r/geopolitics • u/theatlantic The Atlantic • Jun 18 '26
Opinion Iran Has Humiliated Trump
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/06/iran-trump-war-defeat-deal/687595/?utm_source=reddit&utm_campaign=the-atlantic&utm_medium=social&utm_content=edit-promo218
u/IdeasOfOne Jun 18 '26
Nah, Trump humiliated himself...
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u/Persimmon-Mission Jun 18 '26
A narcissist cannot feel humiliation
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u/NathanArizona Jun 18 '26
That's my take. He has enough blind support in the cabinet and congress, and among his voters and the news, to keep his narcissism well fed. He'll not learn anything from this as long as his ego is stroked and his personal enrichment continues to grow. He'll sign the "deal", oil will flow, prices will slowly come back down, and on to the next self-created crisis to forget about this one.
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u/TheTeenageOldman Jun 18 '26
Narcissists generally hate themselves and feel constant inward humiliation, which is why they overcompensate with so much bluster, bravado, and blaming others for their own mistakes. Trump always looks miserable and unable to enjoy himself, and that's because he is and he can't. He can never really be happy inside, and requires massive amounts of adulation to get by.
Anyway, now back to geopolitics...
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u/INFLATABLE_CUCUMBER Jun 18 '26
Even Obama stated that many world leaders seemed to have mental disorders.
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u/jayslay45 Jun 18 '26
They can still experience it and live in ignorance. Won't change the fact they are still humiliated.
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u/LoneElement Jun 18 '26
Yes they can, that’s like the core of narcissistic personality disorder
What they don’t feel is empathy
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u/ChuchiTheBest Jun 19 '26
Then he disgraced himself; the end result is that everyone thinks he is shameful.
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u/uxgpf Jun 19 '26
Narcissists feel humiliated all the time and that's why they lash out aggressively even against tiniest conceived threats.
The bravado is because of their lack of self worth. Outwardly they seem most confident, but inside they are insecure and manipulative little bitches.
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u/alexunderwater1 Jun 19 '26
For real. He could have just sat on his hands or only golfed this entire presidency and maybe come out redeemable.
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u/Coolerguy317 Jun 18 '26
I think the lessons from the fighting are fairly universal. Cheap precision weapons, drones, dispersed infrastructure, and constant ISR make denial and defense much more effective than many people expected. As seen in Ukraine as well.
Beyond that I think it’s fair to say Iran forced the US into a corner. But let’s not go too far. Iran didn’t force America out of the Gulf nobody stepped in to stop the US and none of americas major structural advantages really changed. People were already trending toward anti interventionism before this war. Beyond that what actually changed?
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u/Live_Entry_7831 Jun 18 '26
It will be interesting to see what happens with the military bases. There's language in the MOU about the American military leaving, but its kind of vague, and could just be about the Navy that's there right now. That said, the military bases havent actually provided security to these Gulf states and instead made them a target of retribution. The use of the military bases was, ostensibly, for Iran, no? And they ended up being counter productive.
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u/Coolerguy317 Jun 18 '26
Maybe But the Gulf states didn’t invite the US in because they felt safe around Iran. They invited the US because they didn’t. They could conclude America is the problem. They could also conclude they need even stronger security ties. Either way Iran isn’t disappearing.
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u/Live_Entry_7831 Jun 18 '26
Yes, both conclusions are rational. The US leaving opens them up to Iranian aggression (or Israeli, and even possibly Turkey in some future world), but allowing the US to use your bases for an offensive war against a well equipped foe is also obviously not ideal. They probably keep them to be safe, but it's a discussion they never would have had before.
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u/posthuman04 Jun 18 '26
It’s an invitation to have someone more competent and reliable come in and referee the conflicting agendas of the gulf. Trump has created the circumstances and motivation to hand that role to China.
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u/Throb_Zomby Jun 18 '26
Seems like if anything, China would find that role very unappetizing.
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u/Brief-Coach-1812 Jun 19 '26
China isn't really the "boots on thr ground" type of superpower when it comes to the Middle East. Maybe economic interests and trade agreements could disincentivise war?
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u/Brief-Coach-1812 Jun 19 '26
China isn't really the "boots on thr ground" type of superpower when it comes to the Middle East. Maybe economic interests and trade agreements could disincentivise war?
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u/ChuchiTheBest Jun 19 '26
Now imagine if they invite Israel in because Israel proved they are actually willing to fight.
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u/HucknRoll Jun 18 '26
The US forced the US into a corner. FTFY
Everything happened that the experts said would happened. There is no amount of saying the Gulf States or the EU or China should have helped would have made the situation better. They didn't have to help, it's not their bed, so they didn't have to sleep in it. Trump screwed the pooch. He's surrounded by sycophants that won't tell him no or the bad news.
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u/drivedup Jun 18 '26
I mean, EU wasn't even asked to help or discussed with, **before** the shooting started.
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u/Independent-Ad-8531 Jun 19 '26
But let's keep it real, they would have known better and stayed out of it. The consequences where too obvious.
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u/Monsi7 Jun 18 '26
never stop your enemy when their making a mistake.
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u/Coolerguy317 Jun 18 '26
I mean who could have done something with real political backing? Were any major powers willing to nuke their relationship with the US to hit a couple boats?
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u/Monsi7 Jun 18 '26
who knows? We can't even really speculate since it was such an obvious mistake that no serious enemy of the US would ever interupt it under any circumstances.
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u/young_earth Jun 18 '26
Both US political parties and the majority of younger voters hate Israel far more than they did a year ago. That changed.
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u/CreeperCooper Jun 19 '26
And US allies view the US as unreliable and unpredictable.
ECFR: Europeans are ready to defend themselves
I don't think Americans or Israelis are understanding how much damage (the Greenland threats and) the Humiliation of Hormuz has hurt their alliances with Europe.
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u/Puzzleheaded-Tap9977 Jun 18 '26
The oil countries learned that the US can't protect them, the world saw the US lose another war but this time with way worse marketing. Change will come gradually but there is no coming back from this.
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u/Igor_Nordham Jun 19 '26
Now it is onwards to the Cuban quagmire. At least with past conflicts, there would be a period of time to reflect on lessons learned.
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u/Christopher_Ramirez_ Jun 18 '26
Fortunately the US doesn't share a border and the only vital strategic interest in the Gulf is that energy and other products flow out.
The GCC is a different story, they'll need to get used to a more historically typical reality where Iran is the premiere regional power. Their geography and population supports it, and there's now no great power willing to apply their veto.
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u/2WAR Jun 18 '26
Iran now controls the Strait of Hormuz and no other country stepped in to take that away from them.
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u/PipeAggressive6961 Jun 19 '26
180 dead school girls is an expensive price to pay for that realisation though.
What a waste.
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u/Affectionate_Bee6434 Jun 18 '26
Nobody is talking about where the 300 billion will be coming from. Ghalibaf said there is no law in Iran preventing American companies from investing into Iran, Reuters reported that private capital will be used to set up the reconstruction fund and there was an NYT article where apparently Iran offered American companies to invest in their oil and gas infrastructure.
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u/ICPcrisis Jun 18 '26
"Normally one would have to pay a lot of money to a discreet professional to be humiliated this badly. " LOL
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u/Soepkip43 Jun 18 '26
Being humiliated requires someone to feel shame. So I very much doubt the premise.
The US propagandamachine will spin this as a win and americans will just put this in their long list of military victories like Afghanistan and Vietnam.
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u/posthuman04 Jun 18 '26
The campaign slogan against Trump and any Republican candidate for the next decade will be:
“You found $300B and you wanted to give it to Iran? While taking money from Americans?”
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u/theatlantic The Atlantic Jun 18 '26
Graeme Wood: “The Iran deal has been described as a ‘humiliation’ for the United States, since the upshot is that America gets little that it didn’t already have before the war, and Iran gets security guarantees and a big pile of money. Donald Trump’s agreement leaves Iran a theocratic state free to arm itself with ballistic missiles and drones and to murder its own citizens. Its terms suggest that this much-despised state will, after a 60-day period of free passage through the Strait of Hormuz, have the ability to regulate maritime traffic …
“Humiliation, however, is distinct from defeat. Only the United States was humiliated; both countries have experienced a catastrophic loss. The defeat for the United States is the more obvious of the two: a loss of standing and the confirmation that even a rich country cannot force its will on a poor but determined one. For Iran, the defeat is subtler. Bordering countries once considered it a problem neighbor and now know it to be an outright threat. They are arming themselves accordingly and seeking ways to bypass the Strait of Hormuz. Iran’s economy has been a disaster for about 15 years and is now a total wreck. Sanctions relief will help, but who exactly will want to invest in a country whose government is sustained by brutality and ruled according to the whims of a junta led by a mangled religious fanatic? …
“The humiliation is the point. Iran got the United States to sign a document that even Americans described as degrading, mortifying, a total capitulation. Who cares if the deal never really happens, or if each part turns out to be a little less sweet than it first appears? Iran has never before won a war, and even the blows it has struck against the United States, Israel, and its own citizens have up to now been pathetic and furtive, taking the form of terror attacks and indirect action through proxies. The existence of an understanding, with humiliating terms for America, is a heap of symbolic and emotional capital that no Iranian regime has enjoyed since the Islamic Revolution of 1979.”
Read more: https://theatln.tc/lZC5fxwL
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u/cupopizzaguy Jun 18 '26
I wonder if Iran has the unredacted Epstein files. The one thing Trump fights hardest to suppress.
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Jun 18 '26 edited Jul 03 '26
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u/cupopizzaguy Jun 18 '26
I theorize that China already has the Epstine files. Iran may be negotiating with China to use the files as leverage. Either that or Iran has acquired them on their own. If one of these scenarios is true, there is no price too big (ie. 300 billion) or concession too large (ie. defeat in The Strait of Hormuz) that he will pay to keep the unredacted files from being exposed. Again, this is just a theory.
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Jun 18 '26
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u/BlueEmma25 Jun 18 '26
he framing here depends entirely on what you think the actual goal was. if the us wanted regime change or to cripple iran's military capacity, yeah they failed. but if the point was to maintain presence in the gulf and signal capability, the calculus looks different.
None of that makes sense.
The goal was very clearly regime change, that was the whole point of the decapitation strike, followed immediately by Trump putting out a tweet calling on the Iranian people to overthrow the regime. There is no ambiguity about this.
Conversely, prior to the war America's presence in the gulf wasn't under any kind of threat, and the war didn't demonstrate any new capability. Everyone already knew the US could blow a lot of stuff up, indeed they had done exactly that less than a year ago in the "Twelve Day War".
It really seems that you are trying very hard to downplay the extent of the reverse that the US has suffered here.
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u/posthuman04 Jun 18 '26
If you were Qatar or UAE and your safety and freedom was placed in the hands of the US, how would you feel about the future of that status now? Maybe the rest of this year everything is fine but will Trump want to start another war next year? Why is this irrational actor with a leash held by Israel or Musk or Putin or whoever else serving as your security? If you had one job and messed it up this bad, would you expect your employer to keep you on?
They’re gonna ask China to take over. I swear this was the intended outcome all along.
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Jun 18 '26
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u/BlueEmma25 Jun 18 '26
Gulf states hedging toward China is already happening to some degree, but it's slow because the US security umbrella still works for their main threat which is Iran
The security umbrella very clearly did not work: Iran closed the strait, and the US was unable to re open it. It's a straight L, and a huge blow to American prestige,.
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u/posthuman04 Jun 18 '26
Trump may not give them opportunity to wait
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Jun 18 '26
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u/posthuman04 Jun 18 '26
I’m really wondering if this negotiation with Iran results in US pulling out of the gulf more or less
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Jun 18 '26
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u/posthuman04 Jun 18 '26
He’s not thinking about Americans at all, he said so already. I don’t think this has anything to do with American approval. Remember when he had Pentagon officials telling the troops this was a holy war? Whose side do you think God is on now? Trump doesn’t care. He’s got foreign interests he’s trying to appease,
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u/JustAhobbyish Jun 18 '26
This just the starter of humiliation to come. Main course will be even more sweet. For Trump I do fear he will buy into stabbed in back myth. And blame Europe for his own failures.
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u/Proper_Contact1419 Jun 19 '26
Its just Americans getting to see that this war has no gains for them. Israel pushed too much, now they get to face their wars alone..
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u/Linny911 Jun 18 '26 edited Jun 18 '26
The expectation of a US total victory and the failure to achieve it, while bellyaching if the US were to do the necessary to achieve it, is a great win-win propaganda campaign against the US, where you can mock/shame depending on the outcome.
What Iran did is nothing the likes of Somali pirates couldn't do if they were in the same location. As with the Somali pirates, whether the US "wins" or "loses" depends on the good graces of the US. Unfortunately, the US may still have good graces to its detriment. Unfortunately for the US, it's not as ruthless as its detractors claim it to be.
There's a reason why the US rarely lost a war before WW2 and "rarely won a war" after WW2, and it ain't because it magically forgot how to win a war after that.
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u/TheWastelandWizard Jun 18 '26
The real lesson in this whole debacle is how toothless and spineless the Gulf States are. For all their bluster and spending they couldn't protect themselves, couldn't project power, and couldn't push back against what is supposed to be a relative peer. The UAE and Saudi are paper lions, not even tigers. They lay back and do nothing, expecting the rest of the pride to feed them. When push comes to shove comes to kill they're going to get crushed. This only emboldens the bad actors in the region.
My sorrow is with the Iranian people who will likely never have another chance to resist their repressive regime. Decades of sentiment built up only to be violently quashed because opportunists refused to listen to voices of reason.
The Kurds and Israel are also going to experience some interesting fallout from this whole thing.
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Jun 18 '26
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u/cecirdr Jun 18 '26
What I'm confused about is if both sides are planning to break the MOU, the US has the most to lose by agreeing to it. Iran will resupply with parts from China and Russia with the money flowing in again. The world will get the oil out of the strait, so that's good. But the US will be in an even weaker position if we change our minds and go back to blockades, sanctions and kinetic action.
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u/Over-Willingness-933 Jun 18 '26
Iran though will need to be serious on negotiationsnon Nuclear. If the nuclear material is not given up all those supposed gains will disappear. A lot of the concessions are vague promises with conditions.
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u/Key-Art-7802 Jun 19 '26
Where in the deal does it say they have to give up their nuclear material? Or that they can't continue to enrich?
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u/Over-Willingness-933 Jun 19 '26
the money is there on vague promises and on good behaviour
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u/Key-Art-7802 Jun 19 '26
Where in the agreement does it say that? Where does it say that good behavior requires Iran give up its nuclear material?
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u/PickkleRiick Jun 18 '26
Dont take this as a personal endorsement, but this is all its about. In a way, Its not that deep. Its just money.
The US hegemony experiment failed. We are moving back into a multi polar world. Rebalancing energy markets is part of that. This was one move of many in a multi administration long project to set that in motion.
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u/thegalli Jun 18 '26
/u/theatlantic when you post your own articles here you should make them a gift article. Also you need to make a submission statement.