Trumps schwerer Fehler hat den Iran zur dominierenden Macht am Golf gemacht

The ceasefire in the Iran war is an admission that the US and Israel have [utterly failed to achieve their goals in the conflict](https://inews.co.uk/opinion/trump-biggest-us-humiliation-since-vietnam-4340617?ico=in-line_link). They had hoped their six-week air offensive would reduce Iran to military and political impotence, but instead Iran has gained control of the Strait of Hormuz and has become the dominant power in the Gulf.

For all his apocalyptic [threats to exterminate Iranian civilisation](https://inews.co.uk/news/world/trumps-wild-claim-civilisation-suggests-considering-genocide-4341437?ico=in-line_link), Donald Trump had either to escalate though without much chance of decisively defeating Iran or call a halt to the conflict and get the best terms he could.

As always with Trump, everything about the end of the war is messy, leaving vital questions unanswered. Will he force Israel to declare a ceasefire in Lebanon, where 1.2 million people have been driven from their homes? Trump says that the ceasefire is based on a partial acceptance of Iran’s 10-part peace proposal, but is the US prepared to reduce or drop sanctions on Iran, which amount to an economic siege? Above all else, will this ceasefire be permanent or is it merely a pause in the fighting while the US and Israel regroup?

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would certainly prefer a temporary pause in the war, after which Israel would return to trying to turn Iran into another Gaza, where everything from petrochemical plants to universities would be systematically erased. Iran is suspicious that just as the present war came eight months after the ceasefire which concluded the 12-day war last June, so the present conflict will be succeeded by another even more devastating one.

This might happen, but there are cogent reasons dissuading Trump from returning to the military option. For one, there is no more reason why it should succeed better in future than it has in the past.

The war has proved wildly unpopular at home and abroad. In Rome, the Pope denounced it, citing Jesus as saying to the proponents of war: “Your hands are full of blood.” In the US, influential former Trump supporters furiously objected to the war as the sort of unnecessary foreign entanglement Trump had previously warned against. Disillusioned former Trump acolyte Marjorie Taylor Greene called on people within the administration to stand against “Trump’s madness”, saying: “This is not making America great again, this is evil”. Some 53 per cent of Americans oppose the war and 34 per cent support it, according to [the latest ](https://yougov.com/en-us/articles/54484-us-war-with-iran-remains-unpopular-april-3-6-2026-economist-yougov-poll)[*Economist*](https://yougov.com/en-us/articles/54484-us-war-with-iran-remains-unpopular-april-3-6-2026-economist-yougov-poll)[/YouGov poll](https://yougov.com/en-us/articles/54484-us-war-with-iran-remains-unpopular-april-3-6-2026-economist-yougov-poll).