President Donald Trump’s war on Iran should serve as a wake-up call: The United States of America is strategically lost in the emerging multipolar, neo-mercantilist world and urgently needs to address the widening gap between its expansive legacy strategic commitments and its potentially diminishing relative power. Strategic streamlining and rebalancing to align vital U.S. national interests to available American power (based on a realistic assessment of actual and potential national resources that can be effectively mobilized) is an existential necessity and not a choice.
Trump’s quixotic war on Iran to slay the multiheaded Persian hydra reflects the (1) continued passionate attachment to the 1980 Carter Doctrine (which proclaimed U.S. hegemony over the Persian Gulf region) long after America ceased to be dependent on Persian Gulf oil and gas resources for its energy security, and (2) disregard for the evolving and growing asymmetric capabilities of the Iranian regime to effectively neutralize and counter American power.
The peril of Trump’s somnambulist excursion is that America faces the prospect of strategic defeat in pursuit of an objective that arguably is no longer a vital national interest.
Rather than decapitating and demoralizing the Iranian regime to trigger its collapse, the shock and awe of American military power instead has galvanized the collective willpower of a reawakened and besieged Iranian people to endure what is now perceived to be an existential struggle of national survival. Also, the geostrategic value of Iran to U.S. adversaries such as Russia and China appears to have been ignored, and their potential for providing military and economic support to the beleaguered regime seems to have been discounted.
The strategic disorientation is a result of the conflation of what America wants with what America needs with respect to determining vital national interests, and the concomitant failure to prioritize such vital national interests when American power is called upon to safeguard them.
Trump’s 2025 National Security Strategy lists five “wants” that it asserts “are the United States’ core, vital national interests.” The document also acknowledges: “To focus and prioritize is to choose—to acknowledge that not everything matters equally to everyone.” Trump’s war on Iran fails to meet the parameters of his own strategy.
For example, with respect to the Middle East, the strategy states: “We want to prevent an adversarial power from dominating the Middle East, its oil and gas supplies, and the chokepoints through which they pass while avoiding the ‘forever wars’ that bogged us down in that region at great cost.”
Yet, want is not the same thing as need. Want reflects choice and wishes, while need is synonymous with necessity, not choice or wishes. The closest the National Security Strategy document comes to articulating a need is its clear declaration: “First and foremost, we want the continued survival and safety of the United States as an independent, sovereign republic whose government secures the God-given natural rights of its citizens and prioritizes their well-being and interests.” Any assertion of vital national interest must meet this overarching criterion.
According to the Trump administration, the kinetic war on Iran launched on Feb. 28 was a continuation of the 1979 war on the United States initiated by the new revolutionary regime of Iran with the violent seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. Certainly, America has been waging economic war on Iran since 1979.
If the consensus view of Washington’s decision-makers is that the U.S. and Iran have been continuously waging war against each other in various forms for 47 years, then a de facto “forever war” might be an apt description of the current conflict. Presumably, a forever war is to be avoided, as such a war ultimately would not serve U.S. vital national interests. It is imperative, therefore, that Trump clearly explain to the nation how this war safeguards “the continued survival and safety of the United States as an independent, sovereign republic.”
Such an explanation also must elucidate why U.S. control over Persian Gulf oil and gas resources and the chokepoints through which the energy trade flows (particularly the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf and Bab el-Mandeb in the Gulf of Aden) are vital for American national security.
The answers are not self-evident or obvious. The admonition contained in the 2026 National Defense Strategy should serve as a useful guide: “Out with utopian idealism; in with hardnosed realism.”
After all, in 2025, the Persian Gulf accounted for about only 490,000 barrels per day of U.S. oil imports (8% of U.S. oil imports of 6.2 million barrels per day), or about 2.3% of total U.S. oil consumption of about 20.9 million barrels per day. In fact, the U.S. has consistently been the world’s largest producer of oil since 2018.
As Trump’s 2025 National Security Strategy acknowledges, “As this administration rescinds or eases restrictive energy policies and American energy production ramps up, America’s historic reason for focusing on the Middle East will recede.” Moreover, the 2026 National Defense Strategy suggests that relinquishing legacy U.S. commitments to the region may be appropriate: “Likewise, in the Gulf, U.S. partners are increasingly willing and able to do more to defend themselves against Iran and its proxies, including by acquiring and fielding a variety of U.S. military systems.”
Of course, looming over the strategic question of whether the U.S. war on Iran safeguards America’s vital national interests is the practical question as to whether the U.S. has sufficient resources to fund such Middle East commitments on a sustainable basis. As of fiscal year-end 2025, the total federal debt of $37.6 trillion represented 124% of the GDP of $30.4 trillion. Simply put, the total federal debt is significantly greater than the size of the U.S. economy.
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There is no discernible fiscal silver lining on the horizon. According to projections prepared by the Congressional Budget Office in February (just prior to the launching of the war on Iran), total federal debt held by the public will mushroom to 175% of GDP in 2056. Manifestly, funding strategic commitments on a sustainable basis will continue to be an enormous challenge for the foreseeable future.
Failure to align vital national interests with available national resources will lead inexorably to strategic bankruptcy as well as fiscal bankruptcy. So, mind the gap.
Samir Tata is the founder and president of International Political Risk Analytics, an advisory firm based in Reston, Virginia, and the author of the book Reflections on Grand Strategy: The Great Powers in the Twenty-first Century.