[nathanbedford]

Trumps resolution to prevail in barring Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, even at the cost of losses in the midterm elections, is commendable.

If he is to be faulted for the conduct of this fight over seven months it should be for the following reasons: 1) failure to anticipate that Iran could and would close the Strait of Hormuz; 2) suspensions of bombing, in favor of negotiations; 3) failure to continue bombing while negotiating; 4) delay in imposing a United States blockade on ships attempting to export or move Iranian oil and goods; 5) discontinuing active coordinated operations with Israel; 6) failure, early and extensively, to secure cooperation by cooperating nations to impose sanctions against Iran; 7) failure to arm dissident Iranians; 8) denying Kurds' ambitions to attack Iran; 9) flip-flopping on stating war aims concisely and precisely; 10) flip-flopping on bombing/negotiating; 11) failure to advise and enlist European allies, especially NATO, to cooperate in the fight; unnecessarily antagonizing potential allies in Europe and elsewhere with off-putting braggadocio and belligerence, especially respecting Iceland.

Against all this, we have the transcendental fact that Donald Trump, alone among presidents, has found the courage to actually interdict by armed force Iran's nuclear potential, and that decision, because existential, is historic.

[Theophilus]

Amen!

[Antioch]

The 11 points are effects of one overarching fault: Trump decided to put the paranoid dreams of Netanyahu and Miriam Adelson ahead of his campaign promises to the American electorate. That’s it. And this new fallback “mission accomplished” position that Iran will never get the bomb will be the final humiliation: North Korea, a nation of 20 million under vast sanctions and covert warfare, had no problem developing nuclear weapons despite America swearing that they never would. Sorry to say, but even with a full scale, years long,multi trillion dollar ruinous ground war, Iran is going to eventually acquire nuclear weapons.It’s a mountain fortress of 92 million people.

All boomer jingoism aside, can we have a brief moment of honesty? Trump should have stuck to his promises. He could have easily won the mid terms and had sn amazing legacy. This was the saddest reversal of fortunes since Nixon.

[Pete Dovgan]

Your list of debatable mistakes is long, much as it is with conflicts. They call it ‘the fog of war’, more modern Mike Tyson ‘Everyone has a plan until you get hit in the face’. The only constant has been Trumps resolve to eliminate Iran as a world threat. 47 years of American Presidents, either backing down or, negotiating away, or outright assisting Iran, has only enabled them and more terrorism. Grant failed how many times before he took Vicksburg? Even when he did take it, none of Grant’s commanders recommended him. People often don’t perceive greatness in the moment, possibly caught up in the price of diesel or whatever it was at the time.

[LuxAerterna]

Iran would have multiple nuclear warheads by now if Kamala Harris or Joe Biden were President. At a minimum they would be using them for intimidation or blackmail. From that minimum it gets worse, MUCH worse.

I agree the ceasefires and MOU were mistakes. They gave a lifeline to a regime that, IMHO, was wobbling badly. But at least Donald Trump did SOMETHING. We’d be in dire straights if Donald Trump wasn’t President.

[OttawaFreeper]

I would want to mention that regarding European allies, they mostly are these corrupt, welfare state type fiefdoms that are dealing with the consequences of their own self contradictory policies. These people really were not friends to begin with.

I would also be curious to learn about what is really going on behind the scenes regarding the dissidents in Iran and I wonder if there is a lot we presently do not know about.

[Alberta's Child]

The justifications presented to the American public for the war in Iran were not the same military objectives we were briefed on today in the House Armed Services Committee. This gap is deeply troubling. The longer this war continues, the faster it will lose the support of Congress and the American people. — Rep. Nancy Mace (SC), 3/25/2026

Add this to your list: Lying to Americans repeatedly about what has actually been going on over there.

[oldtech]

I guess the one thing that bothers me the most is knowing that we may likely be running low on munitions. They had best be getting with increased production on those items deemed necessary or Trump may be soon running on empty.

[hcmama]

The transcendental fact is that, alone among American presidents, Trump was the only one stupid enough to start whaling away at this tarbaby.

The cascade of never-ceasing failures stems from that fact.

[Paul R.]

Agreed... mostly...

1) I think the failure is that Trump expected “large” help from our allies in keeping Hormuz open. I’m also not sure he was properly briefed by Hegseth on our logistics weaknesses and the difficulty of knocking out “all” of Iran’s missiles and drones, especially lacking that support I just mentioned. So, we ended up striking with too little / few assets and had to pause, giving Iran time to recover assets too...

2) Partially related to “1”.

3) Partially related to “1”.

4) Partially related to “1”.

5) Agreed.

6) Again agreed, but I would point out that Saudi Arabia, for example, reportedly was supportive at least to the point of encouraging the US to attack, and then got cold feet when Iran was able to hit SA.

7) Mostly agreed, and really, such an effort would require a lot of lengthy “prep” work.

8) Agreed, tho’ reportedly at least one Kurdish group (one MUST NOT think of them as a monolith) took arms and then kept them instead of attacking Iran. My guess is that the on-and-off again nature of US support for the Kurds was not exactly hekpful, and, the arms may have not been nearly enough except to get a lot of Kurds killed. AQnd... Were we ready to add massive air support? (See “1”.)

9) IMO the most basic of the goals were laid out fairly well by Trump and Rubio (destroy Iran’s nuke capabilies and force them to agree to not recover / rebuild, destroy Iran’s conventional military capability, and destroy Iran’s missile capability), but how to get there such that they cannot recover has been all over the place.

10) Agreed - and initially doing so (see “1”) set a bad pattern, esp. given that we did send a lot more capacity to the ME by the end of the “MOU”. OTOH, IRAN was able to force us to retreat from some of our ME land bases because we gave Iran too much time to recover missiles and launchers.

11) I don’t think the Euros were gonna help anyway, but, we should have resolved that months in advance, and prepared for it. While I generally like Rubio, that was a big “miss” by him, as that IS his wheelhouse, as Sec. of State, so to speak. BTW, did you mean “Greenland”?

I still maintain that as soon as we’d achieved maximum effect and disarray in Iran, given what assets we DID have available in “Epic Fury”, the second Iran did / continued with any sort of significant counterattack, after negotiations were initiated, we should have taken out a very focused objective: their refined products capability. This could easily be done, mostly with cheap, ukie style drones, plus a few airstrikes here and there. — Not their entire oil infrastructure, just refined products. Take out half, the 1st 24 hours (easy), and half way through tell Iran they have 24 hours further to cease their missile and drone attacks, and if they don’t, on the 3rd day they will lose the rest of their distillation towers, any significant storage, and any remaining import facilities / logistics. That would utterly “hose” Iran.

To all the above I would add: Major failure to maintain a proper response to the army of Russian / Iranian / Chinese / North Korean / TDS / etc. trolls, tools, operatives, and dupes, infecting all of social media. And... what agit-prop have we really laid on / into / at the population of Iran?

Modern wars are not just fought with militaries / weapons.

Agreed with respect to your final statement.

[libertylover]

failure to continue bombing while negotiating;

Back when the bombing began, I wrote on this forum many times that, "we only lose if we quit early". We haven't lost, but the Republicans have done a poor job in reminding people that this is about the prevention of nuclear war, which has already happened at least once.

[libertylover]

failure to continue bombing while negotiating;

Back when the bombing began, I wrote on this forum many times that, "we only lose if we quit early". We haven't lost, but the Republicans have done a poor job in reminding people that this is about the prevention of nuclear war, which has already happened at least once.

[Theoria]

12) Failure to refill the SPR in 2025. A misused SPR during the Biden years was a Trump talking point.

Then, we entered a combat duration without actually preparing for potential energy shortfalls and disruptions, even after experiencing the Ukraine conflict energy complications!