Trump gets blamed for this war every day. The uncomfortable truth is that America has been walking toward this exact confrontation for a very long time, and no president who tried military force alone ever found a way out either
Blaming a single president for the war with Iran is easy, and largely misses the point. The current confrontation, a collapsed ceasefire, resumed strikes, a naval blockade in the Strait of Hormuz, and a conflict that has already spread across the Gulf, is the product of decades of American foreign policy, not simply one administration’s choices, according to letters responding to an earlier Guardian opinion piece that had placed the blame squarely on Donald Trump, published in a media report. Contributors to that debate argued that repeated US military interventions across the Middle East, under both Republican and Democratic administrations, have created many of today’s structural tensions, pointing to Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya as evidence that intervention has been a recurring feature of American strategy rather than an exception unique to Trump. They also noted that the strategic importance of the Strait of Hormuz itself reflects long-standing American economic and geopolitical interests that predate any single presidency by decades.
Every president who tried this ran into the same wall
The most telling evidence for this argument is not historical. It is happening right now, in real time, to the current president. Max Boot’s analysis for the Council on Foreign Relations found that the collapse of the US-Iran ceasefire demonstrates just how limited Washington’s military options remain, even after months of active fighting, according to the organisation’s own analysis. The United States has inflicted real, significant military damage on Iran. What it has not achieved is any of its broader strategic objectives, regime change, or a genuine end to Tehran’s missile programme and proxy network. Boot’s conclusion is pointed. Trump now faces the same dilemma nearly every American president before him has faced when confronting Iran militarily, a limited campaign with no realistic path to decisive victory. That is a structural constraint, not a personal failing unique to this administration.
Chatham House reached a similar verdict examining why the ceasefire itself proved so fragile. Neither Washington nor Tehran achieved a decisive win during the fighting, leaving both sides more interested in buying time than actually resolving the underlying dispute, according to the organisation’s analysis. Domestic political pressure in both countries, Israel’s security concerns, and decades of accumulated mutual distrust all feed into this instability, the analysis found, concluding that structural rivalry between the two nations drives this crisis regardless of who is sitting in the Oval Office or which temporary diplomatic agreement gets signed.
The ceasefire’s collapse shows how far both sides have already gone
What followed the ceasefire’s breakdown illustrates exactly how entrenched this cycle has become. Iran resumed attacks on commercial shipping and US regional allies, while Washington reinstated military strikes, sanctions and its naval blockade, according to a media report on the escalation. Each side has repeatedly crossed red lines the other had drawn, making genuine de-escalation increasingly difficult with every new exchange. The conflict has also stopped being a bilateral dispute in any meaningful sense, spreading to involve Gulf states, international shipping lanes, and the global energy market directly, turning a US-Iran confrontation into a genuinely regional crisis.
Trump’s own attempt to unilaterally reshape the security of the Strait of Hormuz, declaring the United States would act as the waterway’s “guardian” and charge ships fees for safe passage, drew sharp criticism on legal grounds. Chatham House’s analysis found the policy has no real basis in international law and risks damaging American credibility with Gulf partners rather than strengthening it, according to the think tank’s assessment. The report’s conclusion echoes the broader argument running through all of this analysis, unilateral American action cannot durably secure one of the world’s most important maritime chokepoints. Only negotiation offers any realistic path toward reducing tensions.
Neither side comes out of this looking strategic
The Guardian’s own editorial board has been consistently critical of both parties involved, not just Washington. One editorial argued that continued military exchanges around the Strait of Hormuz threaten global energy supplies while raising the risk of a wider regional war, and while sharply critical of Trump’s decisions, the piece also held Iran’s leadership responsible for repeatedly choosing retaliation and maritime disruption as strategic tools of their own, according to the editorial. Its conclusion was blunt: neither side is likely to achieve lasting security through continued escalation.
That scepticism extended to the ceasefire itself when it briefly held. A separate Guardian editorial described the June memorandum of understanding as only a temporary pause rather than any real strategic success, arguing the United States had failed to achieve most of its original objectives despite the destruction the war had already caused, while regional economies and energy markets absorbed lasting damage and the underlying political disputes remained entirely unresolved, according to the editorial. A further editorial went further still, arguing that Washington had entered the conflict seeking regime change, the destruction of Iran’s missile programme, and the elimination of Tehran’s regional proxy network, only to accept a settlement that fell well short of every one of those goals, according to the Guardian. The paper described this as illustrating a recurring difficulty facing successive American administrations, trying to reshape the Middle East through military force alone, and consistently falling short.
Congress keeps voting against a war with no clear endpoint
The clearest domestic signal that this crisis has outgrown any single administration’s control came from Capitol Hill itself. The House of Representatives has again passed a War Powers Resolution requiring congressional approval for continued military operations against Iran, according to a media report on the vote. The measure remains largely symbolic, but its recurrence matters. It reflects growing bipartisan concern that this conflict lacks any clearly defined strategy or achievable endpoint, and that public support for continuing it has been steadily declining even as lawmakers increasingly question whether further escalation genuinely serves long-term American interests.
A crisis decades in the making, not a single term’s mistake
Taken together, this body of analysis, spanning the Guardian, the Council on Foreign Relations, Chatham House and the Associated Press, converges on a conclusion that resists the simpler narrative of one president’s recklessness. Repeated cycles of American military intervention across the Middle East, sustained strategic competition over Gulf energy routes, and the absence of any durable political settlement between Washington and Tehran have shaped this confrontation for decades, well before this administration inherited it.
None of this excuses specific decisions made by the current White House, including a widely criticized attempt to unilaterally control passage through the Strait of Hormuz, or a ceasefire abandoned within weeks of being signed. But the pattern underneath those decisions, limited military campaigns that inflict real damage without achieving decisive victory, followed by fragile truces that collapse under the weight of unresolved underlying disputes, has repeated itself across multiple American presidencies now. Today’s crisis reflects that long-term structural dynamic in US-Iran relations as much as it reflects the judgment of any single administration currently occupying the White House.
