Piotr Mickiewicz, a professor at the University of Gdańsk in northern Poland and an expert on international relations, said that the conflict amounts to a political defeat for Trump, regardless of how the White House presents it.
Speaking after Trump announced at Palm Beach airport in Florida on Monday that peace talks with Iran were beginning, Mickiewicz said the conflict had shown that Iran, a regional power, was able to resist pressure from the United States.
“A medium-sized state such as Iran has demonstrated that it can stand up to a superpower and not yield,” Mickiewicz said. “No narrative will change that.”
Trump’s announcement followed several abrupt shifts in messaging over three days. On Friday, amid rising oil prices, he said the United States was close to achieving its goals in the Middle East and was considering ending what he called major military efforts against Iran.
On Sunday, he issued a sharp ultimatum, warning that if Tehran did not reopen the Strait of Hormuz within 48 hours, the United States would destroy Iran’s oil infrastructure.
By Monday morning, when many analysts had been expecting a major escalation, Trump instead said he was seeking an agreement and had postponed planned strikes.
The Strait of Hormuz, a narrow waterway between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman, is one of the world’s most important oil routes. In peacetime, about one-fifth of global oil supplies pass through it.
Mickiewicz told Poland's PAP news agency that the apparent chaos in Washington reflected flawed assumptions.
In his view, Trump wrongly believed that after attacks on missile defense systems and the killing of regime leaders, Iran would quickly surrender.
He also argued that the United States had failed to secure the Strait of Hormuz against Iranian pressure before launching military action.
British media have voiced similar doubts. The Daily Telegraph wrote that Trump had backed himself into a corner, arguing that the US administration had failed to anticipate Iran’s response, including the closure of the Strait of Hormuz and missile fire at US allies in the Persian Gulf.
The Spectator went further, saying the conflict could mark “the end of Trumpism” and wipe out the achievements of Trump’s second term.
Mickiewicz said the war had demonstrated the limits of Trump’s force-based foreign policy, which he described as an attempt to replace hostile governments with ones more obedient to Washington.
He pointed to Venezuela as an example, arguing that even when the United States has managed to remove a leader, the political outcome has not remained firmly aligned with American interests.
A sharply different view came from Frederick Fleitz, vice president of the Washington-based America First Policy Institute and a former intelligence analyst.
He told the PAP news agency that European critics may dislike the war, but that did not mean it had been improvised.
“Trump had very concrete goals in this war, and he achieved them,” Fleitz was quoted as saying.
He argued that Iran’s ability to project power abroad and support terrorism had been significantly reduced, that Tehran’s missile production capacity had been weakened, and that its nuclear program had been set back by a decade or more.
“I think these are enormous benefits, and the world is much safer,” he said, according to PAP.
On Trump’s announcement of peace talks, Fleitz said he hoped diplomacy would work. He added that reports were emerging of infighting inside the Iranian regime and several significant defections.
In his view, there may still be Iranian leaders willing to negotiate to avoid the destruction of the country.
That optimism is far from universal. Reports in British media said a 15-point peace plan was to be negotiated by Trump envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, with Egypt, Pakistan and Turkey acting as intermediaries.
But Iranian state television said no negotiations had taken place and dismissed Trump’s statement as fake news aimed at manipulating financial markets and oil prices.
Fleitz said that may simply have been an effort by Tehran to save face.
The Spectator, however, warned that Iran’s so-called mosaic defense strategy, which decentralizes command structures, could make any ceasefire difficult to enforce.
Mickiewicz said that Israel may resist political changes in Tehran and could launch further operations, weakening Washington’s position even more.
In his view, the conflict has so far produced two clear winners: Iran, because it showed it could resist a superpower, and Israel, because it has advanced its own political goals at America’s expense.
Fleitz said Persian Gulf states were putting heavy pressure on Tehran and warned that if Iran continued threatening shipping in the Gulf, it could be cut off from international banking and diplomacy.
If no agreement is reached, he said Trump will likely take military steps to neutralize threats to the Strait of Hormuz, a process he said could take several weeks, before reducing operations and shifting attention to support for the Iranian people.
US President Donald Trump. Photo: The White House, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
(rt/gs)
Source: PAP