{"id":251200,"date":"2026-08-16T10:21:11","date_gmt":"2026-08-16T10:21:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/251200\/"},"modified":"2026-08-16T10:21:11","modified_gmt":"2026-08-16T10:21:11","slug":"trump-turns-to-containing-the-fallout-from-setbacks-in-iran","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/251200\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump turns to containing the fallout from setbacks in Iran"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

WASHINGTON\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Approaching six months of war with Iran after predicting a six-week campaign, President Trump has few options before him to bring the conflict to a close. But some experts believe a new strategy emerging<\/a> from his administration could avert a more consequential defeat.<\/p>\n

The president has repeatedly flirted with broadening the assault, hoping yet another round of bombardment might force Iran to yield. Yet he has ultimately resisted, once again stepping back this month from options to expand strikes across Iran\u2019s critical infrastructure and leadership. And he has refrained since the beginning of the war from ordering a ground operation that would expose U.S. troops to direct attack, faced with dwindling U.S. munitions stockpiles and an entrenched Iranian government willing to retaliate.<\/p>\n

The result has been a U.S. campaign that has failed to achieve any of Trump\u2019s stated war aims \u2014 of regime change in Tehran, the elimination of Iran\u2019s ballistic missile and naval capabilities, and the end of its nuclear program \u2014 but has also avoided the costs of uncontrolled escalation, experts said.<\/p>\n

In remarks Friday<\/a>, Trump said the United States was still in the process of \u201cdefeating Iran, which is being very badly defeated.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have the blockade. No ships get through,\u201d he said. \u201cThey still have missiles, but not a lot. They still have drones, but just a fraction of what they had. But their manufacturing is largely gone.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re winning big with the Islamic Republic of Iran,\u201d he added. \u201cNobody has any idea how successful we are \u2014 they don\u2019t want to write it. But they know. You know who knows how well we\u2019re doing? Iran.\u201d<\/p>\n

In an interview published last week, Trump explained his decision not to proceed with expanded strikes, telling Axios, \u201cwe are low-keying it<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are only semi-negotiating with them,\u201d he said. \u201cWe are just watching Iran with its huge inflation and the fact they have no money.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is a shift from an instinctual posture to one of restraint uncharacteristic of a president who launched the war in February after consulting a mere handful of people, including Israel\u2019s prime minister and fewer than a dozen of his closest aides.<\/p>\n

The current approach \u2014 an economic choke hold on Iran \u2014 is being led by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who was not involved in Trump\u2019s prewar deliberations.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe options are escalating militarily, conceding Iranian victory through a phony negotiation, or continuing the economic pressure we have in place. The president\u2019s problem is that he can\u2019t simply choose \u2014 the ayatollah gets a vote,\u201d said Elliott Abrams, a veteran diplomat who served under Presidents Reagan and George W. Bush, as well as under Trump in his first term. <\/p>\n

\u201cTrump has to choose now between sticking to the blockade and the risks it brings \u2014 including high oil prices and a loss in the midterm elections \u2014 or accepting defeat by Iran and the risks that brings,\u201d he added, \u201cto our friends and allies and to his own reputation.\u201d<\/p>\n

White House officials are betting the risks to Tehran, from soaring inflation and a shortage of goods, are greater than the political costs Trump will incur at the ballot box in November during the midterm elections, with oil prices holding stable under $100 a barrel since mid-July.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have the ability to accept costs because our resources are great. Iran does not, because theirs are few,\u201d said Barry Posen, a political science professor at MIT.<\/p>\n

And while restraint may not end the conflict on Trump\u2019s preferred terms, it could prevent the kind of open-ended escalation that pulled the United States deeper into costly quagmires in Vietnam and Iraq, said Michael O\u2019Hanlon, director of research in the Brookings Institution\u2019s foreign policy program.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe has resisted that temptation so far,\u201d O\u2019Hanlon said. \u201cIn this regard, he is showing greater humanity and greater thoughtfulness than either of those two American presidents during the Vietnam War. And he has avoided the mistakes of George W. Bush in launching big ground wars without adequate planning or preparation.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s troubling, and far from victory,\u201d O\u2019Hanlon added, \u201cbut also far from quagmire or defeat.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s reluctance to escalate has so far averted a high U.S. casualty count in the war. According to the Pentagon\u2019s Defense Casualty Analysis System, 18 U.S. service members have been killed and hundreds have been wounded since the start of operations against Iran.<\/p>\n

But his reticence to deploy additional U.S. troops within striking distance of Tehran \u2014 and the need to protect those already stationed across the region \u2014 has forced the administration to rely on long-range weapons systems that cost tens of millions of dollars and require complex international supply chains to produce, leading to critical shortages of drones, missiles and defense systems<\/a> as the conflict continues longer than planned.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven limited operations, such as the air wars over Kosovo and Libya, dragged on much longer than policymakers expected, and the U.S. ran short of critical precision guided weapons,\u201d said Stacie Pettyjohn, director of the Defense Program at the Center for a New American Security. \u201cWhat really differentiates the current situation with Iran is that Tehran can hold U.S. forces in the region at risk with its long-range missiles and drones.\u201d<\/p>\n

Karoline Leavitt, the president\u2019s outgoing White House press secretary, said the United States has \u201cmore than enough firepower\u201d to carry out any operation the president wishes to order.<\/p>\n

But Defense officials acknowledged to The Times that a protracted campaign, and the risk of an escalation that prompts Iran to expand its targeting of U.S. assets and allies in the region, could further stretch weapons systems to dangerously low levels.<\/p>\n

A \u201clow-key\u201d campaign will mitigate the threat of dwindling supplies and high casualties, without necessarily providing Trump with a path to victory, said Stephen Biddle, a professor of international and public policy at Columbia University.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe issue with Iran isn\u2019t how long the war has lasted, though it\u2019s already lasted longer than the Trump administration apparently expected,\u201d Biddle said. \u201cThe issue is how we\u2019ll get out of it with our interests intact. The administration has no viable plan for doing that, and none is immediately obvious.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Approaching six months of war with Iran after predicting a six-week campaign, President Trump has few options before…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":251201,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3],"tags":[10201,2551,177,711,33201,5075,34,69524,1372,398,896,69,392,3644,36],"class_list":["post-251200","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-iran","tag-administration","tag-ballistic-missile","tag-conflict","tag-drone","tag-few-option","tag-ground-operation","tag-iran","tag-michael-ohanlon","tag-president","tag-region","tag-risk","tag-tehran","tag-trump","tag-u-s-campaign","tag-war"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/117104691342235587","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251200","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=251200"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251200\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/251201"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=251200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=251200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=251200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}