David M. Shribman
NATIONAL PERSPECTIVE
Donald Trump, president of the United States, meet Pyrrhus, king of Epirus.
The leader of the great military force and industrial powerhouse of 2026, who went to war with mighty bombers, missiles, and drones, might gain some pointed perspective from the third century B.C. Hellenic warrior whose military entourage included 20 elephants. He is known in history — if Plutarch, the Greek writer who was an inspiration to the leaders of the American Revolution, is to be believed — for saying, “If we are victorious in one more battle with the Romans, we shall be utterly ruined.”
The circumstances of Trump’s Iran war and Pyrrhus’ battles in Sicily and southern Italy bear scant similarity. But the American president may be conjuring not the history of the original Pyrrhic victory, but the implications of the sentiment expressed by Pyrrhus, if not precisely in foreign policy, then surely in domestic politics.
The first burst of negotiations over the Iran war ended in frustration. The 1975 Thrilla in Manila at least had a decisive victor (Muhammad Ali over Joe Frazier). The 2026 Impasse in Islamabad had no such conclusive verdict (JD Vance finished in a draw with Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf).
But those negotiations raised an important question: Who won the Iran war? Or put another way, who has the stronger hand in the bargaining that is following the Islamabad sessions?
Is it the Americans, who bombarded the country into rubble and submission, not nearly ending Persian civilization but still striking a decisive blow against it? “We’ve defeated them militarily,” Trump said.
Or is it the Iranians, who have realized the power of their geographical position along the northern coastline of the Strait of Hormuz, and who not only survived the onslaught but also survived to fight another day?
The United States partially depleted its stores of military equipment, yet still retains scores of military options, though there is almost no eagerness outside of Israel, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s Pentagon suite and some MAGA pockets to employ them. For its part, Iran — famous for ancient ruins from the tomb of Cyrus the Great to the archaeological sites of the once-great city of Persepolis, but now possessed of modern ruins — still has a large supply of ballistic missiles and launchers, a supple base for the manufacture of drones, and a devoted elite core of the militant Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps that has been trumpeting tones of victory.
Plus, this: Even with a specific negotiated pause in its drive to produce nuclear weapons, Iran’s technological team assigned with the task of producing them, the knowledge of how to manufacture them and perhaps even the raw materials to create them, may remain much as it was before the war began.
“There’s no victory unless the other side is willing to give up,” said Margaret MacMillan, the University of Toronto historian considered the leading authority on war and post-war negotiations. “The Americans never lost a battle in Vietnam, but North Vietnam won the war; it was the Americans who pulled out. Vladimir Putin won many battles at the beginning of the Ukraine war but hasn’t won the war.”
Despite the absence of credible public-opinion surveys, Iranians actually might be more willing to return to battle.
Both countries possess strains of willingness and reluctance to recommence the battling.
Some elements of the Trump team, likely including Hegseth, may be eager to fight. The Revolutionary Guard has shown no reluctance to abandon the battle. At the same time, most Democrats, many mainstream Republicans and part of the isolationist wing of the MAGA movement oppose new military engagement, while an immeasurable slice of the battered Iranian population, especially the opponents of the Tehran theocracy who only months ago thronged the streets in protest, are surely weary of the toll of battle.
The moral high ground that Trump occupied in his determination to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons now has been leveled. His vow to destroy Iranian civilization won the contempt of global leaders from Pope Leo XIV to backbenchers in the House of Representatives. Several MAGA luminaries have fled the movement’s umbrella. Democrats on Capitol Hill have revived talk of impeaching Trump for a third time. The Republican hold on both chambers of Congress has been weakened, if not broken.
“His comments on things, especially about the pope, have hurt him and the United States,” said Roberto D’Alimonte, a political scientist at the University of Florence. “The war has alienated many of America’s friends.”
There is little question that the war has weakened Trump at home as well.
Inflation has hit a two-year peak. Gasoline prices may have inched down temporarily, but they are months from returning to the pre-war position that allowed the president as recently as this winter to tell rallies that they were at astonishing lows. Indeed, overall energy prices in the U.S. are 12.5% higher year over year, with fuel oil marking a stunning 44.2% rise.
Concerned about his poll ratings, troubled about Republican prospects in this fall’s midterm congressional elections, frustrated that he did not win the swift victory he predicted in his “little excursion” in the Middle East, and furious at Iran’s intransigence at Islamabad, Trump lashed out with an announcement of a naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. Blockades generally are considered acts of war.
On the surface, the United States has unstoppable force. But it has learned that Iran is an immovable object.
Consider this remark issued by Iran’s foreign ministry after the Pakistani summit: “The heavy loss of our great elders, dear ones and fellow countrymen has made our response to pursue the Iranian nation’s interests and rights firmer than ever before.”
That does not meet Professor MacMillan’s standard.
But it is a reminder of the wisdom of Georges Clemenceau, the French prime minister who was a force at the Versailles peace negotiations at the end of World War I.
“It is far easier to make war than make peace,” he said in his July 1919 Speech on Peace in Verdun, which three years earlier was the site of the longest battle of the war and where there were 800,000 casualties. Four months after that speech, he told the French Senate, in words that have eerie application today, “I do not know whether war is an interlude in peace, or whether peace is an interlude in war.”
A Swampscott High School Class of 1972 member, David M. Shribman is the Pulitzer Prize-winning former executive editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
