Trump’s Iran war victory boast has echoes of Bush’s ill-fated ‘mission accomplished’ claim

It lacked the triumphalist symbolism of George W Bush’s memorable – and subsequently ill-fated – appearance before the “mission accomplished” banner aboard the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln six weeks after the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

But there was no mistaking the boastful claims asserted on Friday by Donald Trump after a military assault on neighbouring Iran that has, so far, lasted a similar period and which, by widespread agreement outside the Trump administration, has not gone to plan.

Ahead of resumed peace talks in Islamabad and in a frenetic flurry of posts on his Truth Social network, the president all-but proclaimed unambiguous victory, insisting all the major sticking points had been ironed out in advance.

“A great and brilliant day for the world,” Trump declared in his trademark block-capital letters.

Above all else, the strait of Hormuz, the economically vital choke point that Iran had blocked in retaliation for being attacked, would reopen, thereby removing a near-existential threat to the global economy by allowing the 20% of world energy supplies normally routed through it to freely flow again.

Post after post referred to the reopening of the strait, which Iran had targeted as a central part of its strategy of imposing pain on the international economy.

Iran had removed – or was in the process of removing – the mines it had reportedly placed in the waterway as a deterrent to shipping. It had agreed, so Trump claimed, to never again use closure of the strait again as a military weapon – a striking declaration, given that Iranian officials have long alluded to the sea passage as a lever of their survival strategy.

It seemed a shaky justification for a victory lap, given that the strait was completely open to shipping before the war began and that Iran has now proved its ability to inflict international disruption.

Moreover, according to Trump, Lebanon – now subject to a 10-day ceasefire with Israel, which has been in renewed conflict with Tehran’s longstanding Lebanese Shia proxy group, Hezbollah – was not included in the agreement. That, too, was a striking claim in view of Iran’s fixation with its regional “axis of resistance” against the west.

A clue as to why Iran might have conceded such a point came in Trump’s statement that “Israel will not be bombing Lebanon any longer. They are PROHIBITED from doing so by the U.S.A. Enough is enough!!!”.

Conspicuously absent on that point was any confirmation – or clarification – from Tehran, although the Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, confirmed that the strait of Hormuz was “completely open” to commercial shipping.

Trump was less effusive in spelling the goals achieved by his decision to go to war, making passing reference only to Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium, which the US, Israel and the west have long alleged is a precursor to building a nuclear weapon.

“The U.S.A. will get all Nuclear “Dust,” created by our great B2 Bombers,” he wrote. “No money will exchange hands in any way, shape, or form.”

Separately, he told Reuters that Iran had agreed to indefinitely suspend its nuclear programme and that it would work with Washington to recover the enriched uranium that Trump claimed to have “obliterated” in bombing raids last June.

Given that Iran’s nuclear activities have been the subject to protracted and tortuous diplomatic dispute for a quarter-of-a-century, the claim that it had been suddenly and simply resolved seems dubious.

The 2015 nuclear agreement Tehran reached with Barack Obama’s administration, and which was abrogated by Trump three years later, was years in the making, after all.

In declaring that Iran now agreed to quickly surrender a right to enrich uranium, which it has long asserted was inviolable, Trump is in effect claiming to have secured at the negotiating table something which it is far from clear the US won on the battlefield.

Meanwhile, the Islamic regime – far from collapsing, as Trump and prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel had assumed it would – is still standing and determined to do all its power to survive, an achievement tantamount to victory for Tehran given the imbalance of military forces and the targeted killings of so many of its senior figures.

Against that backdrop, how likely is it that the two sides are suddenly reconciled to each other? Peace for our time it may be. But that phrase has an unfortunate history.