He says he's winning in Iran. He's losing bigly.
Bad enough for you to insist — in the face of all evidence
to the contrary — that you won the 2020 election.
But it’s another thing for you to pretend — in the face of
mounting deaths and injuries, ballooning expenses, and rising prices — that you
won, or are winning, the war with Iran you began on February 28.
“Let me say, we’ve won,” you told
a rally in Kentucky on March 11.
“I think we’ve won,” you said on the White House South Lawn
on March 20.
“We’ve won this war. The war has been won,” you said in the
Oval Office on March 24.
“We are winning so big,” you told a fundraising dinner on
March 25.
“We’ve had regime change,” you told
reporters three days ago. “The one regime was decimated, destroyed,
they’re all dead. The next regime is mostly dead.” Iran has now moved onto its
“third regime,” and American negotiators are now speaking to “a whole different
group of people” who have “been very reasonable,” you said.
You’re making all this up. In fact, you’re losing your war.
And so is America and much of the rest of the world.
After a month, your war has already cost 13 American lives, cost American taxpayers at least $30 billion, cost American consumers at least a dollar more per gallon of gas than they paid a month ago, pushed up food prices and mortgage rates, and pushed down the value of 401(k) retirement plans. It’s mangled supply chains for industries that rely on items such as fertilizer to grow food or helium to make computer chips. It’s also wreaked havoc across the Middle East with at least 1,574 civilians killed in Iran, including 236 children, and at least 50 killed in Iran’s attacks on other Gulf nations.
You assumed Iran would give up its nuclear program. Wrong.
After more than a month of bombing by the United States and Israel, you’ve most
likely stiffened the regime’s resolve to produce a nuclear weapon.
In this respect, too, America is worse off — more endangered
than we were in 2018 before you withdrew the United States from the Iran
nuclear deal negotiated by Barack Obama. In that deal, Iran agreed to restrict
its nuclear program — reducing uranium stockpiles by 98 percent and capping
enrichment at 3.67 percent, and allowing inspections — in exchange for relief
from UN, EU, and U.S. nuclear-related sanctions.
Iran now holds a stockpile of approximately 970 pounds of
uranium enriched up to 60 percent purity, according to the Center
for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation. That’s close to weapons-grade. No
one knows where it’s stored.
You thought winning this war would be as easy as abducting
Nicolás Maduro from Venezuela and setting up a puppet regime there. Wrong
again. The old ayatollah is gone, but the new one and his regime are even more
radical and hard line.
You assumed America’s military might would weaken Iran’s
military capacity. Wrong. They’ve embraced asymmetric warfare — using cheap
drones and missiles and blocking the Strait of Hormuz — rather than take on
America’s and Israel’s superior forces directly.
You thought the regime would soon cave. Wrong. It’s been
over a month and they’re the ones playing the waiting game. They think they can
withstand the mounting political and economic pressures better and longer than
you and America can. They may be correct.
Reportedly,
you’ve told aides you’re now willing to end the war even if Iran continues to
block the Strait of Hormuz. Maybe this is your best option at this point. But
it will allow Iran to decide in the future how much oil gets through and for
whom, and could cause the economic damage to the U.S. to grow exponentially
worse.
Mr. Trump, do you really believe you won
this war? Do you really believe America is better off than it was when you
began the war?
Maybe the people around you are telling you that you’ve won
the war and we’re better off because you punish the bearers of bad news and
reward those who tell you what you want to hear. Presumably you’re hearing the
same fictionalized good news from Republicans in Congress, from sycophantic
leaders abroad, from other assorted lackeys and suck-ups.
Or maybe you think that if you can convince enough people
that you won and we’re better off, you will have won and
America will be better off. Because for you it’s always about
public perceptions of reality rather than reality itself.
Everything depends on hype, spin, exaggeration, and outright lies. For you
there’s no truth, only belief.
Or maybe you think that if you keep saying you won or are
winning, and America has come out on top, your magical thinking will in fact
come true.
But this isn’t a game, and you’re not a magician. This is
real blood and guts. Real pain. Real deaths and injuries. Real price increases
at the gas pump. Real hardships for real people — in America, in the Middle
East, and elsewhere.
You can’t pretend, sir. This isn’t reality television. This
is for real. And the reality is Americans are worse off now and less secure
than we were when you started this.
