Trump lost badly in Iran. How does he spin that as a win?

Trump lost badly in Iran. How does he spin that as a win?
No amount of late-night posting and Fox News bluster can make this world-historical humiliation look like victory

By Andrew O'Hehir
Executive Editor
Published April 26, 2026 9:00AM (EDT)


(Salon) There is no way to sugarcoat the epic scale of America’s humiliation in Donald Trump’s disastrous and irrational war with Iran, or the damaging global effects that will endure years or decades into the future. With the “stable genius” and “extraordinarily brilliant person” in the White House visibly decompensating into impotent rage and erratic burst of mania, there is no obvious exit strategy that will allow him to declare victory (as he must, for interwoven and deeply unfortunate psychological and political reasons).

This war has accomplished exactly none of its stated objectives — even with those constantly shifting and being defined downward — and has almost certainly strengthened the regional power and global reputation of the Iranian regime, despite weeks of bombing and the deaths of much of its leadership. Trump’s options would seem to be a negotiated settlement that might, at best, approximate the pre-war status quo; a potentially catastrophic military escalation favored by literally no one except Lindsey Graham, the Israeli government and a handful of right-wing Iranian expatriates; or an indefinite continuation of the current phony war over the Strait of Hormuz, in hopes that the Iranian economy will suffocate before global recession sets in (an outcome that may be unavoidable no matter what else happens).

That’s a doubleplus-ungood list of options, and while it’s easy to say that the first one presents the most rational outcome for all sides, it’s not clear that even matters. The Pakistani government’s effort to play peacemaker has once again collapsed, with neither Iran’s foreign minister and Trump’s amateur-hour negotiators willing to show up in Islamabad this weekend. Trump is “quite fed up” with this war and eager to make a deal, reports Amos Harel of the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, but is trapped between Benjamin Netanyahu on one side and Iran’s new war-hardened governing faction on the other, both of whom are more than willing to fight on.

....(snip)....

From the beginning of this conflict, the Iranians identified the fundamental weakness of U.S. strategy, which was based on a litany of false assumptions, starting with the premise that total victory could be achieved with air power (something that has never happened in the history of warfare) and that killing Iran’s senior leaders would cause the regime to surrender or collapse. Trump and Pete Hegseth and Marco Rubio and whoever else somehow persuaded themselves — or allowed Netanyahu to persuade them — to ignore the obvious Heffalump trap that was right in front of them, that being yet another protracted, expensive and massively unpopular foreign war likely to crater or destroy a presidency. ..................(more)

https://www.salon.com/2026/04/26/trump-lost-badly-in-iran-how-does-he-spin-that-as-a-win/