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Donald Trump Is Losing the Iran War

Despite his constant declarations of victory, the truth about this conflict is clear.

Donald Trump during a meeting in the Cabinet Room at the White House on March 26, 2026.

After weeks of bombing Iranian military installations, naval vessels, and cities, President Trump declared the war against Iran “won” on March 24. Such a momentous achievement could have been announced in a grandiose speech—perhaps on an aircraft carrier with a banner describing the mission as having been accomplished—but Trump’s assertion passed without much fanfare.

Perhaps the reaction was so muted because Trump had already proclaimed that the war was won several times before—such as three weeks ago, when he said he thought the “war was complete, pretty much,” or two weeks ago, when he told a rally in Kentucky that America had won “in the first hour” of the war.

Perhaps there was a collective national shrug because, at the same time that Trump has declared victory, he has also claimed, against all Iranian denials, to have recently held “constructive talks” with unnamed leaders in Tehran who are “desperate for a deal,” but simply fear saying so because they will be killed, either by the government or by the US itself.

Or perhaps Trump’s words were ignored because everyone can plainly see that it is a lie. Despite such victories, despite such completeness, the war has somehow gone on still, as the Iranians will, unbelievably, not “accept they have been defeated militarily,” in the words of White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt. The idea that the United States is in fact losing this war is completely out of the question. But there is no avoiding the truth: The United States is, in fact, losing this war.

Endless press conferences, statements to gathered reporters, and social media posts from the commander-in-chief tell of thousands upon thousands of strikes, the decimation of the Iranian Air Force, and the destruction of literally “100%” of Iran’s military capabilities. But, as anyone with eyes can plainly see, the Iranian military continues to fight, not just in a flailing and minuscule way as the president implies, but with consistent levels of ballistic missile fire towards both Israel and American bases in the Gulf. This has forced the White House into increasingly baffling turns of phrase to describe what is happening.

At the same time that the president claimed that in Iran “we have nobody even shooting at us,” an F-35, a stealth fighter jet thought to be the height of cutting-edge military power, was struck and disabled by Iranian anti-aircraft fire for the first time in the plane’s history (Five days later, Trump would claim Iran had “no anti-aircraft equipment). In the 12 days since Trump posted that Iran was now only sending “a drone or two” and “a close-range missile somewhere,” the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has launched more than 30 additional waves of attacks and shows no sign of stopping or even dropping the number of missiles and drones it fires. Despite claims of the destruction of the Iranian Navy, the Strait........

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