We are now several weeks into a war with Iran that America never should have entered.
The Strait of Hormuz, the narrow, strategic artery through which a fifth of the world’s energy flows, is shut down.
Oil to Asia, natural gas to Europe, global shipping lanes: all frozen. And the truth is as simple as it is alarming. We have no exit strategy. No off‑ramp. No plan for what comes next.
This crisis didn’t fall out of the sky. It was chosen. And it was chosen for reasons that have very little to do with America’s interests.
From the beginning, the administration badly underestimated Iran.
The president was persuaded, largely by voices aligned with Israel, that a fast, hard strike would cause Iran to fold.
That fantasy collapsed immediately.
What we got instead was the worst‑case scenario our own generals warned about: a regional power with deep military capacity, a unified population, and the most strategically valuable choke point on earth now fully under its control.
What makes this even harder to swallow is that this is the exact opposite of what the president ran on.
For a decade, Trump branded himself as the candidate who would end the forever wars, not start new ones.
His first term proved he could exercise restraint. After killing Soleimani, he refused to escalate. He held the line. But this time, the man who once warned that Washington was too quick to rush into conflict has now plunged us into one.
Part of the story is the people surrounding him.
Benjamin Netanyahu visited the White House repeatedly in the months leading up to the strike.
Senators like Lindsey Graham openly describe themselves as Zionists whose allegiance is to Israel.
Trump’s own “spiritual” advisors, steeped in Dispensationalist theology, reinforced the idea that America must act on Israel’s behalf, even at the expense of our own interests.
And then came the admission from Senator Marco Rubio: the United States struck Iran because Israel was preparing to strike first, and we feared Iranian retaliation.
In other words, Israel is driving the ship. Americas are paying the price. Is that what blessing looks like?
The justification was the same tired line we’ve heard for 40 years: Iran is “weeks away” from a nuclear weapon.
Netanyahu has repeated that claim for decades. Yet our own Director of National Intelligence said there was no credible evidence of an imminent threat. We were in the middle of negotiations that appeared to be working —until we used those negotiations as cover for a surprise attack.
That destroyed our credibility worldwide. Nations now see the United States as deceptive, untrustworthy, and willing to weaponize diplomacy. And they’re not wrong to think so. Actions speak louder than words.
Meanwhile, the constitutional breakdown is glaring. The Constitution is clear: only Congress can declare war. Yet once again, the executive branch initiated a major conflict without congressional authorization.
The Founders feared exactly this, that presidents, not the people, would drag the nation into war. This is not a defensive war. We were not attacked. We initiated hostilities based on speculative claims and foreign pressure, just like Iraq.
Strategically, the situation is even worse. We decapitated part of Iran’s leadership, but the regime remains intact. The military remains operational. The Iranian people did not rise up.
Instead, we handed Iran a unifying enemy: us. We created martyrs, including a Shia pope-like religious figure. We killed civilians, including children at a girls’ school attended by the families of Iranian military leaders. Imagine how America would respond if a foreign nation killed 160 of our children and religious figures. Iran’s rage is predictable.
And here’s the part Americans need to understand: Iran doesn’t need to defeat us militarily to win this war. They can’t, and they know it.
Winning for Iran means surviving. It means dragging the war out. It means bleeding America’s treasury and America’s sons and daughters. It means turning American public opinion against its own president. And they are succeeding.
They have the perfect leverage: the Strait of Hormuz. To reopen it would require a massive ground invasion of a nation of 90 million people, far larger and more capable than Iraq or Afghanistan. We are trapped in the very scenario our generals warned about.
Even if the war ended tomorrow, the damage to America’s reputation is done. We will be seen as a nation that lies, that breaks its word, that uses diplomacy as a trap. Future presidents will spend years trying to rebuild trust.
And for what? For Israel’s interests, not our own.
This will hang around the president’s neck for the rest of his term, and around America’s neck for far longer.
The question now is whether we have the courage to confront how we got here, and whether we will insist that our leaders return to the constitutional, moral, and strategic clarity that once kept us out of wars we had no business fighting.
Scott Clem can be reached at: ScottClem@live.com
