Together with Carl Bernstein, Bob Woodward soared to journalistic fame for covering the Watergate scandal and writing the book about Richard Nixon, All the President’s Men. He has continued to write for The Washington Post and to publish books about presidents and their wars. Donald Trump is no exception; he is the subject of Woodward’s trilogy about that president’s first term: Fear (2018), Rage (2020), and War (2021). Most likely, Trump will be the subject of another Woodward trilogy on more wars: in Venezuela, Ukraine, and the ongoing war in the Middle East which has segued into a war against Iran.
In his works, the renowned journalist kept the US president front and centre in a form of personification of events that most historians tend to avoid. Instead, they focus on the structural characteristics of the state, the economy, the social environment, or international relations as the driving forces behind a march to war. This article will not attempt to adopt Woodward’s approach, but it will examine Trump’s responsibility for the current war against Iran.
This is not the first of Trump’s ventures into war. He launched one against Venezuela and threatened to invade Greenland if he could not buy it. He trod into the Ukraine quagmire with his failed attempt to promote a negotiated end to the conflict. His peace-making efforts followed the same trajectory in the “fifth Gaza war” after the “ceasefire” agreement signed in Sharm El-Sheikh and the 20-point plan adopted by the so-called Board of Peace, which he heads.
But now Trump is waging his first real war. It started with diplomacy amid “maximum” pressure in the form of existing and additional economic sanctions, coupled with a massive military buildup, featuring two aircraft carriers and their accompanying forces, with a third carrier on its way. The diplomatic track proved to be a form of deception. While talks in Muscat focused on Iran’s nuclear programme, the US-Israel Axis decimated the negotiating atmosphere on 28 February with intensive strikes on Iranian military and nuclear sites. On the same day, in the opening salvoes, the Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was killed along with 43 military, political, and security leaders.
Then came the conflagration, taking a different course from the so-called Twelve-Day War of June 2025. In that war, reciprocal strikes between Iran and Israel culminated in the US bombing of Iranian nuclear sites, enabling Trump to declare victory.
In effect, however, the war continued through 2025, as Trump continued to claim that his aim was to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. But he was never consistent. While halting the nuclear programme may have remained the ultimate goal, the goal post kept shifting. At times it was to retaliate for what he described as Iranian aggression against Americans, harking back decades to such incidents as the bombing of the US Embassy in Beirut. At other times, he fast forwarded to demands for democracy and human rights in Iran. For example, the recent protests that erupted in Iran prompted Trump to express support for the demonstrators’ demands and promise assistance “with due speed”. However, this “democratic” objective contradicted the goals of the MAGA movement. Not only does this movement aim to “Make America Great Again”, but it also wants to end US regime-change operations abroad.
If, by 2026, the war reflected a balance of power favouring the US-Israeli Axis, subsequent events revealed an Iranian strategy that mitigated the impact of losing its military and political leadership by prolonging the war and shifting it towards forms of attrition.
For a while it was widely believed that Trump would always be able to declare victory against Iran and move onto another front, whether against Greenland or Cuba. However, the new phase saw the initiative shift to Iran, which moved in three directions: first, launching direct and sweeping attacks on the Gulf Cooperation Council states, triggering a global economic crisis; secondly, closing the Strait of Hormuz to international navigation, except for Iran itself; and thirdly, pushing Shiite militias in Iraq and Lebanon to join the fight by destroying energy sources and ports.
In the US, Trump no longer has a declaration of a victory over Iran within his grasp. He cannot achieve a complete Iranian surrender.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 26 March, 2026 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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