Trump has admitted defeat on Iran war after historic blunder

The Iran "deal" is a tacit admission of strategic defeat by the Trump administration and of a failure to achieve nearly all of his war aims.

The US and Iran have agreed to stop fighting and to open the Strait of Hormuz. Everything else is being kicked down the road over 60 days of ceasefire and beyond.

Iran war: The latest updates

Given that the Strait was open before the conflict was started by Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu, reopening it is no great achievement. It simply restores the status quo ante bellum.

After a war that has cost an estimated $30bn, killed thousands and destroyed hundreds of millions of dollars worth of US military hardware, have any of Trump's declared objectives been fulfilled?

Five big nos

• No on Iran's nuclear programme: both the fate of Iran's highly enriched uranium stockpile and its enrichment project are to be discussed over the coming weeks. It remains far from obliterated.

• No to changing the regime: Ayatollah Khamenei and a slew of top-ranking commanders have been killed but have been replaced by even more hardline figures, apparently in no mood to compromise.

• No to helping the Iranian people who rose up against their government. If anything, the war has strengthened Iran's leadership, particularly if it benefits from sanctions relief as part of this deal, which seems more than likely.

• No to destroying Iran's ballistic missile arsenal. America's self-styled bombastic 'Secretary of War' had claimed it had largely been neutralised; US intelligence estimates 70% of Iran's missiles remain serviceable.

• No to reining in Iran's proxies. These are not part of any deal, it seems, for now at least.

Trump's supporters will point out that Iran's military has been massively degraded.

His lieutenants are fond of saying most of its navy is at the bottom of the sea. But not where it counts. Iran's naval potency has remained intact in the Strait of Hormuz, giving the Iranians leverage they could only have dreamt of before.

Iran's air force has been destroyed, but it was largely obsolescent anyway.

A huge number of Iran's IRGC and military bases have also been taken out, but their occupants have survived and remain firmly in control of the country.

A deal that achieves nothing new

In short, Iran priced in the beating its conventional military would take and has prevailed where it's mattered most.

As things stand, the deal achieves none of what Barack Obama's 2015 nuclear deal did. So far, the highly enriched uranium stays in Iran, the enrichment programme can be reassembled, and there is no moratorium yet on enriching more.

Trump accused Obama of handing the Iranians billions. Negotiations following this memorandum of understanding are likely one way or another to do the same.

Trump has found his off-ramp to this war. He has a better chance now of averting global economic meltdown. He hopes to move on and salvage his party's political chances in America's forthcoming midterm elections.

There is a huge amount at stake in the diplomacy that now follows, which will be fiendishly difficult.

Iran has acquired leverage through this war that it never enjoyed before. Its control of the Strait of Hormuz gave it a grip on a fifth of the world's oil supply. It can wield that power at will in the future.

It is likely, therefore, to be even less accommodating in these negotiations.

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Attacking Iran turned out to be a massive miscalculation for Donald Trump.

It has cost America's standing in the world dearly and left Iran potentially stronger.

It will go down as one of the greatest strategic blunders in US history.

(c) Sky News 2026: Trump has admitted defeat on Iran war after historic blunder