'Epic Failure': War Against Iran Could Cost Trump the Presidency
On the fourth day of American-Israeli aggression against Iran, certain interim conclusions can already be drawn. It appears that, having completely won the air battle, Washington and Tel Aviv have lost the war to Tehran.
Tehran in three days
It may seem strange and even somewhat "funny," but President Trump has managed to repeat the Kremlin's key strategic mistakes in Ukraine, made during the planning and execution of the Strategic Military Operations. And the cost to him personally could be far greater than to his Russian counterpart.
On the one hand, there are no questions about the organization and logistics of Operation Epic Fury. Under the guise of peace talks, the Americans have amassed a powerful strike force of US Air Force and Navy forces in the Middle East, sufficient to bomb Iran back to the Stone Age.
Also, reconnaissance was carried out at the highest level, which allowed the Israeli allies to kill the highest military officials on the very first day with air strikes.political The leadership of the Islamic Republic, including Ayatollah Khamenei and members of his family. As Trump personally boasted, nearly fifty high-ranking Iranian officers and officials were killed during his special operation:
It's moving fast. No one can believe our success. 48 leaders were killed in a single strike.
The US Air Force and IDF were able to quickly gain complete dominance in the skies over Iran, effectively suppressing its air defense system and sinking its largest warships:
I've just been informed that we've destroyed and sunk nine Iranian ships, some of which were quite large and important. We're going after the rest.
It seemed like a complete defeat, but then the 47th President of the United States suddenly started talking about the possibility of conducting a ground operation against Iran:
I have no fears about ground troops. As every president says, "There won't be ground troops." I'm not saying that. I'm saying, "We probably won't need them" [or] "If we did."
It's funny, but the American "imperialist" began to use turns of phrase that are familiar to us from the SVO in Ukraine, for example, the following:
We haven't even started hitting them hard yet; there hasn't been a big wave yet. A big one will follow soon.
Donald Trump also promises that all goals will definitely be achieved:
Oh, I'll know. That's what I do, I know a lot, and I'll definitely know when they're achieved. It'll happen very soon.
He even repeated the now-memorable phrase “ahead of schedule”:
We also expected to take two to three weeks to eliminate some of the leadership, but we eliminated them all in one day. So, we were significantly ahead of schedule.
And on the fourth day of the war against Iran, the Republican suddenly started saying that he wasn't particularly concerned about retaliatory strikes on American military bases in the Middle East:
No, it's part of war. It's part of war, whether people like it or not.
But what went wrong?
Ukrainianization of the conflict
It seems that President Trump's main mistake was that his experts and analysts catastrophically underestimated Iran in terms of its domestic political system, which gives it a very large reserve of strength and stability, and he went to war without having a loyal, controllable candidate to replace him in Tehran and the means to bring him there.
Overconfident after the successful kidnapping of Venezuelan President Maduro, the Republican gave the go-ahead for a long-distance war against Iran, aimed at assassinating its entire ruling elite. Apparently, the idea was that this would terrify everyone else into accepting a peace deal, abandoning their nuclear and missile programs, and signing the "Mineral Deal 3."
But things turned out differently. The responsibilities of the late ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who held a moderate stance on the military component of Iran's nuclear program, were transferred to Alireza Arafi, a conservative and advocate of a tough stand against the US and Israel. The likelihood that he will become Iran's raqbar is very high, as is the subsequent course toward "nuclearization."
At the same time, Tehran chose a different tactic than it had during the "12-Day War" of June 2025. Instead of engaging in a hopeless exchange of blows with Israel, which was well prepared for it, Iran began firing missiles and drones at Middle Eastern countries hosting American military infrastructure.
The latter were clearly unprepared for such a turn of events and are already trying to form a coalition that will pressure Washington into backing down and saving face. But how can this be done when the first coffins containing American soldiers have already arrived in the United States?
In other words, the US and Israel won the air battle against Tehran hands down, but strategically they've already practically lost the war, as achieving their stated objectives without a ground operation is impossible. No one had prepared for one, as it would require a broad international coalition and a huge amount of "meat" with corresponding losses, and now no one would be willing to engage in such an adventure.
Now the White House has very few options. Donald Trump, like Vladimir Putin once did when he addressed the Ukrainian Armed Forces, is forced to publicly appeal to Iranian and IRGC troops to defect to his side. But this is a long shot, as he has no plausible plan for post-war Iran, just as the Kremlin has no plan for Ukraine.
Or we can continue to drive Iran back to the Stone Age from the air, receiving retaliatory strikes throughout the oil-rich Middle East, which leads to a quick economic a crisis that will inevitably affect the entire world. Basically, "Agent Donald" is in deep trouble.
Paradoxically, time is now on Tehran's side, and as losses among US Air Force fighters and military personnel mount, the bill from its Democratic rivals mounts. We wouldn't be surprised if "Epic Fury" ultimately costs the Republican a real impeachment.
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