The war President Donald Trump launched against Iran in late February has spiraled beyond his control. That is the assessment of former allies now speaking anonymously to journalists, describing an operation that began with confidence but has become a conflict where "they hold the cards now."
Trump's allies in the White House have begun distancing themselves from the war. Sources told Politico reporter Megan Messerly they hoped the strikes would be quick — removing Iran's leadership much as Trump's Venezuela strikes did in January. They thought Trump's vagueness on objectives would let him declare victory whenever he wanted. Now, sources told Messerly, Trump "no longer controls how, or when, the war ends."
One source said: "We clearly just kicked their ass in the field, but, to a large extent, they hold the cards now. They decide how long we're involved — and they decide if we put boots on the ground. And it doesn't seem to me that there's a way around that, if we want to save face."
The Strait of Hormuz Crisis
The war has created a dangerous situation in the Persian Gulf. Yesterday, Trump continued demanding that other countries help reopen the Strait of Hormuz for tanker traffic — but one by one, they declined. It is a dangerous business, and since Trump launched the war without consulting anyone, allies don't seem inclined to help him out of the mess he created.
Trump has told reporters that "numerous countries" have told him "they're on their way" to help enable ships to transit the strait, but he has also threatened to leave NATO over allies' unwillingness to help clear the Strait. The threat appears hollow given his earlier declaration on social media: "Because of the fact that we have had such Military Success, we no longer 'need,' or desire, the NATO Countries' assistance — WE NEVER DID!"
Oil is now selling at more than $100 a barrel, up from about $70 a barrel before the U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran that began on February 28. Gas prices have risen by at least $0.70 a gallon since then.
Iran's ability to stop most traffic through the Strait of Hormuz threatens not just about 20% of the world's oil supply as well as natural gas. About 20% of the world's fertilizer also passes through the strait, which will affect crops for this year's growing season. It will also limit helium — necessary for cooling silicon chips and medical equipment — and aluminum.
The Diplomatic Disaster
The administration appears unprepared for the crisis. Anna Kramer of NOTUS reported that last fall the Trump administration cut all State Department staffers from the Bureau of Energy Resources who were in charge of maintaining diplomatic contacts with foreign energy bureaus and Middle East gas and oil companies. Those laid off included the only expert in tracking sanctioned oil tankers, and the person in charge of coordinating with the international agency that manages releases of oil reserves around the world to address crises.
"There was never any handover or transition. There was no formal handover of contacts or anything like that. We were all just let go," one former State Department energy official told Kramer. Those trying to work on energy issues with the U.S. government after their departure could not find any contacts. Nine former members of the bureau told Kramer it seems clear the administration did not prepare for a global oil crisis.
Trump's claim that "nobody expected" Iran to hit other countries in the Middle East supports their statement — previous administrations planned for exactly that scenario.
Judd Legum of Popular Information explained that the administration decommissioned the last of its four minesweeper ships in September. Based in Bahrain, the vessels were equipped to find and destroy both moored and bottom mines. They were supposed to be replaced with new systems using unmanned vehicles, but those have so far been unreliable, and the systems apparently have not been deployed. Starting a military operation without anti-mining ships in the region to protect traffic through the Strait of Hormuz illustrates how poorly officials planned.
Political Fallout
Today Joe Kent, a staunch Trump ally, resigned as director of the National Counterterrorism Center, saying he supported "the values and the foreign policies" Trump had campaigned on but that he "cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran. Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby."
Although Kent is correct that U.S. intelligence assessed that Iran posed no imminent threat to the U.S., both the White House and House speaker Mike Johnson pushed back aggressively on Kent's statements, trying to justify their Iran entanglement.
Johnson said: "We all understood that there was clearly an imminent threat that Iran was very close to the enrichment of nuclear capability and they were building missiles at a pace no one in the region could keep up with."
The sense that Trump has dragged the U.S. into a war in the Middle East is splitting MAGA leadership. Isolationists who supported Trump's claims of being "America First" and ending long foreign wars are turning on those supporting his Iranian incursion, and their attacks on social media have become deeply personal.
The Election Controversy
Trump's pressure on the court over his claims of political weaponization and the 2020 presidential election seems designed to enlist support for his claims that the 2026 election was rigged if voters choose Democratic majorities in the House and/or the Senate. Trump told House members in January that if Republicans don't retain control of the House, he will be impeached.
Trump and his loyalists insist Congress must pass the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) America Act to prevent Democrats from stealing the 2026 election. Critics might note this framing ignores that Republicans won the House, the Senate, and the presidency in 2024 — making it hard to argue Republicans cannot win without new voting rules.
As G. Elliot Morris of Strength in Numbers noted, since then Trump has lost working-class white voters and Latino voters who put him in office. Republicans could woo them back but instead are trying to push voters off the rolls by demanding proof of citizenship.
It is already illegal for noncitizens to vote in federal elections — such voting is vanishingly rare — and states, which run elections, already require ID. Trump's demand that voters provide proof of citizenship — a passport or birth certificate and matching REAL ID — when registering to vote and again at polls would cut as many as 21 million voters off the rolls, according to the Brennan Center for Justice and the University of Maryland's Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement.
Tonight the Senate voted to take up the measure.