With the details of the signed Memorandum of Understanding still unclear, it does appear, for all intents and purposes, that the United States has lost the war with Iran. That means Pete Hegseth, the first Secretary of War, has lost a war.

As if the US couldn’t look more foolish, the MoU gives the US nothing it wanted when it comes to the military objectives it was pursuing in Iran.

The First Secretary of War Loses A War

MAC SLAVOSH 

The only big “accomplishment” is that Iran will reopen the Strait of Hormuz, but not “toll-free” as US President Donald Trump claimed. But the vital waterway was open before the US and Israel’s joint strikes on Iran on February 28th that started the war.

The Center for Economic Policy and Research wrote that Trump and Hegseth took the US into a war that it was unable to win, and the fact that the ruling class didn’t see it was astounding. Thousands of people have died in Iran, and many more were killed in Lebanon, where the war is continuing. Not only that, the war pushed the cost of fuel to unbearable heights as Americans are already grappling with inflation that has pushed grocery prices higher than ever.

The cost of this war to the US was a whopping $25 billion and resulted in significant U.S. munitions depletion. So that the Strait of Hormuz could be reopened, which, again, was already open before the war. So what did the US gain? It looks like nothing.

Iran has already declared victory, with most on both sides agreeing that the US is on the losing side.

Iran Declares Memorandum of Understanding A “Record of US Failure”

Because of his own failures, Hegseth berated North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies for failing to provide US military forces access to bases on the continent to launch attacks on Iran. Hegseth called the action of NATO countries “shameful.”

“These allies, they put America’s sons and daughters, our sons and daughters, at risk by denying them the predictable access, basing and overflight that never should have been in question at all,” Hegseth, the infamous Christian Nationalist and misogynist, said.

https://www.activistpost.com/the-first-secretary-of-war-loses-a-war/

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Timothy Snyder

The US ‘deal’ with Iran is a humiliation. This outcome reveals not just Trump’s incompetence but flaws in the system that allowed him to rise to power.

In promoting his ‘deal’ with Iran, US President Donald Trump has tried to dress up a humiliating defeat as a victory. While it’s tempting to blame this outcome on incompetent leadership, it stems more from the policies and institutions that have allowed entertainers and profiteers to rise to power.

America has capitulated to Iran. The ‘memorandum of understanding’ signed by the two sides specifies terms that spell victory for the Islamic Republic and humiliation for President Donald Trump and the United States. War, as some people apparently needed to learn, is not about the pleasure one takes in watching things blow up. It is politics by other means. And as Iran has just demonstrated, winning means changing the enemy’s politics so that they are forced to surrender.

From the beginning, the unprovoked US-Israeli war on Iran put Trump’s incompetence on display for all to see. Instead of trying to understand how the Iranian leadership thinks and operates, Trump, US Secretary of ‘War’, Pete Hegseth, and other US officials treated them as stooges who would immediately submit as soon as the bombs started falling.

With no strategy of its own, it did not occur to the Trump administration that Iran would have a plan: retaliate with long-range strikes and close the Strait of Hormuz. US officials had no second move, except to dress up defeat as victory (which they are, laughably, still trying to do). This is what happens when voters entrust entertainers to wage war, and profiteers to negotiate peace.

Many Americans still seem to be under the illusion that Trump is a shrewd dealmaker. He never was – that was a character he played on television. Trump and his cabinet members talk big in front of the cameras but know nothing about how global power works. Trump is vulnerable to flattery, always in a hurry, unable to focus and indifferent to any issue beyond his own comfort. After starting the war against Iran on a lark, he surrendered for political convenience: lower gas prices would bolster his bid to stay in the White House forever.

Until now, I figured that Trump’s geopolitical legacy would be as a footnote in the Ukraine war: a wannabe oligarch who artificially extended a real oligarch’s war of aggression. Now, Trump will also be remembered as the architect of the brutal Iranian regime’s revival.

By attacking Iran, Trump generated sympathy within the country for torturers and murderers. By losing to Iran, he expanded its power in the Middle East. And by capitulating to Iran, he created an enduring revenue stream for its rulers. Iran will charge fees for transit through the Strait of Hormuz; the US will unfreeze $24 billion in Iranian assets and pay $300 billion in reconstruction funds. Gone is any leverage that America had to prevent Iran from building a nuclear weapon.

We tend to think of evil and folly as mutually exclusive. If something is evil, it must serve an intelligent purpose; if it is foolish, it must not be very malicious. But Trump’s war in Iran shows that evil and folly can march hand in hand along the path to national self-destruction.

Trump’s war on Iran was both a strategic and an ethical disaster. Fighting an undeclared and illegal war of aggression, flouting the laws of war and killing scores of civilians do not bring victory. Delighting in such actions is not a sign of canny calculation. It is simply wrong. One can enjoy violence and still be a loser. One can be both hard-hearted and soft-headed, as Trump and Hegseth have proven.

In other words, there is no consolation. The Trump administration used evil means foolishly, not for some good purpose, and left the world far worse off than it was before. Thanks to Trump, the US has caused widespread economic pain and – to the delight of China, Russia and Iran – created a more disorderly international order, less bound by law.

But if evil and folly can march together, so, too, can virtue and wisdom. The US reached this point because it allowed political, economic and media power to be concentrated in the hands of a few. While it’s tempting to blame America’s capitulation on incompetent leadership, it stems more from the policies and institutions that allow such people to rise to power.

Wars of whimsy are a symptom of tyranny, and a warning for those who prefer republics. They must be opposed; but, more fundamentally, they must be prevented by removing money from politics, addressing basic inequalities, breaking up monopolies, and enabling social mobility.

Iran easily won this war because it had only to threaten the self-interest of an aspiring tyrant. To build an America that does not capitulate requires the opposite of Trump’s hard-heartedness and soft-headedness. Americans should value leaders with harder heads – people who have demonstrated genuine qualifications and done some good with their lives – and resist charismatic charlatans who stick their hands in our pockets and send our children to war. We must also value leaders with softer hearts: leaders who channel our desire to care for one another and to create a government that enables better lives for us all.

Project Syndicate 2026

https://johnmenadue.com/post/2026/06/dressing-up-defeat-as-victory/

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