Has Trump lost the Iran War?

What his friend Henry Kissinger once said about guerrillas will haunt Trump's legacy

In Short

• Republicans lost both chambers in what was termed a Blue Tsunami
• Three US carrier groups currently deploy nearly 200 aircraft regionally
• Tehran's seven reported conditions include reparations, military withdrawals and sanctions relief

“The guerrilla wins if he does not lose. The conventional army loses if it does not win”, the statesman Henry Kissinger wrote in a January 1969 essay the ‘The Vietnam Negotiations’.

The US would learn this Kissingerian maxim the hard way twice after that essay was written — the first, when withdrew from Vietnam after a bruising eight-year-long military campaign in 1973 and later, from Afghanistan in 2021. In both cases, guerrilla armies it had battled for years, swiftly overthrew pro-US regimes it had expended blood and treasure in building up.

In Iran, President Trump faces a third replay of the Kissingerian maxim. An eight-month conflict with Iran has failed to produce a decisive military victory.

On November 9 Trump said that the Iran war was ‘militarily effectively over’. He said this in a White House briefing after meeting Qatar’s Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani. Trump said the US was keeping the ‘status quo’ in the conflict at the behest of Iran’s neighbours.

The Iran imbroglio has scorched the Trump administration-- a November 3 midterm debacle, a Blue Tsunami, has seen Republicans lose both the House and Senate to the Democrats.

Trump has a two-month window in which to carry out further action before the new and hostile senate and house of representatives convene on January 3. The US has three carrier strike groups with nearly 200 aircraft at the moment in the Indian Ocean region. But even these forces are unlikely to achieve any of the four broad objectives Trump had when he began the bombing Iran on February 28-- changing the regime, dismantling Iran’s nuclear enrichment, destroying its missile capabilities and ending its support for proxies like the Houthis and Hezbollah. Iran has taken a severe beating militarily, but by expanding the conflict across West Asia, closing the Strait of Hormuz and simply refusing to surrender, Tehran has secured itself a Kissingerian victory.

In a lengthy post on X hours after the defeat, US Vice President JD Vance squarely attributed the defeat to the Iran War. The only way out of the Carter Trap that Trump(https://www.indiatoday.in/opinion/story/iran-us-war-trump-carter-trap-deepens-as-conflict-widens-after-ceasefire-sandeep-unnithan-opinion-2958040-2026-07-28 ) seems to have stumbled into is to accede to seven preconditions the Iranians are believed to have spelt out in talks in Doha with Qatari PM Al Thani in September.

Among them, an end to hostilities on all fronts, in Lebanon, Gaza and Yemen, releasing Iran’s frozen assets, lifting the naval blockade, withdrawal of US air and naval forces, reparations for war damages, and an end to hostile rhetoric against Tehran.

A saving grace for Trump is the unique nature of the Iran war. The US opted for military and later economic pressure over a land invasion with soldiers on the ground. This means that should the US choose to exit the conflict, there won’t be publicly humiliating spectacles like the rooftop evacuation of US nationals in Saigon, 1975, or the chaotic exit from Bagram airbase in 2021.

In 2017, Trump welcomed Kissinger into the White House describing him as an old friend and a ‘man I have great, great respect for’. He could examine his friend’s career after that 1969 essay-- as Nixon’s Secretary of State and National Security Adviser, Kissinger intensified the bombing of Hanoi and bombed neighbouring Cambodia, and got the Nobel Peace Prize in 1973 for ending the Vietnam War. It remains the most controversial Nobel prize ever. Trump has publicly hankered for the Prize in a way few candidates have, and was overlooked by the Norwegian Nobel Committee twice. Ending the Iran war which he started, could just give him a third shot at the elusive prize.

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