Editor at Large: History Repeats in Iran

“Let's start with the most important point about the agreement President Trump is apparently about to sign with Iran. There were no good options. If we're lucky, the deal in the works may restore the status quo ante in the region: shipping lanes reopened, negotiations over Iran's nuclear program resumed -- with a regime that has been tactically degraded but looks strategically enhanced.

 

The worst outcome, in other words, except for all the others.

 

That's what you get when you launch a strategic expedition on a tide of hubris and ignorance, a "little excursion" you insist will end in "four to five weeks" in "the unconditional surrender" of your enemy -- an enemy so obdurate that it values its own existence far above the lives of its own people.

 

It's unfair to blame Mr. Trump alone, because this strategic failure is not new for the U.S. It's also what you get when you embroil yourself in another conflict in the greater Middle East based on a bleakly familiar combination of misjudgments: a massive underestimation of the enemy's defensive capabilities and will to resist, and a massive overestimation of your own offensive capabilities and will to prosecute a costly war to a conclusion.

 

So, yes, negotiating the best deal was the right choice. What were the alternatives? Maintain the state of blockade and siege? That would have done greater harm to the U.S. and world economy, with limited chance of success. Return to the bombing campaign? More costly depletion of munitions, jeopardizing our other military commitments, in exchange for reparable damage to Iran's military infrastructure.

 

Escalation? That might have promised a more conclusive outcome. But how likely was it and at what cost? Blithe exhortations to "finish the job" again underestimate the level of commitment necessary to achieve the stated objectives: opening the sea lanes, depriving Iran of its nuclear capability; degrading its infrastructure so it poses no future threat. All this would have required extended naval warfare against an enemy entrenched in defensive and offensive posture along a 1,000-mile long Gulf littoral, sustained amphibious operations in hostile waters, the deployment of enough ground forces to retrieve remote and well-protected nuclear material, and more forces to ensure the elimination of defensive capabilities.

 

In short, escalation wouldn't have meant a calibrated ratcheting up of the surgical operation we have been trying to execute for the past three months. It would have meant all-out war against a country with a population larger than Iraq's and Afghanistan's combined, with a military and political leadership dug in to defend the regime to the last man. Could we have won? Maybe, but not at a cost most Americans would deem acceptable.

 

It isn't unpatriotic to express skepticism about our ability to fight and win this kind of war. The accusation that voicing criticism of a campaign waged on flawed assumptions and fanciful expectations means rooting for the enemy is repugnant. Iran's regime is one of the most despicable on the planet; it has murdered Americans and threatens regional stability. It deserves to be ground into dust. But we should be able to debate the best way to defend ourselves from it without being accused of campaigning for the enemy.

 

If Iran emerges from all this stronger, as reasonable critics fear, then those who have so enthusiastically backed all-out war should reflect on their own role rather than attacking those with reasonable doubts.

 

It is this, after all, that makes America great: that we can debate the wisdom of policy without calling each other traitors; we can call on the wisdom of a wide range of people to develop the right strategy. Above all, we learn our lessons when we make misjudgments rather than claim we have been stabbed in the back. We know where that leads.

 

This last point is the biggest irony of all this. Since George H.W. Bush's resounding success in expelling Iraq from Kuwait in 1991, we have been stuck in a repeat pattern of wild oscillations between overconfidence and hypercaution; successive presidencies have ridden a swinging pendulum between hubris and timidity.

 

Bill Clinton's pusillanimous response to al Qaeda's terrorist attacks on the American embassies in Africa and the USS Cole emboldened our enemies and led more or less directly to the criminal tragedy of Sept. 11, 2001. George W. Bush pushed the pendulum the other way and assumed an easy victory over Iraq in 2003. Barack Obama's diffidence gave us his red-line disaster in Syria in 2013. Joe Biden's shortsighted aversion to even limited military engagement resulted in the calamity of the Afghanistan withdrawal in 2021.

 

Between those last two, Donald Trump seemed finally to have achieved equilibrium with prudent intervention where necessary while avoiding unnecessary wars.

 

George Santayana's famous observation about history has been absorbed into the bloodstream of popular thought: Those who don't learn from it are doomed to repeat it. But what are we to make of those who seemed to have learned the lessons and then went and repeated the mistakes anyway?” [1]

 

Very influential people in international energy companies are getting great profit from this war. That makes expecting a swift end of the war too optimistic.

 

The staggering windfall for major fossil fuel corporations—estimated at over $30 million per hour in excess profits during early conflict periods—fuels the perception that prolonged volatility disincentivizes swift resolutions to energy-driven conflicts.

The connection between conflict, supply chain disruptions, and executive compensation highlights major market distortions:

•     Massive Windfalls: Analysts at Oxfam projected that the six largest Western fossil fuel companies (including Chevron, Shell, and BP) are earning nearly $3,000 every single second, largely driven by war-related volatility.

•     Executive Rewards: High commodity prices and trading margins have drastically boosted corporate bottom lines. For example, the CEO of Chevron, Mike Wirth, sold $104 million worth of company shares during just the first three months of the conflict.

•           Shareholder Focus: Instead of directing these excess, unearned profits toward expanding capacity to lower consumer costs, energy majors are heavily prioritizing shareholder payouts through aggressive stock buybacks and dividend increases.

•           Governments worldwide are pushing back against these dynamics. In the US, lawmakers have introduced the Big Oil Windfall Profits Tax Act to claw back excessive gains, while European finance ministers are pushing for similar emergency levies. Don’t hold your breath.

 

1. Editor at Large: History Repeats in Iran. Baker, Gerard.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 26 May 2026: A17.