Of all the comparisons Donald Trump might have chosen, none could have been more alarming than the Vietnam War. In a press conference in the Oval Office on 13 July, the president was asked whether bombing Iran is the new normal for Americans, to which he replied: “Well, you know, we were in Vietnam for 19 years – we’re here for four months.” Of course, the war in Vietnam was never supposed to last that long. The mantra was always “just one more year, one more battalion”, even though the staying power of the US military was no match for the Vietcong.
David Halberstam’s The Best and the Brightest is the classic account of how America’s top minds – so convinced of their statistical models, their righteousness and the omnipotence of the US military –blundered in to the most divisive American conflict since the Civil War. Halberstam charts how dissent within the government was hushed up and optimistic statistics were fed up the chain of command. The monstrous scale of American cognitive dissonance during this time is laid bare in George Packer’s biography of the diplomat Richard Holbrooke, a figure who seems to capture so much of the tragedy of American power. Holbrooke arrived in Vietnam another Quiet American inadvertently upending the world, full of naivety, only to be horrified at what he saw – and he determined to speak truth to power on his return. And yet, he ended his career where he began, dealing with another US adventure – this time in Afghanistan – convinced of the righteousness of his mission.
What is curious about Trump’s predicament is that he never believed in the good America of Holbrooke’s imagination, and nor do most of his advisers. Many of Trump’s top officials have expressed doubts about the war. According to the New York Times, intelligence officials warned the president before the war that plans for regime change were farcical.
More recently, as reported by Axios, US intelligence has expressed doubts that the Iranians will keep their word on not enriching uranium. Last month, the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, said tolls could not be charged on the Strait of Hormuz as it would go against international law, only for his president to say that he plans to levy them. On 13 July, Trump spoke of his intention to place a 20 per cent toll on the value of ships’ cargoes passing through the waterway – only to reverse the threat a day later. Either way, Trump is ignoring Iran’s stance, which is essentially that the war can end only once its control of the Strait has been recognised.
Talk is rising in Washington about a potential deal in Ukraine before the end of year. But any potential for Trump to exercise global leadership in that theatre is being overshadowed by the conflict in Iran. The breakdown of the ceasefire with Tehran adds more credence to those who say that this war has become a strategic defeat for the US that Trump cannot escape, no matter how many times he escalates it to avoid humiliation. The White House has never controlled the pace of events since the war began. America’s bases and its allies in the Gulf have been exposed as vulnerable to attack from a military force that is, on paper, much weaker than the US. Its alliances with the Gulf states have suffered as America has become a source of chaos and its reputation as a custodian of global stability has been shattered. Political scepticism towards US technology companies such as Palantir is increasing. Brazil and Europe are trying to detach themselves from the American financial system. France is making headway with its own AI company Mistral.
The fact is that the Iranians have more staying power than the Americans because, whatever happens, geography remains. In March, Trump told the New York Times that he wanted to instal a new leader in Tehran as he did in Venezuela, and reiterated that the operation was supposed to last only four or five weeks. But then in June the US signed the ceasefire deal that effectively gave the Iranians control over the Strait of Hormuz. It included a reconstruction plan for Iran worth $300bn, a sum roughly double that of the Marshall Plan in today’s money. Additionally, Trump said he would lift sanctions and would be committed to respecting Iran’s territorial integrity. Limits to Iran’s missile capability, which exercised the Israelis before the war, weren’t included.
Oil prices are creeping up, threatening to kickstart inflation and, with it, rises in interest rates. This all reduces the Republicans’ chance of remaining in control of the Senate after the November midterms. The masculinist confidence with which this war began – remember those bloodthirsty press conferences from the war secretary, Pete Hegseth? – has turned into a desperate attempt to claw back credibility. The US is stuck between an unfavourable agreement that leaves it worse off than its position at the start of the war and the continuation of a conflict it seems unable to win.
If the Vietnam War was overseen by a class of imperial bureaucrats who were high on their own rationality, then this war in Iran is the fault of one man’s hubris. Those around him warned against going along with Benjamin Netanyahu’s plans and are conscious of the price that American power is paying for the adventure. Boxed in, Trump is preparing the ground to relitigate the 2020 election, casting doubts on the integrity of all US elections. He has little to boast about ahead of the crunch in the autumn. The only promise he can make – and it is one that events, month after month, are exposing as empty – is that the war will not go on much longer.
[Further reading: Watching England is agony. Why do we do it?]
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This article appears in the 15 Jul 2026 issue of the New Statesman, After Keir Starmer
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