Opinion | Trump’s Iran gamble won’t advance his prospects at home or with China | South China Morning Post
Wednesday, March 18, 2026 8:10 AM
Friends + Interlocutors,
You’ve got to ask yourself, “What is America getting out of this war in Iran?” Trump has demanded “unconditional surrender” from Tehran. In the meantime, Tel Aviv is liquidating Iran’s top leadership. Trump boasts about it. He seems to relish the carnage.
But what is he trying to achieve? I think he has dishonored himself and therefore the United States. He calls the war “an excursion”. On whose behalf? It was clearly unnecessary and unjustified. Why is Trump lying? What is he hiding?
Opinion Trump’s Iran gamble won’t advance his prospects at home or with China
The eminent British military strategist Michael Howard famously said that the purpose of forecasting wars is not to get it right, but to avoid getting it terribly wrong. US President Donald Trump has already got it terribly wrong. No one knows why he launched a war with Israel against Iran.
Trump may have been partly correct when he posted on Truth Social that, “Iran’s Navy is gone, their Air Force is gone, missiles, drones and everything else are being decimated, and their leaders have been wiped from the face of the earth”. While clearly exaggerations, the US has inflicted heavy damage. Yet, he was clearly wrong in claiming, “We have unparalleled firepower, unlimited ammunition, and plenty of time.”
The US has neither unlimited ammunition nor plenty of time. Less than two weeks into the war with Iran, the Financial Times reported that the US had expended years’ worth of key munitions, including large numbers of Tomahawk cruise missiles. And Trump doesn’t have plenty of time ahead of the coming US midterm elections.
He has few options now: even if he did declare victory and wished merely to withdraw, Iran would not allow it. Tehran has little left to lose. Iran can keep striking Israel and US military bases in other countries using drones and missiles it can continuously produce.
This war raises a critical question: does the US have a coherent national strategy? The short answer is no. If the war in Afghanistan was one of the US’ “forever wars”, the Middle East is America’s permanent battlefield. Since the 1980s, the US has been involved in at least six wars in the region.
Israel is the US’ Achilles’ heel. Given the close US-Israel relationship and the influence of the pro-Israel lobby, successive US administrations have supported Israel, differing only in the degree of support. For the US, withdrawing from the Middle East will be harder than exiting the war in Ukraine. In this sense, Israel’s leverage exceeds that of all the US’ allies in Europe combined.
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Israel is a winner so far. Reported casualties among its armed forces are lower than those of the US, which has lost at least 13 soldiers. Israel’s greatest achievement is dragging the US into a regional war. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has insinuated that the conflict is turning Israel into a global superpower.
Yet Israel won’t be the real winner. Its global image has deteriorated sharply since its massive and indiscriminate killing in Gaza following the Hamas attacks in October 2023. The Palestinian issue is central to the world’s 2 billion Muslims, who make up roughly 25 per cent of the global population. Any injustice against the Palestinians will draw support from the global Muslim community – a reality a small country like Israel cannot alter.
Moreover, the US’ long-standing support for Israel looks shaky. According to a Gallup poll in February, more Americans sympathise with the Palestinian people than with Israelis.
Trump’s announcement about delaying his China visit by “a month or so” is no surprise. If he does come, I wonder how he can justify the war to the Chinese leadership, given the harm US actions have inflicted on China’s interests. Trump claims he’s “helping China here and other countries because they get a lot of their energy from the [Strait of Hormuz]”. China will certainly not buy such a claim.
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Few commercial ships are now sailing through the extremely dangerous waters in the Strait of Hormuz, and deploying US warships to escort just one or two vessels each time is not cost-effective. Trump’s call for other countries to join the US Navy to escort ships has fallen on deaf ears. This is not like the multilateral anti-piracy operations in the Indian Ocean that were launched in 2008, when navies from over 25 countries including China joined efforts to stabilise the situation.
China’s losses are obvious, but not unbearable, as reflected in its relatively stable stock market. In 2025, 42 per cent of China’s imported crude oil came from the Middle East; only about 13 per cent of that total came from Iran.
In recent years, China has reduced its foreign energy dependence by expanding renewable sources. According to Bloomberg, which cited a China Central Television report, the country’s power generation in 2025 was more than twice that of the US and far exceeded the combined annual electricity consumption of the European Union, Russia, India and Japan.
A February essay written by Kyle Chan in Foreign Affairs magazine, titled “China Is Winning by Waiting”, argued that if Washington continues its capricious international behaviour, Beijing won’t rush to exploit the situation because it does not need to. He has a point. Dozens of ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz have reportedly updated their destination signals to signify ownership by or affiliation with China.
These are unplanned advertisements for Beijing: security is associated with China, while chaos is linked to the US. In 1994, US national security adviser Anthony Lake labelled North Korea, Cuba, Iran, Libya and Iraq as “rogue states”. Today, which behaves more like a rogue state – Iran or the US? Can any US official still speak of the “rules-based international order”?
When Trump visits China in a month or so, one thing is for sure: the war will not end. His self-confidence may well be at a low point. China will remain as calm as ever. Trump’s tariff war has not crushed the Chinese people and his empty flattery will not deceive them either. Welcome to Beijing, Mr President.
