Sing, O Muse, of the Rage of Donald Trump!

The war in Iran is not a Greek tragedy, but we must admit that it has all the elements of a great one. There’s a prideful president, who listens mostly to his ego and is driven by a need for greatness and legacy. He overreaches in a disastrous war, abandoning his promises, splintering his following, and bringing unnecessary pain and destruction to the world.

And as in so many Greek tragedies, the root cause of this disaster is hubris. Many have remarked on how curious it is that a president whose election was based on railing against the stupidity of the United States’ wars in the Middle East would choose to start such a war himself.

But where voters heard Trump criticize unpopular wars, it turns out that he was mostly criticizing his predecessors. As U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance told reporters after last year’s attacks on Iran’s nuclear sites, “The difference is that back then, we had dumb presidents, and now we have a president who actually knows how to accomplish America’s national security objectives.”

We might laugh at such hubris, but the first year of Trump’s second term largely confirmed this notion in the minds of Trump and those around him. Airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear sites, the seizure of President Nicolás Maduro from Venezuela, and even a brief air campaign against the Houthis in Yemen were moderately successful punitive expeditions. They might not have been groundbreaking strategic achievements, but they showcased impressive tactical precision by U.S. military forces, produced almost no blowback, and did not suck the United States into any broader quagmires.

Increasingly convinced that he had found the recipe for successful use of force overseas, it was almost inevitable that Trump would overreach. Six weeks into the war with Iran, as the economic costs spiral and the administration struggles to find a way out, we have clearly reached that point.

Now, the question is the extent to which Trump’s hubris—his notorious unwillingness to think through the second- and third-order effects of his actions—will hurt U.S. interests in the long term. If the White House cannot find an off-ramp soon, not only will the economic costs begin to snowball, but they will likely put the United States in a worse strategic position for a decade or more.

The war’s immediate impacts are visible to all. Though markets have been somewhat more resilient to the Strait of Hormuz’s closure than anyone might have expected, they’ve grown increasingly jittery ever since the conflict passed the one-month mark. The price of specific oil products (i.e., jet fuel and diesel) has spiked, countries in Asia have introduced rationing measures, and the likelihood of inflation and a potential recession has increased.

And, of course, there are the domestic political costs for Trump’s own party. Republicans, already disfavored in the upcoming midterm elections, could lose the House and the Senate. Trump’s own approval ratings are falling, especially among younger voters—almost eight in 10 of them are dissatisfied with his presidency.

Both the economic and political effects, however, could potentially be mitigated if the war were to end soon. Instead, it is the strategic ramifications that should concern policymakers.

For one thing, it is almost a joke in Washington at this point to talk about the “pivot to Asia” that never actually occurred. Trump is at least the third U.S. president to fail to focus on the threat from China as outlined in National Security Strategies. But it is not simply that the United States is focused on the Middle East when it should be focused on China. Rather, it is the concrete degradation of its radar and air defenses, interceptors, missiles, and other capabilities.

The protection of U.S. bases in the Indo-Pacific—that is, in a Taiwan contingency—is heavily dependent on those munitions, which are being used at an accelerated rate during the conflict in Iran. Given the United States’ lackluster defense industrial base, the munitions will not be replaced quickly, easily, or cheaply. The practical ramifications of this war for U.S. deterrence in the Indo-Pacific are clear. Deterrence is often defined as a combination of capabilities and credibility; the war in Iran places U.S. capabilities—and its ability to deter China—in doubt.

Then there’s Trump’s own strategy of energy dominance. Upon coming into office, the Trump administration proclaimed a bold energy strategy that was predicated on U.S. shale energy production, in which the country would act as an important fossil fuel player, producing oil and especially liquefied natural gas (LNG) for allies, and helping stabilize world markets. Though not good for the climate, such a move would undoubtedly be good for the U.S. economy, as well as for its power and influence.

Yet it is likely that another long-term impact of this conflict will be driving countries away from fossil fuels. As regional oil and gas infrastructure comes under threat, particularly in Qatar, and energy flows remain bottled up in the Strait of Hormuz, countries that based their energy strategies on LNG are increasingly seeing it as a bad bet. Poorer Asian countries are turning back to coal to fill today’s gaps; later, they’re likely to turn to Chinese renewable technologies like solar. European states, meanwhile, face difficult decisions about phasing out Russian gas or restarting mothballed nuclear power programs. Trump’s energy dominance strategy was never a sure thing, but this war has smothered it in the crib.

The war has also bolstered fears about U.S. unreliability in its role as a guarantor of international trade and sea lanes, a role that it has played since the end of World War II. In this war, though, the United States has acted more as an agent of chaos in world markets than a stabilizing force.

Indeed, the Trump administration seems to have given little thought to the notion that a war of regime change against Tehran might lead Iran to try and block the Strait of Hormuz. But the war has turned what was always an implicit threat to a practical reality, and now Tehran has suggested that it will continue using its commanding position atop the strait to demand tolls from ships for safe transit even after the fighting is over. It’s hard to imagine a situation that could more effectively highlight the limits of United States’ power and ability to set the global rules of the road.

Perhaps most importantly, the Trump administration is undermining its own foreign-policy legacy. The administration has always had its own internal contradictions, but as its 2025 National Security Strategy demonstrated, it was nonetheless able to pull together a vision of the world that appealed to different constituencies within the Republican Party, a strategy that would serve U.S. interests and involve playing a constructive role in the world. In practice, the administration sought to defuse tensions with China and engage in peace-building in Ukraine and elsewhere.

But the war in Iran has derailed Trump’s China summit, strengthened Russia, and undermined negotiations on the war in Ukraine. It has pulled attention from discussions about burden-shifting in Europe and revitalizing the defense industrial base. And it has done so for almost no strategic benefit. Even though this campaign has destroyed many Iranian weapons platforms and killed Iranian leaders and troops, leaders can be replaced and weapons systems can be rebuilt. In the absence of a ruinous escalation to ground combat, the war is likely to be a tactical success and a strategic failure at best. If it does escalate, then it will become a gaping wound, dragging the rest of Trump’s foreign-policy down with it.

Last year, I was asked what my best- and worst-case scenarios for a four-year Trump presidency would be. Trump has always been impulsive and hard to predict, but his foreign policy has also been able to upend existing orthodoxies in ways that could be beneficial to future policymakers. A best-case scenario for a Trump presidency, I still believe, would be one of creative destruction, in which he might do away with many of the old structures that held U.S. foreign policy in an unproductive form, providing future administrations with space to build.

Instead, however, we seem to be edging far closer to the worst-case scenario, in which that destruction is so random and so costly that it serves to degrade U.S. power, rendering it far more difficult for the United States to build a new and constructive role in the world.

As many heroes of the Greek epics learn, pride all too often goes before the fall. The war in Iran is a strategic blunder of epic proportions. It not only shows the world that the United States is less powerful than commonly assumed, but it is also driving ill-will toward the country, while hollowing out U.S. military capabilities and future deterrence credibility. If the Trump administration does not find an off-ramp soon, then the end result may be tragic indeed.