Now is the twilight of Donald Trump’s supremacy. The US is still the richest and most heavily armed nation on Earth. That status is secure. The current president, contemptuous of law and indulged in lawlessness by a supine Congress, enjoys even greater power than the constitution allows.

With those advantages it takes a special talent for incompetence to look as thwarted and impotent as Trump does with more than two years of his second term still to run.

History will record the war against Iran as a turning point in the fortunes of the current US administration and a grievous wound to national prestige.

Pumped with hubris after the audacious military operation to kidnap Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro, Trump believed an equally brisk triumph was available in the Middle East. The Tehran regime would be decapitated. The country’s hydrocarbon resources would then be available for US exploitation.

Six months later, Iran is controlled by a new generation of hardliners. Emboldened by resilience under US and Israeli bombardment, they demand financial concessions from Washington as the price for peace – reparations and a right to toll the strait of Hormuz.

The war is not over, it has just turned cold. Trump believes Iran’s fragile economy is close to collapse. He threatens to push it over the brink with “D-day” sanctions. The metaphor of second world war amphibious assault is supposed to make yet another round of financial coercion succeed where past embargos have failed.

It is true that ordinary Iranians are suffering terrible privations, but repression limits their capacity to translate discontent into demands for political change. By contrast, US consumers, aggrieved by the inflationary consequences of the war, and confused about its purpose, get to express their unhappiness in midterm........

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