Conrad Black - The Trump Doctrine Deconstructed Part 3: The Cost of War October 30, 2026
A few days ago, former President Barack Obama, stumping for Amy Acton and Sherrod Brown in Cleveland, Ohio, provided a perfect illustration of the spread of misinformation about the Iran conflict.
Despite an unsuccessful presidency, Obama remains a well-liked public figure and is considered trustworthy by a majority of Americans, especially Democratic voters. In his speech, he dismissed the Iran conflict as unnecessary and criticized its cost, before stretching credulity past its limits with the assertion that recent U.S.-Israeli actions had strengthened Iran’s geopolitical position.
The speech borrowed its structure, if not its style, from the standard Trump rally template: a series of statements based on how politically beneficial they would be if true, rather than any excessive preoccupation with their veracity, generously interspersed with self-congratulatory revisionist history.
Where Trump is the used-car salesman trying to sell you a beloved classic American muscle car, glossing over some of the issues under the hood, Obama is peddling a hybrid station wagon with the horsepower of a golf cart, insisting that if you don’t like it, you’re a dunce or a rube standing in the way of progress.
The distinction is that Trump is trying to upsell Americans on the gimcrack mythos of the great U.S. of A., while Obama is hawking the “Great Liberal Deathwish” on an instalment plan.
“Iran didn’t have nuclear weapons because I had put a deal in place that everybody acknowledges kept them from getting nukes. And I didn’t have to fire a missile to do it. I just had to engage in diplomacy.”
— President Barack Obama, 24 October 2026
Obama’s Diplomacy
In reality, Obama released between $100 billion in previously frozen Iranian assets, roughly half of which were liquid and convertible to cash, and through sanctions relief, enabled the regime to expand oil production and exports to add an additional $20 billion in annual revenue. In exchange, Iran was not required to dismantle its uranium enrichment infrastructure or play nice.
They merely had to agree to a temporary pause on their nuclear ambitions. Under the JCPOA’s sunset clauses, after the waiting periods had elapsed, Iran would have been free to pick up where it left off, and start amassing weapons-grade uranium while remaining technically compliant with its non-proliferation treaty obligations. In effect, Obama paid the terrorists’ ransom upfront and reserved the right to be held hostage later.
To no one’s surprise, except perhaps President Obama’s, Iran’s conduct throughout the negotiating process and after the deal was finalized made clear that it was not a good-faith actor. During negotiations, Foreign Minister Javad Zarif established a working group of prominent Iranian lawyers and legal scholars to help draft the agreement. Among them were experts in exploiting ambiguity in international regulations. They fought to insert ambiguous language throughout the agreement, only later to cite that same ambiguity as an impediment to compliance.
While the JCPOA was in effect, Iran routinely pushed the envelope with the IAEA. Whenever it was caught breaching conditions or exceeding clearly defined stockpile limits, it feigned innocence and insisted it was an honest mistake. In truth, Iran was like a baseball player leading off in preparation to steal a base, constantly testing the limits.
One might have expected that Obama’s largesse would have earned some goodwill with the regime. But four days after the deal was finalized, Ayatollah Khamenei addressed the country on national television, praising large crowds that had assembled to chant “Death to America” the week prior.
“At Al-Quds Day rallies last week, you heard ‘Death to Israel,’ ‘Death to America.’ You could hear it. The whole nation was shaken by these slogans. It wasn’t only confined to Tehran. The whole of the nation, you could hear, that was covered by this great movement. So we ask Almighty God to accept these prayers by the people of Iran.”
— Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, 18 July 2015
And the Supreme Leader’s belligerence was not just talk. Throughout the JCPOA’s term, Iran continued testing ballistic missiles, advancing centrifuge technology, expanding its military footprint in the region, and financing and arming proxies like Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Iraqi Shia militias, Hezbollah and the Houthis. The regime captured American sailors, harassed U.S. warships, threatened American forces throughout the region, conducted cyberattacks and espionage, and pursued a coordinated strategy to undermine American and allied interests.
To make matters worse, these efforts were funded in part by cash and assets made available through Obama’s sanctions relief. While the Iranians pocketed the cash and patiently waited for their permission slip to continue their nuclear ambitions, they only escalated their confrontational stance toward the United States. President Obama’s diplomatic efforts, for which he heaped praise upon himself in Cleveland, were a farce.
The Cost
Later in the stump speech, Obama went on to opine about the present conflict:
“Our allies and our bases have been attacked. Americans have been killed. Hundreds of Americans have been wounded. We have run down our stock of missiles, and Iran now has veto power over the Strait of Hormuz, where oil goes through to get to the world market. So they’re in a stronger strategic position now than before the war started.”
Since February 28, 23 American lives have been lost, and each of those deaths is a tragedy. However, only 11 were killed by Iran. The majority were due to medical conditions, a tragic mid-air collision and one suicide, all unrelated to Iranian strikes. By contrast, the Iraq quagmire that critics of this conflict are comparing it to saw an average of that many Americans killed every week for almost nine years. The comparisons to Vietnam are even more preposterous, as that conflict saw an average of 11 dead Americans per day for 14 years, with entire years where 200–500 flag-draped caskets were shipped home every week.
In this conflict, approximately 93% of all Iranian offensive strikes have been intercepted by U.S. and allied missile-defence systems. Since the start of the war, Iran’s missile and drone launch capacity has been reduced by over 95%. Its conventional navy has been sunk, its air force grounded, and its ground troops have been deployed to Iranian cities to terrorize and oppress its own citizens rather than engage U.S. or allied forces. With no American boots on the ground and the most vulnerable regional bases evacuated and operations relocated to safety, further U.S. casualties will be limited.
The other cost consideration is financial. This conflict has cost an estimated $47.1 billion so far, with ongoing operations projected at around $2.5 billion per month. While that may sound like a lot of money, so far, those costs have been absorbed through existing defence resources and appropriations. To date, Congress has not yet needed to increase military spending by one cent.
The administration has proposed a massive, one-time $1.5 trillion defence budget for 2027 (the increase substantially earmarked for preparing for the future of warfare through major investments in AI, robotics, and space-based missile defence, rather than Iran specifically), but even if Congress rejects the increase and holds defence spending roughly flat at 2026 levels, the U.S. will have adequate funding to adequately replenish its missile stocks, sustain the blockade and continue necessary precision strikes against Iranian targets for a prolonged period. By comparison, monthly U.S. spending during the War in Iraq averaged $10 billion and peaked at $25 billion (inflation adjusted). Once gas prices normalize, the financial impact of continuing this engagement will be effectively imperceptible to the American public.
The Hormuz “Veto”
- To keep driving up gas prices, Iran must shut down the trade route upon which 90% of its exports and a major part of its entire economy depend.
- Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Oman are all currently expanding their ports and establishing new pipeline corridors, and by 2028 will have the infrastructure to bypass 60% of Hormuz oil flow.
- In recent weeks, total Middle Eastern oil exports have reached peaks above pre-war levels, even as Iran’s share has been reduced practically to zero, as producers find ways to bypass the Strait.
- Since the conflict began in February 2026, the United States and other friendly oil producers unaffected by the Middle East conflict—which, thanks to Trump’s recent actions in another theatre, now include Venezuela—have increased production by 1.5 million barrels per day, with the ability to more than double that increase over the next twelve months.
- While Democrats look likely to win the House and will almost certainly plunge the nation into another impeachment sideshow, no reasonable scenario will result in a Senate conviction. In the meantime, the president can invoke his constitutional authority to largely disregard a hostile, partisan Congress and get the job done.
In other words, as time goes by, Iran loses more and more of its leverage.
The war of attrition
With Iran facing a deep recession and inflation nearing 70%, things only get worse. As conditions deteriorate, more force will be required to pacify a populace that already despises the regime, creating a vicious cycle. The regime must increasingly cut civilian expenditures and divert funds to meet the IRGC and Basij payroll, but offloading more of the economic pain onto ordinary Iranians foments even greater unrest, necessitating more force to stay in power, and so on. Quickly, the situation becomes a pressure cooker. The U.S. midterms are days away, and the mullahs have put all their eggs in a basket with a false bottom and will soon discover the hems of their dresses stained with yolk.
The energy shock has been an effective campaign tool and will surely do some real damage to the Republicans at the polls. But consider the context. The average gas price during Joe Biden’s four years in office was $3.471 per gallon, compared with $3.472 for Trump 2.0.
Even at the May 2026 peak, prices at the pump remained $1.10 per gallon lower in real terms than the peak under the previous administration in 2022. Far from unprecedented, real average gas prices were higher than the 2026 year-to-date average in 22 (or more than 1 in 5) of the last 100 years. The point is not to diminish the strain on Americans struggling to make ends meet, but those painting a picture of a major crisis are catastrophizing for political reasons.
The endgame
The United States is not mired in another intractable Middle East quagmire, the Iranian regime cannot win a war of attrition, and the midterm results will not change that equation. My prediction is that regardless of the results on November 3, the mission will continue. In any scenario, the president has nothing to lose and will be more motivated than ever to secure what he now regards as a key part of his legacy. This conflict will be recognized by history as a crucial turning point in establishing relative stability in the Middle East.
The regime does not have time on its side. More than 70% of Iranians reject the Islamic Republic, and the regime earns greater contempt as it clings to power with a progressively tighter and more oppressive grip. Once its machinery of repression falters, the revolutionary spirit of the great Persian people will have the opportunity to slip the yoke of Islamofascism once and for all.
The post-midterm Trump will be unencumbered by public opinion and will be largely free to prosecute this conflict in the most effective way to achieve that objective. There are already signs the U.S. is preparing to resume major military operations after the midterms, and it seems more likely than ever that Trump will finish the job he started.
Our last question
It is hazardous to attempt to predict what the future holds, and there is certainly plenty of precedent for America’s foreign interventions going sideways. But the scorecard so far is decidedly positive. The U.S. and its allies, through strikes on Iranian launch sites, stockpiles and munitions factories combined with their missile defence systems, have been able to reduce the lethality of Iranian strikes by 99%.
By all accounts, Iran’s capacity to wage conventional war has been reduced to virtually nothing. It is unable to hold the region hostage. As far as the regime’s nuclear ambitions are concerned, its enrichment facilities were heavily damaged by U.S.-Israeli strikes, and there is no sign that it has tried, or has the capacity, to rebuild its enrichment capacity any time soon.
It is left with only two options. First, the unconventional and self-defeating tactic of cutting traffic through the Strait of Hormuz. It has had very mixed success at achieving that objective, and perversely, the Strait is a trade route that Iran is vastly more dependent on than those it seeks to harm by closing it. Second is to wage war by proxy. In pursuit of this strategy, Iran is effectively sending its remaining allies on suicide missions to preserve its regional leverage. Meanwhile, Hamas and Hezbollah have been severely hobbled by Israel.
The Houthis have managed to mount an effective campaign in recent months, but face an imminent Saudi-backed counter-offensive supported by the U.S., Turkey and Pakistan. Iraqi militias remain a threat, but Baghdad is aligned with the U.S. in its attempts to pacify them, a process which should become easier as Iran’s ability to finance and supply them becomes progressively strained. Over the coming year, we can expect the steady erosion of these proxies’ military capacity and usefulness to Tehran.
In summary, so far, so good.
A chance for peace
While generally averse to putting too much stock in wishful thinking as it relates to geopolitics, particularly in the Middle East, I invite readers to consider what it could look like if Trump succeeds. There is a real path emerging for the people of Iran to deliver the regime a coup de grâce and to install a moderate government of their own choosing. This sequence of events would usher in an era of unprecedented Iranian prosperity and cooperation. Iran could gradually become a valued ally in suppressing violent extremism across the region, rather than serving as its chief architect.
The first domino in a chain that could see Iran rescued from the Dark Ages, the Houthis smashed, Hamas rooted out, Hezbollah sidelined, Iraq pacified, and the Abraham Accords expanded to include Saudi Arabia, Egypt and other major Muslim-majority nations is teetering.
If, over the next two years, Trump manages to coax even a few of those dominoes to fall, he will have left behind an astounding foreign-policy legacy, one far greater than that of Barack Obama, who oversaw the prequel to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, North Korean brazenly conducted four nuclear weapons tests, Libya’s descent into chaos, large swathes of Iraq and Syria falling under ISIS control, and a refugee crisis that has in subsequent years nearly overwhelmed dozens of Europe’s great historic cities.
There’s no guarantee Donald Trump will pull it off. But he might—and whether you like him or not, there’s no good reason not to hope he does
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