ِAfrasianet - Some old facts about wars kept knocking on the door of the Oval Office during the month after U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sent U.S. and Israeli warplanes to bomb Iran.
Failing to learn from the past means that Donald Trump now faces a difficult choice: If he can't reach a deal with Iran, either try to declare a victory that won't fool anyone, or escalate the war.
The earliest of these facts is the Prussian military strategist Helmut von Moltke the Elder: "No plan holds up at the first contact with the enemy," he wrote in 1871, the year Germany was united as an empire, a moment that had as much impact on the security of Europe as it might have on the security of the Middle East.
Trump may prefer the modern version of boxer Mike Tyson: "Everybody has a plan until they get the blow," and most closely related to Trump are the words of one of his predecessors, Dwight D. Eisenhower, the U.S. general who led the Normandy landings in 1944 and later served two terms as president of the United States in the 1950s.
Eisenhower's dictum: "Plans are worthless, but planning is everything" was that discipline and methodology in making war plans make it possible to change course when the unexpected happens.
For Trump, the unexpected element was the regime's resilience in Iran, who seemed to be hoping to repeat the blitzkrieg last January when Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Celia Flores, were kidnapped, now in jail in New York and facing trial, and Maduro's vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, replaced him as president and is receiving instructions from Washington.
The hope of a repeat victory over Maduro points to a significant lack of understanding of the differences between Venezuela and Iran.
Eisenhower's famous quote about foreplanning came in a speech in 1957, and he was responsible for planning and leading the largest amphibious military operation in history, the invasion of Western Europe on D-Day, so he knew exactly what he was talking about.
He explained that when an unexpected emergency arises, "the first thing you do is take all the plans off the shelf and throw them out the window and start over, but if you haven't planned before, you can't get started, at least smartly."
"That's why it's so important to plan, and to stay immersed in the nature of the problem that you may one day be asked to solve, or help solve."
Far from capitulating or collapsing after Israel and the United States killed Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in the first air strike of the war, the regime in Tehran is still working and responding, making good use of its weakened position.
Trump, on the other hand, gave the impression that he was acting improvised as events unfolded, following his instincts, not the pages of intelligence and strategic advice that other presidents had been studying in depth.
The end of the war for Trump
13 days after the war, Trump was asked in an interview with Fox News Radio when the war would end, and he replied that he did not think the war would "go on for a long time," but about ending it, it would be "when I feel it, I feel it inside of me."
Relying on the president's instincts rather than a well-thought-out set of plans, even if they have to be modified or abandoned, makes war more difficult, and the lack of clear political direction reduces the effectiveness of the U.S. armed forces' enormous firepower.
Four weeks ago, Trump and Netanyahu put their trust in a violent bombing campaign that has killed not only the Supreme Leader but also his closest advisers, and has so far killed 1,464 Iranian civilians, according to HRANA, a U.S.-based group that monitors human rights abuses in Iran.
The two leaders had been expecting a quick victory, and both called on Iranians to complete the bombing with a popular uprising to overthrow the regime.
Iran's stubbornness
The regime in Tehran is still in place, and it is still fighting, and Trump is now discovering why his predecessors were unwilling to join Netanyahu in a war of choice to destroy the Islamic Republic where the regime's opponents did not rise up, they are well aware that government forces killed thousands of demonstrators last January, and official warnings have been broadcast that anyone who thinks of repeating the protests will be treated as an enemy of the state.
The Iranian regime was established after the 1979 revolution that toppled the Shah, and then formed in the midst of the scourge of the 8-year Iraqi war, and the regime is based on institutions rather than individuals, and derives its strength from established religious beliefs and the ideology of martyrdom, which means that the assassination of leaders, even if shocking and destabilizing The Iranians, whether at the hands of his forces or by American and Israeli bombardment, are an acceptable price to pay.
The Iranian regime could not match the firepower of the United States and Israel, but, like Moltke, Tyson, and Eisenhower, it planned where it expanded the war, attacking its Arab neighbors in the Gulf, as well as U.S. bases on their territory and Israel, spreading losses as widely as possible.
Iran's de facto closure of the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow entrance to the Gulf, has cut off about 20 percent of global oil supplies and caused turmoil in global financial markets.
Iran has spent years and billions of dollars building a network of allies and proxies dubbed the "Axis of Resistance," which included Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza and the West Bank, with the aim of threatening and deterring Israel. Israel has dealt strong and effective blows to this network since the outbreak of the Gaza war following Hamas's attacks on October 7, 2023.
But Iran is now showing that a geographic advantage, the narrow Strait of Hormuz, can be a more effective deterrent and threat than its highly expensive system of military alliances, as Iran can assert its control over the strait using low-cost drones that can be launched from hundreds of kilometers within its mountainous territory.
Allies can be killed, but geography remains the same, and without control and occupation of the slopes on both sides of the strait, and the vast swathes of Iranian territory behind it, the United States, Israel, and the entire world will discover that the Iranian regime will demand a major role in reopening the Strait of Hormuz.
As former NATO deputy commander General Sir Richard Sheriff pointed out on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, any military simulation dealing with the consequences of an attack on Iran would have shown that the IRGC would close the Strait of Hormuz.
This brings us back to the importance of planning how to start a war, how to end it, and how to deal with the next day, and Donald Trump and his narrow circle, seduced by the idea of a quick and easy victory, seem to have gone beyond these steps.
Last Friday, they fired a barrage of missiles at Israel for the first time since the start of this war, which was launched with air strikes on Iran on February 28, and if the Houthis resume their attacks on navigation in the Red Sea, Saudi Arabia will lose its western sea route to export oil to Asia.
The Red Sea contains its own chokehold, the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, which is no less important to global trade than the Strait of Hormuz, and if the Houthis decide to escalate by attacking ships in Bab al-Mandeb and areas further south, as they did during the Gaza war, they will cut off the sea route between Asia and Europe through the Suez Canal.
This would create a worse global economic crisis.
Netanyahu's clarity
On the first day of the war against Iran, Netanyahu recorded a video statement on the roof of a building in Tel Aviv known as the Kirya, which houses the headquarters of Israel's military command, and he spoke clearly about Israel's goals for the war, a clarity that Trump lacked.
This should come as no surprise, as it is easier for Israel to fight a war with Iran than it is for the United States, where the interests of a regional power differ from the broader global challenges the United States faces.
Netanyahu believes he can ensure Israel's future security by inflicting as much damage as possible on the Islamic Republic, and said in the video that the war is "to ensure our existence and our future," and Netanyahu has always considered Iran Israel's most dangerous enemy, and his critics say this focus was one of the reasons for Israel's failure to detect and prevent Hamas attacks launched from Gaza on Oct. 7, 2023.
Netanyahu thanked the U.S. military and Trump for their "help," and then moved on to the point that is at the heart of the issue for him.
"This alliance of forces allows us to do what I have been eager to do for 40 years, which is to deal a severe blow to the terrorist regime, this is what I promised, and this is what we will do," he said.
At various times during his long years in power, Netanyahu and the Israeli military have studied ways to go to war with Iran and destroy its nuclear facilities, ballistic missiles, and everything that makes it a threat to them, and the prevailing conclusion in Israel has always been that although they can inflict serious damage on Iran, it will only be a setback for the regime, and it has become recognized that the only way to destroy Iran's military capabilities for a generation or more is to ally with the United States.
But that required a president in the White House willing to go to war alongside Israel, something that had never happened before despite the close relationship between the two countries and Israel's reliance on U.S. military and diplomatic support, and Netanyahu was unable to convince any U.S. president that it was in the U.S. interest to go to war with Iran until Donald Trump's second term came.
Despite the hostile and tense relationship between the United States and Iran since the overthrow of the Shah, Washington's staunchest ally, in 1979, successive American presidents have considered that the best way to deal with the Islamic Republic is to contain it, and during the U.S. occupation of Iraq, it did not go to war with Iran even when Tehran was preparing and training Iraqi militias that were killing American soldiers.
Trump has included the nuclear threat on his growing list of reasons to go to war, but there is no credible evidence that Iran was on the verge of possessing a nuclear weapon or the means to deliver it, and even the White House still maintains a statement on its website, dated June 25, 2025, titled: "Iran's nuclear facilities have been completely destroyed, and any claims to the contrary are fake news."
Trump is now discovering why his predecessors considered the risks of choosing war so great.
An asymmetrical war
It is still too early, just a month later, to compare it to other wars in which the United States has appeared to be victorious on paper in terms of the number of enemies killed or the number of airstrikes carried out, such as in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, but it is important to remember that these wars are over, yet Years of bloodshed and murder, in ways that were ultimately seen as defeats for the United States.
Trump has twice postponed his threat to destroy Iran's power grid, which he describes as a war crime, and he says that the reason is that Iran is desperately seeking a deal to end the war, having received severe blows in terms of the losses and damages the United States has already inflicted on it, and its fear of more.
Contacts are underway between the two sides, mediated by Pakistan and other parties, but the Iranians deny Trump's assertion that these negotiations have reached the level of comprehensive negotiations.
No official text of the president's 15-point peace plan has been released, but leaked copies show a document that summarizes all the demands that the United States and Israel have made to Iran over the years, which is closer to terms of surrender than to a basis for negotiations.
Unless the two sides can make a qualitative leap towards an unprecedented common ground of consensus, it is difficult to imagine reaching an agreement, and this is not impossible as the Iranian regime has a history of negotiations, and Arab diplomatic sources have supported other reports, telling me that Iran was offering a path towards an agreement on its nuclear program when the United States suddenly abandoned the diplomatic track and went to war on February 28, and one of the sources told me: "You know, the Iranians were offering everything," this may sound oversimplistic, and the U.S. denies any progress, but indications are that there was room for more diplomacy when the U.S. and Israel sent the bombers.
If an agreement is not reached between the Americans and the Iranians, Trump will have only limited options where he can declare victory, claiming that the United States has destroyed Iran's military capabilities, and therefore has accomplished the mission, and that opening the Strait of Hormuz is not his responsibility, and that this could lead to a collapse in global financial markets and alarm his already grumbling allies in Europe, Asia, and the Gulf.
The global economy.
Trump is likely to decide to escalate the war, with more than 4,000 U.S. Marines on ships bound for the Gulf, and paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division on alert and plans to send additional reinforcements are discussed.
No one is talking about a full-scale invasion of Iran, but it is possible that the Americans will try to take control of islands in the Gulf, including Kharj Island, Iran's main oil terminal, and that would involve a series of complex and dangerous amphibious landings, which could benefit Iran, which is seeking to drag the United States into a long war of attrition, and Iran believes its regime's ability to endure pain is greater than Trump's.
In Iran, Trump has realized that he is facing the limits of his power: the Iranian regime has a different definition of victory and defeat, with survival being a victory in itself.
But now they aspire to more, believing that control of the Strait of Hormuz gives them new leverage to impose demands, perhaps for strategic gains, and the Iranians have demanded, among other things, a guarantee that they will not be attacked in the future, and recognition of their control of the Strait of Hormuz as a condition for opening it to navigation.
White House spokeswoman Caroline Levitt said last month that "President Trump is not procrastinating, he is ready to unleash hell, and Iran should not make a mistake again."
"If Iran fails to accept the reality of the moment, if it does not realize that it has been militarily defeated, and will continue to do so, President Trump will ensure that it is dealt more severe blows than it has ever been subjected to."
But defeat in the war is not an option: If Iran had been severely defeated, as Trump and his team say, the regime in Tehran would have already collapsed, and Trump would not need to threaten them to force them to accept their fate.
The United States and Israel could inflict more destruction and kill far more people in Iran. In Lebanon, Israel continues its attack on Hezbollah, Iran's main ally.
In the absence of a ceasefire, they calculate that they are able to escalate the level of force so that the Iranians have no choice but to surrender.
But that's not at all certain.
The longer the war drags on, the worse its consequences will be for the region and the world, and Ali Vaez, a senior Iran analyst at the International Crisis Group, told me that it could be "catastrophic."
In 1956, the United Kingdom and France went to war on Israel's side after then-Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal, a global waterway that was no less important a choke point for the global economy than today's Strait of Hormuz.
For Britain, it marked the beginning of the end of its imperial hegemony over the Middle East.
The United States is facing the rise of China, and when the history of their competition for the title of the world's most powerful power is written, Trump's ill-planned war against Iran may be seen as a turning point, or a milestone in the downturn, as the Suez crisis was for the United Kingdom.
