Have We Won Yet?

Susan Estrich on Apr 16, 2026

Usually, when you're talking about winning a war, it helps to know what you were fighting for. What was the goal of the war? If you don't know that, how do you know the difference between winning and walking away?

In a way, the Trump administration has made it easy on itself. Since they haven't managed to explain what we're doing plunging the world into war, they don't have to show what they accomplished. They don't really have to accomplish anything.

Of course, there have been various rationales offered. Iran's evil leaders deserved to be toppled. That's an easy sale. But is it worth it if we get just as evil ones to replace them? Do we blink, or wink and call it a significant change? Do leaders like us better or only fear us more when we assassinate their father? Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu makes no bones about it: He wants regime change. But American policy leaders have been more cautious. If you embrace regime change, how do you declare victory when you don't get it?

Then there's the obvious imperative of dealing with Iran as a hostile nuclear power. We're already through at least one and a half rounds -- maybe, counted separately, as two -- rounds of deception of whether our attacks obliterated Iran's nuclear potential. That was what we supposedly accomplished in the last war and in the early days of this one. Q Overstatement, it turns out. Now, we seem to be talking years, not obliteration -- how many years Iran will agree to forestall its development and of course, how we will ever hold them to it. Diplomacy is how you manage to win wars, or at least not lose them horrifically, on the ground. Some familiar folks mocked the Obama administration for seeking diplomatic compromises with Iran. What do you think the administration is doing right now?

In the meantime, it doesn't exactly feel like we're winning this war. We didn't destroy a civilization in a night, thankfully, only one man's temporary definition of winning. But we also have not dramatically changed the calculus of the negotiations, much less the politics at home.

President Donald Trump does not have the country behind him on this war and understandably so. What most of us see and feel are its costs and its uncertainties, not any benefits. We can cheer the demise of terrible leaders, but when they are replaced by equally obstinate ones?

It is a measure of Trump's weakness at home that his own party is divided on giving him a blank check to conduct this war. Going into the midterms with a divided party and an unpopular war that is driving up gas prices and inflation is a recipe for disaster. He needs an offramp and the only offramp is victory.

Evil empire that they may be, my bet and that of some smart journalists covering this war, is that the great old American checkbook of public and private money will be opened up to lure Iran into the 21st century. We will reduce the sanctions and restrictions that have held back Iran's economic development. If we can't bomb our way out, then what is left but to buy our way out? A diplomatic success backed by military might. Otherwise, you have a forever war, which will entirely cripple the Trump administration and its prospects in November.

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