Even as a ceasefire was crumbling, leading the U.S. to wage new attacks on Iran, President Donald Trump touted the United States\u2019 war as a success.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re doing very well against the Islamic Republic of Iran,\u201d he said at a\u00a0July 23 event<\/a>\u00a0in Washington, D.C. \u201cWe\u2019re doing extremely well.\u201d Later in the event, Trump reiterated this, saying the U.S. was \u201cdoing very well, very, very well\u201d in the war.<\/p>\n He also voiced confidence\u00a0July 29<\/a>\u00a0in a tele-rally for a Wisconsin congressional candidate: \u201cWe\u2019ll finish off Iran pretty soon. It\u2019s gonna happen.\u201d<\/p>\n The war, which began Feb. 28, has cost at least $37.5 billion in direct military expenditures through mid-July, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth\u00a0told lawmakers<\/a>. It has also\u00a0led to<\/a>\u00a0the deaths of 18 service members, with 624 wounded, as of late July.<\/p>\n Has it been a tactical or strategic success? The U.S. has degraded Iran\u2019s conventional military assets. But Iran has been able to use what\u2019s called \u201casymmetric warfare\u201d \u2014 including the use of inexpensive drones to attack U.S. forces and allies \u2014 to leverage its military power.<\/p>\n The obliteration of Iran\u2019s nuclear program and genuine\u00a0regime change<\/a>\u00a0have remained elusive, while new problems, notably Iran\u2019s newly asserted control over the strategic\u00a0Strait of Hormuz<\/a>, have emerged.<\/p>\n Foreign policy experts are skeptical of Trump\u2019s bullishness.<\/p>\n \u201cThe charitable assessment is that the administration would get an \u2018incomplete,\u2019\u201d said Aaron David Miller, a Carnegie Endowment for International Peace senior fellow. \u201cIf the war were to end today, it would be a major strategic defeat by the administration\u2019s own metrics.\u201d<\/p>\n Barbara Slavin, a Stimson Center fellow, said the Iranians so far \u201chave consistently out-strategized Trump. They are betting that they can hold out longer than American consumers.\u201d<\/p>\n The White House did not respond to an inquiry for this article.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\tThe U.S. military offensive has been successful, to a point<\/p>\n The U.S. has inflicted significant damage on Iran\u2019s military, including to its air defenses and conventional naval assets.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cRebuilding some of these facilities will likely take considerable time and cost billions of dollars,\u201d said Arman Mahmoudian, a research fellow at the University of South Florida\u2019s Global & National Security Institute. \u201cIran has also lost a number of senior nuclear scientists and high-ranking military commanders.\u201d<\/p>\n However, military experts caution that Iran has maintained significant capabilities, because it planned for a war in which it faced the United States\u2019 superior conventional military.<\/p>\n Iran can continue its fight by launching missiles or drones from deep inside its own territory. A\u00a0missile attack<\/a>\u00a0in July against a U.S. base in Jordan, combined with continuing drone attacks against Persian Gulf states, \u201cindicates that Iran still possesses both munitions and operational launching capabilities,\u201d Mahmoudian said.<\/p>\n Preventing such attacks would require a substantial U.S. ground force to seize territory inside Iran to create a buffer zone, he said \u2014 which would represent a major escalation.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\tKey U.S. goals remain unmet<\/p>\n Trump hasn\u2019t fulfilled several goals he laid out for the war.<\/p>\n One is regime change. The U.S. has killed many top Iranian officials, including its supreme leader, but Iran\u2019s government structure\u00a0shows no sign<\/a>\u00a0of loosening its hold on power or changing its ideology. The Iranian people who Trump once expressed solidarity with have seen\u00a0no expansion of<\/a>\u00a0their rights and freedoms.<\/p>\n In January, before the war, \u201cI was convinced we were in the last period of the Islamic Republic,\u201d said Richard Nephew, a senior research scholar at Columbia University. \u201cI don\u2019t think that\u2019s true now. \u2026 The more we do, the more we seem to solidify the position of the real bad guys in that system.\u201d<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s foremost goal \u2014 neutralizing Iran\u2019s ability to build a nuclear weapon \u2014 has not yet been accomplished, nuclear policy specialists say. The program has been\u00a0damaged but not destroyed<\/a>.<\/p>\n The Iran war \u201cdid not fundamentally alter the status of Iran\u2019s nuclear program,\u201d which made clear that airstrikes alone \u201ccannot eliminate Tehran\u2019s residual capability to build a bomb,\u201d said Daryl G. Kimball, Arms Control Association executive director.<\/p>\n In theory, U.S. military forces could have pushed Iran into negotiating a nuclear agreement, said Brendan Green, a University of Cincinnati political scientist. But it\u2019s unclear whether the Iran war has been damaging enough so far to drive Iran to a negotiated nuclear settlement, he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n The war, Kimball said, has further delayed the return of international inspectors to search for enriched uranium and centrifuges, and it has \u201cseverely damaged what little trust may have existed in Iran regarding any future agreement.\u201d<\/p>\n In addition, the U.S. failure to derail Iran\u2019s nuclear ambitions could weaken its leverage with other nations who might see nuclear weapons as a national security asset. \u201cOnce again we are reminded of why states want the bomb,\u201d said John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org. \u201cAnd the list (of states) is growing longer.\u201d<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\tProblems caused or exacerbated by the war itself<\/p>\n The biggest economic and geopolitical concern to emerge from the war is Iran\u2019s newfound ability to control the commercial traffic that transits the Strait of Hormuz, including petroleum and\u00a0other key products<\/a>\u00a0like fertilizer, aluminum and other industrial commodities.<\/p>\n Iran \u201cmay no longer possess a navy capable of dominating the Persian Gulf, but it likely retains enough capability to disrupt, or even temporarily paralyze, maritime traffic through the Strait of Hormuz,\u201d Mahmoudian said. \u201cLarge oil tankers are particularly vulnerable because of their size and relatively slow speed, especially while navigating narrow waterways.\u201d<\/p>\n The war\u2019s effect on the global economy could worsen if the Houthis, a Yemeni proxy of Iran,\u00a0move to block shipping<\/a>\u00a0in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait between Saudi Arabia and Africa \u2014 one of the primary alternative shipping routes to the Strait of Hormuz. And an Egyptian port near the Suez Canal was attacked July 29, believed to be by a drone; it\u2019s unclear whether Iran or one of its proxies carried it out.\u00a0<\/p>\n The most direct effect on Americans from the shipping squeeze has been higher prices for gasoline. Prices at the pump are about $1.15 higher now than they were before the war in late February; at times since the war began, gasoline has been as much as $1.55 higher than pre-war levels.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t think we can assume any return\u201d to the pre-war status quo,\u201d said Hugh Daigle, a University of Texas at Austin petroleum and geosystems engineering professor. \u201cIran and Oman have been talking about imposing tolls on traffic through the Strait, while the U.S. has talked about security fees for vessels coming and going. Iran has realized how much of a bargaining chip the strait can be and will be more willing to use it in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n Because gasoline is factored into many other consumer prices because of transportation costs, overall inflation has spiked as well.\u00a0<\/p>\n In early June, Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody\u2019s Analytics, estimated the cost of the Iran war, including consumer impacts, to be\u00a0$100 billion<\/a>\u00a0in the first four months. That would be about $685 per U.S. tax return \u2014 and that\u2019s before counting the costs from June and July.<\/p>\n Another problem that has been exacerbated by the Iran war: a\u00a0reduction in U.S. weapons stockpiles<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Several<\/a>\u00a0reports<\/a>\u00a0have<\/a>\u00a0found<\/a>\u00a0that U.S. weapons stockpiles are rapidly decreasing as the Iran war continues.\u00a0<\/p>\n