Caitlin Dewey is a senior writer and editor at Vox, where she helms the Today, Explained newsletter.
It’s okay; you can laugh. There is indeed something farcical, albeit grim, about the purported negotiations between the US and Iran.
Yesterday, President Donald Trump claimed the two countries had made “very good” progress toward ending the war. Hours later, Iran’s foreign ministry denied that any such conversations had ever occurred. Trump then clarified that his envoys had talked to other Iranian officials but did not name any names. (The word “clarify” is admittedly doing lots of work in that sentence.)
Regardless of who is or isn’t speaking to whom, Trump does appear interested in ending the war he started — or, at least, reassuring markets to that effect. That begs the obvious follow-up question: Did Trump get what he wanted from this? Is the US, in fact, “winning” the conflict?
That’s a messy question, in any war — but especially this one. Trump has moved the goalposts so many times, it’s hard to keep track of what the score is. So, I turned to several of my colleagues who cover world news for Vox and asked them how they’re evaluating the war. Who is winning and who is losing... if anyone?
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Zack Beauchamp, a senior correspondent at Vox:
In tactical terms, Iran is the obvious loser of this war: Its senior leadership has been assassinated, and its military assets decimated, with minimal casualties on either the US or Israeli side so far. Under normal circumstances, this would be what total defeat looks like.
But the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz has been extraordinarily effective in putting pressure on the United States, seemingly bringing the Trump administration to the negotiating table. If the US backs down under economic coercion, Iran will have just proven its ability to hold the global economy hostage and get away with it. That means it would end the conflict in a stronger political position than where it started, despite its overwhelming battlefield defeats — which is what victory looks like.
This would represent a catastrophic failure of planning and foresight by the US-Israel coalition, almost certainly traceable back to Trump himself. The president launched the war with no obvious endgame and has constantly shifted objectives, thus proving that all the tactical might in the world cannot make up for a complete lack of strategic direction.
Joshua Keating, a senior correspondent at Vox:
If Donald Trump has a political superpower, it’s his ability to declare victory in a particular crisis and move onto another one, regardless of the facts on the ground.
Again and again, as his foreign policy has gotten more aggressive and adventurous, analysts like me — primed from the experience of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine — have warned that Trump was risking quagmire and blowback. He’s consistently defied those predictions.
This time around, however, he doesn’t seem to be able to summon his superpower. It may be that the experience in Venezuela fueled his confidence that regime change on his terms would be easy to pull off. Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz has also changed the global economic reality in a way that would make it hard for even this president to call it a victory. And the US is fighting alongside an ally — Israel — with the incentive to keep this war going for as long as possible.
Trump appears to be searching for something he can call victory. But Iran — despite the punishment it has absorbed, including the death of a large swathe of its senior leaders — seems stubbornly unwilling to give it to him.
Bryan Walsh, a senior editorial director at Vox:
The Iran conflict has demonstrated just how asymmetric modern warfare has become. On one side, you have the United States and Israel making use of frontier military technology, including AI, to utterly devastate Iran’s military, slaughter its leadership, and take command of the skies — all within a few days.
On the other side, you have Iran using cheap drones to force the US and Israel to exhaust their expensive interceptor systems in an attempt to protect a vast swathe of space. It doesn’t matter if Iran loses most of its drones and missiles with every strike; if a few get through and hit a US base, or a Dubai hotel, or a Qatar natural gas facility, Tehran gets the win. As in past asymmetric conflicts, Iran only has to get lucky once; the US and Israel have to be lucky always.
But, for all the drones and the AI targeting, the conflict also illustrates a very old rule of war: Location matters. Or, as Napoleon would put it, “The policies of all powers are inherent in their geography.” Iran’s location gives it huge leverage over the gulf of water that bears its name and the narrow strait through which a quarter of the world’s seaborne oil trade passes — or did, before Tehran leveraged the threat of force to close it.
Geography is fixed; even if the US manages to reopen the strait through force or negotiation, the Iranians will still be there. And now, they, and the rest of the world, know just how potent a weapon they have.
