First, the good news: A ceasefire has been agreed upon in a war threatening a level of devastation unimaginable when President Donald Trump ordered five weeks of bombing and missile strikes in an effort to collapse the Islamic regime in Iran.
But while critical questions remain ahead of talks set for Saturday on a longer-term deal – not least, whether the truce fully takes hold – the war has left Mr. Trump facing a sobering paradox.
Militarily, he has demonstrated the effect of U.S. power. In tandem with war partner Israel, the United States has taken out much of Iran’s military infrastructure, as well as its political and military leadership.
Why We Wrote This
In the wake of a shaky, 11th-hour ceasefire deal, the United States appears in a weaker position globally than when the war with Iran began.
But geopolitically, the U.S. appears in a weaker position than when the war began.
That’s partly because the regime in Tehran, though battered by the U.S.-Israeli attacks, is still standing. It is still capable of firing missiles and drones. And it has proved ready to wield a potent form of leverage it had kept in reserve until the war: control over the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20% of the world’s oil, gas, and fertilizer supplies pass.
But the war has also dealt a blow to an advantage the U.S. has long held over major rival powers: Its strong web of allies around the world.
The allies’ trust in the U.S. as a reliable, fundamentally benevolent partner in that relationship was eroding before the war, as a result of Mr. Trump’s steep trade tariffs last year.
The closest of U.S. partnerships – the transatlantic NATO alliance – had come under further strain over Mr. Trump’s threat to take control of Greenland from NATO-ally Denmark.
But the Iran war has caused a new level of alarm among allies in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia.
First, because of the way it began: a unilateral decision by Mr. Trump, without informing – much less consulting – any allies except Israel. They had hoped America’s military buildup around Iran would not lead to war, which they feared would risk becoming a broader regional conflict with worldwide repercussions.
Yet, above all, it’s because of how Mr. Trump has conducted the war – the unpredictable, often intemperate social media posts through which he’s been charting its course.
New concern arose in the days before the ceasefire announcement over an expletive-filled post on Easter Sunday threatening to attack Iran’s energy plants and bridges, and then his warning to Iran on Tuesday that “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.”
NATO has come under particular strain. European allies have ruled out participating in the war, even though Mr. Trump has responded with angry rebukes and a suggestion that, once the war is over, he might pull the U.S. out of the alliance.
Though U.S. forces have been relying on European NATO bases for logistical and transport purposes, major allies, including Britain, have refused their use for offensive operations.
A measure of the depth of allied concern is that Italy – led by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, Mr. Trump’s closest ally in Western Europe – refused a landing request for U.S. military aircraft.
Italy’s defense minister, Guido Crosetto, this week summed up allies’ shock at Mr. Trump’s increasingly incendiary online rhetoric.
Lamenting the fact that, in this U.S. “presidency, no one dares contradict the boss,” he said the Iran war was putting at risk America’s “global leadership.”
Amiri Diwan/Reuters
The war and its ripple effects have also placed major strains on other U.S. alliances.
Asian allies, deeply dependent on energy imports from the Persian Gulf and suffering the economic effects of Iran’s near-closure of the Strait of Hormuz, have been left hoping, from one Trump social media post to the next, that the war might somehow begin to wind down.
Allied Arab states in the Gulf region have suffered not just the economic effects of a war they had wanted to avoid. Their cities and infrastructure have been under Iranian missile and drone attack.
Even if the Pakistan-mediated meeting on Saturday does lead to a peace deal, they’ll remain wary of a threat brought home by the war: Iran’s power to damage their oil and gas facilities and to choke off the Strait of Hormuz.
None of America’s allies will want a break with Washington. Their economic ties and, crucially, U.S. defense and security support, have become essential over many years.
But there are signs that a “derisking,” and a gradual loosening of that dependency, might be in the cards.
In Europe, NATO partners rejected Mr. Trump’s suggestion that they force the strait’s reopening during the war. But with Britain in the lead, they’ve been coordinating diplomatic and military options to facilitate passage through the narrow waterway once the war is over.
In the Middle East, a core of U.S. allies – including Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey, and Pakistan – has been cooperating on efforts to end the war in a way that might allow a stable new regional arrangement and prevent a further round of fighting.
The allies hope Washington will still provide an overall security umbrella. On issues in which their interests intersect, they assume both sides will want to safeguard the partnership.
But in denouncing NATO countries for not backing the war, Mr. Trump said the U.S. “will not forget.”
After a war none of them wanted, but whose effects all have felt, the allies might not forget, either.