Trump’s Endless War Games

Donald Trump’s so-called “military operation” against Iran is rapidly beginning to mirror Vladimir Putin’s Ukraine misadventure—overconfident, poorly planned, and sliding toward a drawn-out quagmire.

The MAGA ideology is built on denigrating expertise, but everything that the experts predicted in this case—that the Iranian regime would harden instead of folding, that it would respond asymmetrically, that it would close the Strait—has already come to pass. Photo: Roberto Schmidt/Getty Images

Julia Ioffe

March 26, 2026

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This weekend will mark one month since Donald Trump took America to war against Iran without congressional approval or a plan. But do you really need congressional approval if you don’t call it a war? “I won’t use the word ‘war,’ ’cause they say if you use the word ‘war,’ that’s maybe not a good thing to do,” Trump said last night at the N.R.C.C.’s annual fundraising dinner at Union Station. “They don’t like the word ‘war,’ because you’re supposed to get approval. So I’ll use the word ‘military operation,’ because that’s what it is.”