From Iran to the U.K., Trump Is Being Forced Into Retreat
New York Times · LC · trust 41/100
A war that was intended to demonstrate the reach of American power has now done the opposite. It is a lesson in unintended consequences.
Listen · 11:00 min Share full article 19 The R.A.F. Fairford air base, from which a dozen American B-1 bombers were withdrawn last weekend, has been a mainstay of U.S.-British military cooperation since it opened in 1944. Credit... @Craigyoungmedia, via Reuters By David E. Sanger and Eric Schmitt
David E. Sanger and Eric Schmitt have reported on American conflicts and geopolitical strategy for the Times for more than forty years. Mr. Sanger is a White House correspondent and Mr. Schmitt covers the Pentagon.
It was no big deal, Mr. Trump insisted, and his secretary of state, Marco Rubio, tried to wave it away by noting that the Pentagon is “constantly reallocating resources where they need to be.”
But to anyone watching the deployment of American power around the globe in the seven months since Mr. Trump decided to attack Iran, it was another glaring example of how, time after time, Mr. Trump and his defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, have been forced into retreat, pulling back military forces that had been deployed to the Middle East and Britain as a deterrent.
Over the past several months, as the conflict has dragged on, the Iran war has come to reveal enormous new American vulnerabilities, forcing changes that the Pentagon was not contemplating a year ago. But it has also proved a bitter lesson in the unintended consequences that have flowed from Mr. Trump’s war of choice.
Mr. Trump intended the attack on Iran as another demonstration of the American military’s extraordinary power, following the successful bombing raid on three Iranian nuclear sites in June 2025 and the seizure of President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela from his bed in Caracas in January.
But rather than enhance American power, the war has constrained it. The closing of bases in the Middle East and limiting the use of one in Britain have, at a minimum, vastly complicated the logistics of projecting power. American bombers can still reach their targets, of course, but only by flying from the United States, requiring more time and refueling. American carrier groups can still patrol in the Arabian Sea, outside the Persian Gulf, but now they must be resupplied from Diego Garcia , an island in the Indian Ocean 2,200 miles away, requiring additional weeks and huge costs.
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