasons. Not only is the expanding conflict in Pakistan's immediate neighborhood, but it has also caused severe energy shortages in the country, deeply affecting its economy.

Lacking knowledge of global economics and showing little interest in the global impact of his domestic policies, President Donald Trump has created a serious international crisis through his war with Iran. His intense bombing of Iran on the last day of February 2026 did not produce the changes he had expected from his intervention. Bombing of Iran was encouraged by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who saw the Iranian nuclear programme as an existential threat for his country. He wanted to ensure that Tehran abandoned the programme and that international inspection of what it was doing in that area would be allowed.

That was one of the important features of the treaty President Barak Obama had concluded in 2016 with Iran. Trump was obsessively preoccupied with dismantling all that Obama had done. He scrapped the Iran deal. Instead of a treaty he thought he could bring about changes in Iran through the deployment of his country's military might. That resulted in the launch of the Iran war. But Iran's policies did not change, neither did the composition of the ruling class that governed the country. Trump's Iran war has had consequences the American leader did not expect. The most important of these is the use of the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow sea-lane through which most of the oil the Middle East produces passes.

Hormuz is a 90-mile-long horseshoe-shaped sea-lane that enables the countries sitting on either side – Iran to the north and Oman to the south – to potentially disrupt shipping. As Rosemary Kelanic wrote for The New York Times, this "rugged coastline provides ample haven for precision-guided Iranian missiles, drones, and attack boats to menace vessels with 'shoot and scoot' tactics that are impossible to defeat. Iran can produce such weapons cheaply and indefinitely, making Iranian attack an endemic risk crossing the Hormuz that even a negotiated deal with Tehran would not eliminate." Kelanic, the director of the Middle East programme at Defense Priorities, a thinktank, commented that "private shippers have balked at risking crews and cargoes for less-than-perfect security which has allowed Iran to suppress traffic without attacking every vessel attempting to cross."

Another quote from another analysis in The New York Times provides a good summary of where the situation stands today. This one is from an article by Erika Solomon. She writes: "Iran's leadership believes it has found the world's Achilles heel. With the help of regional militia allies, Tehran spent the past week underscoring its ability to threaten several of the world's most critical energy facilities and waterways." When Trump signaled that a major escalation was imminent if no concessions were made, two former Iranian officials said Tehran's leaders told him to go right ahead. Trump had threatened to wipe out the entire Iranian civilisation. "They are ready for the war and they won't back down," said Amor al-Mousavi, a former Iranian diplomat who told reporters that he had met with the team working with Iran's head negotiator and speaker of Parliament, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf. The Iranians want Trump to return to the memorandum of understanding that Pakistan and other mediators from the neighborhood had helped write.

"We have no problem with war at all, and we are ready for the big confrontation," al-Mousavi told the Americans. Iranian officials have spotted the pattern of President Trump's efforts to shape negotiations, said Sasan Karimi, a former senior Iranian official and a professor of Iranian Studies at the University of Tehran. "Whenever their messages are exchanged, Mr. Trump starts to pressurise the situation by threatening Iran, so he can try to get further concessions," he said. "But Iran is not so easily manipulated."

Saudi Arabia is verity concerned about the developing situation in the Middle East. The official Saudi news channel said on August 2 that Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, MBS, had recently spoken with President Trump to "stress the necessity of prioritising dialogue to deescalate tensions" and "prevent a wider conflict".

At its heart the recent struggle "is about redesigning the regional security architecture," said HA Hellyer, a senior associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London. The core of that struggle is the issue of control of the Strait of Hormuz, he said. "The Iranians are very, very serious about not giving up control, and they're willing to bomb things to make sure that's the case." Beyond that development there was also the startling July 17 attack on the American military sites in Jordan that killed three American soldiers. "The strike in Jordan was the game changer," said Ali Vaez, Iran project director at the International Crisis Group. It not only demonstrated that in spite of the American and Israeli attacks, Iran's missile arsenal remined well stocked and also that Tehran's intelligence capabilities are more robust than believed.

Continued Ali Vaez: "The entire Iranian strategy in this period has been aimed at making the United States understand if there is another round of escalation, the scope and scale of Iranian response would be so much more devastating for the region and the global economy." President Trump has never fully grasped the motivations of the Iranians, how they refuse to be bullied or cowed. Throughout his two terms as president, Trump has been "reluctant to learn the lesson that aggressive tactics toward Tehran have only hardened their position."

It is not only Iran that is reluctant to bow down before Trump. Most other countries are reacting in the same manner. An interesting example is that of Canada whose prime minister has threatened that if Trump uses tariffs – something he has declared he would do – the Canadians would react in the same way.

Ibrahim Rezae, the spokesman for the Iranian Parliament's national security and foreign policy, echoed a threat by President Trump that he would bomb Iran back to the Stone Age. "If a strike is made on Iran, we will return the entire region and its facilities to the Stone Age." When the American president said that he was postponing an escalation, a prominent hardline commentator, Seyed Mohammad Marandi posted a picture of chicken tacos on his X account. It was a reference to the acronym used by Trump's critics: TACO, or "Trump always chickens out."