The Cowboy Lost the War
In Hollywood cowboy films, the hero always enters town on horseback, chewing a cigar, shooting faster than his own shadow. Enemies fall, dust rises, victory music plays, and the screen fades to ‘The End’.
The problem is, geopolitics is not a cowboy film. In the Middle East, those who return are often not heroes, but accountants busy calculating the bills.
A The New York Times editorial this week sounded like the strike of a judge’s gavel: “President Trump Lost This War”. This sentence was not written by anti-American activists on a street corner; it emerged from the editorial board of the most influential newspaper in the United States. The board concluded that Donald Trump failed to secure almost everything he promised the American people before the war began.
His campaign vitrine was once so lavish. There was “unconditional surrender”. There was “total victory”. There was “zero uranium enrichment”. There was even the massive discount of regime change in Tehran. Trump’s language often resembled a shop’s sale banner: everything appeared easy, fast, and profitable. Just swipe the card, and the problem is solved.
However, war turns out not to be a marketplace. The goods displayed in the window are not necessarily available in the warehouse. Now, if a peace agreement is signed in Geneva, the world witnesses an irony that even satirists might be ashamed to invent. After four months of war, billions of dollars in military costs, tens of thousands of missiles, and the threat of apocalypse, America returns to the negotiating table with a menu similar to the 2015 nuclear deal. This is the very agreement made by Barack Obama, which Trump later discarded like someone throwing away an umbrella because they believed the sun would shine forever.
It turns out political weather enjoys playing jokes. So, who won? The question is like asking who wins when two neighbours fight with machetes and eventually meet at the same community health centre. One has lost a tooth; the other has lost an ear. Both return with a prescription for medicine.
Iran, in a certain sense, has gained what it lacked at the beginning of this year: bargaining power. The regime expected to collapse is still standing. Its nuclear programme has not been truly buried. The Strait of Hormuz has proven to be not just a shipping lane, but the oxygen tap for the world economy. Iran is like a small coffee shop owner who turns out to control the electricity switch for the entire village. When the lights are turned off, everyone realises they have been underestimating the position of the cashier’s desk.
But one should not be tempted to parade Iran as a champion. The land of poets still carries wounds. Its military infrastructure is devastated. Its economy is in tatters. Its younger generation is still burdened by political repression. Winning in diplomacy does not automatically mean life becomes cheaper for the people. History is full of nations that won wars but lost to the price of rice.
America itself did not return empty-handed. The Strait of Hormuz has reopened. Energy prices may stabilise. Trump can sell the narrative that Iran was forced to negotiate. However, the most expensive thing lost cannot be bought in any shop: prestige. The world sees the superpower like a heavyweight boxer entering the ring with spotlights, booming music, and scattered sponsor advertisements. His opponent is a middleweight boxer. The audience thought the match would end in two rounds. Instead, round after round passed. Breathing became heavy. The trainer began to panic. Until finally, the match was stopped by the referee’s decision. The boxer did not lose by knockout, but the audience left whispering, “They said he was Mike Tyson. Why does he look like a chicken Tyson?”