Searching For A Trump-Friendly Victory

The war launched against Iran by the United States–Israel duo, concealed behind the cover of diplomatic negotiations, has now entered its first week. Despite the overwhelming superiority in firepower that the United States has amassed, it has failed to prevent Iran from expanding the conflict on a regional scale. Moreover, within the first 48 hours, Iran carried out low-cost attacks that destroyed seven radar bases of various types belonging to the United States in the Gulf region. A data center belonging to Amazon was struck, and civilian air and sea ports across the region—most notably Dubai International Airport—have ceased operations. Although markets appear to be moving moderately despite the Gulf-centered chaos, experts warn that the post-trauma shock to the global economy could be severe. While some countries in the Gulf region have reduced oil production, Qatar has completely halted its liquefied natural gas (LNG) production.

U.S. Domestic Politics Could Not Say “No To War”

Claims that there would be significant opposition within the United States to this war have, so to speak, turned out to be hollow. On Thursday, March 6, the U.S. House of Representatives rejected, by 219 votes to 212, a bill intended to prevent new attacks against Iran without congressional authorization. A day earlier, a similar initiative had come before the Senate, where an effort to limit Trump’s war was defeated by 53 votes to 47.

What is striking here is the persistence of people who still believe that members of Congress—90 percent of whose campaign funding comes from Jewish lobby organizations—would move to stop an attack on Iran, despite witnessing the extent of U.S. support during the genocide in Gaza. These individuals appear to remain attached to the old cliché from the Vietnam War, according to which soldiers returning home in coffins wrapped in the American flag ultimately ended the war. More than half a century has passed since those days. Today, soldiers returning in flag-draped coffins from Iraq, Afghanistan, or Syria, or those who may return from Iran, no longer carry the same societal impact for the majority of the American public. The ultimate determinant of this war’s trajectory will be the state of the U.S. economy.

The War Will Last As Long As The U.S. Economy Allows

With the Trump administration initiating “Operation Epic Fury,” the cost of the attack in the first 24 hours alone reached $779 million. If we also include the weapons and ammunition supplied to Israel at almost no cost, the war’s average daily expense has already approached $1 billion.

Over the past 15 years, the United States has maintained an average defense budget of roughly $1 trillion. The Trump administration increased this figure to $1.5 trillion for 2026, and it is now seeking even more funding from Congress to sustain the current war. Considering that our country ranks 17th globally with a defense budget slightly above $25 billion annually, the economic scale of the conflict unfolding to our south becomes clearer. At the current pace, the U.S.–Israel partnership alone could spend the equivalent of Türkiye’s entire defense budget within a single month.

If the expenditures of European forces deployed to the region, the defensive spending of Gulf states, and Iran’s own war costs are added to this calculation, the result would be an enormous economic footprint.

At present, 50,000 U.S. troops are under arms in the region under the command of U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM). Approximately 200 aircraft, along with two aircraft carriers and their associated carrier strike groups, are conducting operations against Iran from the seas and airspace stretching from the central Indian Ocean to the island of Cyprus.

After one week of fighting, the only concrete achievement claimed for the combined U.S.–Israeli firepower has been the sinking of 17 Iranian naval vessels. Yet despite this, control has not been established over the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran has effectively closed, disrupting 20 percent of global oil trade. Iran has not yet deployed its high-speed boats prepared for asymmetric naval warfare, nor the attack craft capable of launching ballistic missiles.

At present, there is no clear picture of victory for the Trump administration. When the war began, Trump raised the bar by declaring “regime change” as the objective. As days pass, however, his statements regarding the war’s goals have become increasingly ambiguous. Moreover, remarks by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on the fourth day of the war, stating that the United States had been persuaded by Israel to enter the conflict, created the largest rift in the White House during the first year of Trump’s second term.

While Trump claims he convinced Israel to go to war, Rubio’s contradictory statement disrupted the balance within the cabinet. Following this rift, the Secretary of State appears to have receded from the spotlight, with Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth taking a more prominent role. Beginning March 5, Hegseth held press briefings highlighting the U.S. military’s battlefield performance, yet these appearances have failed to dispel doubts within the international community and the American public.

During this period, Trump gave a phone interview to an ABC White House correspondent. When asked, “What happens next?”, he replied: “Forget what comes next. They’re destroyed. It will take them 10 years to rebuild.” This remark may also be interpreted as the U.S. president settling for the destruction already inflicted rather than insisting on regime change.

However, an even greater danger lies ahead for Trump. Having previously described the 2015 nuclear agreement with Iran negotiated by the Obama administration as a “badly negotiated deal,” Trump could ultimately end this war without securing any economic gains. Encouraged by Benjamin Netanyahu, and buoyed by the decision to redirect Venezuelan oil supplies to refineries in Texas, Trump appears to have embarked on the Iranian campaign with expectations of strategic benefit.

His confusion was also evident in another statement on March 5:

We will work with the people and the regime to ensure that someone is leading who can build Iran nicely without nuclear weapons.

According to Israel’s Kan News and the U.S. outlet Politico, Washington is preparing to move away from the current intense bombardment campaign toward a lower-intensity phase expected to last 100 days.

This zigzagging trajectory seems to have drawn Israel’s attention as well. Israeli officials have reportedly begun questioning whether the United States might be conducting quiet ceasefire discussions with Iran without informing Israel. Although U.S. officials deny such contacts in the international press, Israel appears convinced that evidence of such diplomatic outreach exists.

If Iran can offer Trump a symbolic victory that allows him to feel triumphant—and one that can be presented as success to the American public—the Iranian leadership may achieve its single essential objective: keeping the regime intact. Even if this outcome condemns the Iranian people to decades of hardship, it could still allow Tehran to survive the war politically intact.