Iran War Misconceptions. By Victor Davis Hanson at American Greatness.
Shorter than recent Democrat wars:
The shooting portion of the Iran “War” lasted about 40 days — far shorter than Barack Obama’s 2011 congressionally unauthorized seven-month bombing campaign against Libya.
Bill Clinton’s unauthorized 78 days of bombing Serbia in 1999 hit bridges, schools, hospitals, monuments, and power plants — far more indiscriminate targeting than anything in the Iran War so far….
Fabrications and distortions:
The Strait of Hormuz was open before the war and is now closed, so the war was a failure.
The Strait was open because an appeased Iran had no reason to close it — given that no nation on earth dared to end its nuclear dreams of dominating the Middle East, funding anti-Western terrorists, and threatening Europe and the U.S.
So the rub was always disarming Iran and then dealing with its inevitable desperate strategy of closing the Strait.
Trump’s agreement will simply be a copy of Obama’s earlier Iran deal.
Obama dealt from a position of abject weakness. Iran assumed correctly that Obama would offer endless concessions and cash, while never considering force. …
Trump is dealing with a bankrupt Iran, a neutered military, a restive Iranian street, a wounded regime, and the specter that the U.S. can do whatever it wishes militarily to a shattered Iran for the foreseeable future.
The U.S. is bereft of allies and strategically isolated in the war.
During the war, the unthinkable occurred when Israel de facto became an ally of the Arab Gulf monarchies.
Other than a few rogue nations and Arab terrorist clients — the weakened Hezbollah, the crushed Hamas, and the wary Houthis — Iran has zero friends.
Neither China nor Russia offered Iran much in the way of aid, other than satellite imagery and some smuggled supplies. Both lost their once-prominent positions among clients in the Middle East who deeply resented their siding with Persian Shiite theocrats over Arab oil suppliers and arms buyers.
Israel has more combat aircraft than the United Kingdom, France, and Germany. The Gulf monarchies do so as well. Both Israel and the Gulf states have been flying bombing missions against Iran. There is a far greater chance of Arab-Israeli rapprochement after the war than before it. …
The Iran War was a betrayal of MAGA’s commitment to no “forever wars.”
The second Iran intervention, following up on the initial June 2025 bombing, was certainly an optional and preemptive action. …
Yet there still are no ground troops in Iran. The loss of 13 soldiers, while tragic, is less than the two-week fatal-accident rate of the military.
There is a good chance that less than six weeks of active bombing achieved far more than 20 years in Afghanistan and a decade in Iraq — at a fraction of the human and fiscal costs.
The problems of Iranian nukes and Iran’s rapid production of conventional ballistic missiles (with Chinese help) could not be kicked down the road any longer. It fell on Trump to deal with it. What would Kamala have done?