Trump's Iran Trap: Forever War Has a Familiar Face
According to the New York Times chief diplomatic correspondent, the answer is not encouraging.
The question being asked in Washington this week is not whether the United States can win the war in Iran — it is whether anyone in the administration has thought seriously about what winning would require. According to the New York Times chief diplomatic correspondent, the answer is not encouraging.
President Donald Trump, who built a political identity on ending wars rather than inheriting them, now faces the precise entanglement that consumed George W. Bush in Iraq and Barack Obama in Afghanistan. The ceasefire brokered weeks ago has collapsed in practice if not on paper, with both American and Iranian forces exchanging missile strikes while the White House weighs whether to introduce ground troops — a move Trump is reportedly leaning toward, per The Mirror.
The structural problem is not tactical. Iran is not Iraq. Its population is three times larger, its territory twice the size, its military culture shaped by four decades of preparing for exactly this scenario. American commanders who served in the Mesopotamian campaigns know what sustained occupation costs — in lives, in treasure, in domestic political capital — and what it rarely produces.
The parallel that haunts the diplomatic analysis is not just strategic. It is institutional. Trump entered office with a clear anti-interventionist mandate. That mandate is now competing with the logic of a war that, once entered, generates its own momentum. Withdrawal looks like defeat. Escalation looks like resolve. The space between them narrows with every missile exchange.
Congress is watching, divided, and not yet willing to call it by its name.
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*By Isla Camilleri, Global Affairs & Lifestyle Editor*
