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President Trump’s war on Iran is turning out to be an even bigger calamity than it seemed just a few weeks ago. Not only has he proved unable to convert America’s vastly superior military power into any sort of geopolitical victory, he has also weakened our position worldwide.

The consequences of this erosion are likely to be longer-lasting than the (considerable) economic impact of Iran’s shutdown of the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow transit for a quarter of the world’s seaborne oil trade, which—it’s worth recalling—was free and open before Trump launched his ill-considered war. (His advisers had warned him that the Iranians might retaliate by locking the strait; he ignored them, believing the war would be won very quickly.)

Even before the war, Trump’s trash-talking of our traditional allies—and of alliances as a concept—left many European and Asian leaders wondering if the U.S. would help defend them against aggression. Now they are openly fearing that the U.S. would be unable to help them much even if the president—Trump or his successor—might want to.

Friends and foes couldn’t help but notice that the vaunted U.S. military depleted half or more of its stockpile of certain high-tech weapons systems—including very expensive air-defense missiles—in the course of shooting down extremely cheap Iranian drones. (China’s strategy, in the event of a war, is to launch swarms of cheap anti-ship missiles against U.S. warships attempting to defend Taiwan. Russia’s military has reoriented to drone-dominant tactics being used by both sides in its long war on Ukraine.)

Compounding the anxiety, Pentagon officials announced that they had to delay a $14 billion arms sales package for Taiwan because some of the weapons are needed to shore up U.S. military capabilities in and around Iran. Early in the war, the Pentagon held up delivery of 400 Tomahawk cruise missiles to Japan, rerouting them to the Persian Gulf region. It also redeployed several high-tech THAAD defense missiles from South Korea, where they had long been stationed.

The leaders and........

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