Over seven months after Operation Epic Fury started on February 28, it’s difficult to avoid the depressing conclusion that the United States has been exposed as something close to the “pitiful, helpless giant” President Richard Nixon warned of 56 years ago. Nixon, of course, used the phrase to rally an American public disillusioned with the Vietnam War. But the descriptor also applies to today’s ongoing war against Iran—a war the majority of Americans thought was a mistake at the outset.
In its eagerness to defend the decision to go to war and spin a narrative of victory, the Trump administration has spent months explaining to the American people (and our allies abroad) just how much damage has been inflicted on Iran’s military infrastructure. When he is not assuring the nation that the war will be over after the midterm elections, President Donald Trump repeatedly claims that the Strait of Hormuz, the strategic waterway the Iranians have turned into its greatest source of leverage, is under complete U.S. control. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is quick to note the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’s diminishing capacity. And Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, in his quest to throw around Washington’s considerable financial heft, speaks as if the Iranian economy is only a few short weeks away from total implosion.
Yet it’s been glaringly obvious for a while now that the administration is wearing rose-colored glasses. The reality is the geopolitical equivalent of a smelly dumpster-heap of economic costs, military strain, and strategic malfeasance. By now, the list is long and well-known to anybody even vaguely paying attention to the news. Oil flows through the critical Strait of Hormuz have been throttled by Iran for months. By the Pentagon’s own admission, the war has cost U.S. taxpayers over $40 billion (and that’s a low estimate, since it doesn’t account for the extensive damage Iran has inflicted on bases in the region). Our munitions cupboard is running empty, with the U.S. military using up over 60 percent of its entire stockpile of air defense interceptors and many of its high-end (“exquisite”) precision munitions, including the all-important Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS). Washington’s Asian allies and partners, including Japan and Taiwan, are seeing their own orders of U.S.-manufactured missiles delayed for months, if not years. Others, like South Korea, watch as U.S. air defense equipment normally stationed to defend the region is moved to the Persian Gulf.
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