Iran Conflict Raises Prospect of Forever War

More than four months after President Trump predicted a short war with Iran, the conflict is intensifying and broadening. The ceasefire agreement between the US and Iran has collapsed, leaving passage through the Strait of Hormuz restricted and the two nations on a war footing: the United States has carried out days of sustained airstrikes while Iran targets American allies in the Gulf. To many analysts, it’s raising the specter of a forever war. We talk about where U.S. policy goes from here.

Guests:

• Max Boot, senior fellow for national security studies, Council on Foreign Relations; columnist, Washington Post; author, “Reagan: His Life and Legend”
• Vivian Salama, staff writer, The Atlantic
• Kevin Kiley, U.S. Congressman representing California’s 3rd District

This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.

Mina Kim: Welcome to Forum. I’m Mina Kim.

Nearly five months after President Trump predicted a short war with Iran, the conflict is intensifying and broadening. The ceasefire agreement has collapsed, leaving passage through the Strait of Hormuz severely restricted and the two nations on a war footing. The U.S. has carried out days of sustained airstrikes, while Iran targets U.S.-allied nations in the Gulf, and three more U.S. service members have died over the weekend from the violence.

To many analysts, the escalation is raising the specter of a forever war.

Joining me to talk about what that means and the impact it could have at home and abroad: Vivian Salama, staff writer at The Atlantic. Vivian, welcome to Forum.

Thanks for having me. Glad to have you.

Also, Max Boot is with us, senior fellow for National Security Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and a columnist for The Washington Post. Max, glad to have you back as well.

Max Boot: Glad to be back.

Mina Kim: So, Max, do you think this conflict is taking on characteristics of a forever war? Would you agree with that?

Max Boot: Absolutely, because Trump knew how to start this war. It’s very easy to start bombing Iran, which he did at the end of February, but he has no idea how to end the war.

He apparently started the conflict under the extremely naïve assumption that if he just bombed Iran for a few days, the whole regime would collapse, the nuclear program would end, and he would achieve this, you know, Valhalla in the Middle East.

Obviously, anybody who’s a halfway serious analyst of warfare, of Iran, or of anything else knows that was a fantasy from the get-go. Now that fantasy has been brutally exposed, and clearly Trump desperately wants to get out of this war, but he can’t because Iran will not relinquish control over the Strait of Hormuz, which, of course, is the choke point through which 20% of the world’s oil passes.

So Trump is trapped, and the entire world is trapped. My concern is that the conflict will continue to escalate with dire consequences, not only for the region but for the entire world, and in particular for the U.S. economy and the global economy.

Mina Kim: Hmm. Vivian, your latest Atlantic piece is called “The Forever Negotiation.” Tell me why you chose the word “forever” and what’s happened since the Memorandum of Understanding was signed June 17.

Vivian Salama: Well, I took it upon myself to explore the various clauses — all 14 of them — in the Memorandum of Understanding, which was signed by President Trump at the Versailles Palace last month during a dinner. It was very randomly signed.

I wanted to do a bit of an audit of the MOU to see where we were. They were supposed to be talking for 60 days in an effort to get a more concrete, long-term deal — a more detailed deal. We had hit the halfway point, and in exploring the various clauses, I found that the vast majority of them, at least those that were supposed to be either immediately implemented or implemented within a 30-day time frame, had been violated.

That included the clause saying they would immediately stop hostilities and rein in their troops. The clauses that talked about the economic incentives that were to immediately go into effect for Iran have been withdrawn by the U.S. because of the renewed hostilities.

One after another, I looked at the clauses and realized they were being violated. Yet whenever I pushed U.S. officials, Iranian officials, or officials from Arab countries that have a stake in this, they all said talks are still continuing, despite the fact that these clauses have been violated.

Mina Kim: So that’s the only clause that has not been violated.

Vivian Salama: Literally. There’s a clause in there — I believe it was number three — that said both parties would commit to talking for 60 days.

So I noted that was the only one that wasn’t fully violated, except there’s an asterisk next to that because they are taking a timeout.

That’s why we called it “The Forever Negotiation.” We’ve entered this cycle of tit for tat, although since it was published, that tit for tat has gotten a lot more intense. Obviously we’ve seen a few more casualties, including American troops who were killed.

So this is definitely getting deeper and deeper into the realm of serious hostilities again, all the while talks don’t seem to be yielding any concrete results.

Mina Kim: Let me invite listeners in.

Do you think this is becoming a forever war? Why or why not? And if you do, what do you think has gone wrong?

Email forum@kqed.org. Find us on Discord, Bluesky, Facebook, or Instagram at KQED Forum, or call us at 866-733-6786.

Vivian, what does that mean for the country in broad strokes? What could a lasting state of conflict mean for the country and the global economy?

Vivian Salama: The implications are enormous across the board.

First of all, there’s the loss of life. We did see at least three soldiers killed in action over the past couple of days, and of course that goes to the top of the list. The longer we’re at war, the greater the potential for more soldiers being killed in action.

We also have a president who promised that forever wars would be over, in part because he did not want to send American sons and daughters out to die in a war when the focus should be domestic. So that is definitely at the top of the list.

Then, of course, you mentioned the Strait of Hormuz being closed and the enormous global economic implications that come with it. You talk about rising food prices, rising gas prices, all of which will be increasingly under pressure the longer this continues.

There’s also the fact that the federal government is so preoccupied with events overseas. Something like this can absorb so much bandwidth within the administration, all while domestic problems continue to pile up.

As I covered President Trump’s 2024 campaign, one of the biggest things he complained about was that there was too much attention given to events overseas. He argued that this undermined the premise he campaigned on, which was that “America First” should be the priority. That was his mantra, and a number of his closest allies feel he’s betrayed that.

Mina Kim: Max, what would you add with regard to the cost of this war — the economic costs so far and in the future?

Max Boot: It could get a lot worse.

It’s already pretty severe because you’re seeing gasoline prices go over $4 a gallon. That’s hitting Americans in their pocketbooks.

It hasn’t been catastrophic so far, in part because I think the oil markets and the stock markets are all kind of operating under the “TACO” theory — that Trump always chickens out. So they assume that as soon as the economic repercussions become severe enough, Trump will make a deal.

Clearly that’s what he was trying to do last month with the Memorandum of Understanding. The problem is the Iranians increasingly look like they don’t want a deal because they don’t trust Trump.

Rather than doing a deal with the U.S., they just want to control the Strait of Hormuz and charge tolls on traffic through the strait. So it’s not clear to me that another deal is possible right now.

Unfortunately, that means the conflict could spiral. Trump keeps threatening to attack Iranian infrastructure — electrical plants, desalination plants, bridges, and so on.

He has refrained from doing that so far, in part, I think, because of the pressure he’s getting from America’s Persian Gulf allies, who are saying, “Wait a second, President Trump. If you escalate against Iran, Iran will escalate against us,” meaning the Gulf states.

You’ve already seen some attacks on a desalination plant in Kuwait, but it could get much worse. Iran clearly has a very potent arsenal of missiles and drones, so it could easily target oil facilities, desalination plants, and other vital economic and humanitarian infrastructure in the Persian Gulf states if the conflict escalates further.

You could imagine long-term damage being done to oil infrastructure that could take years to repair.

One of the most ominous developments we’ve seen this week is that the Houthis in Yemen have declared they’re going to close the Red Sea to Saudi commerce because they can control the Bab el-Mandeb Strait just as the Iranians can control the Strait of Hormuz.

The Bab el-Mandeb Strait has been something of a safety valve for the Saudis because they’ve been rerouting oil exports away from the Persian Gulf through the Red Sea. But if the Houthis close the Red Sea, that’s going to remove one of the shock absorbers for the global economy.

We’re also losing another shock absorber because the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in the U.S. is at its lowest level since 1983.

If this crisis continues for a few months and gets worse, I think the economic consequences are going to be very severe. We’re looking at a very real prospect of a global recession.

Mina Kim: I actually want to play a clip of the president this morning responding to a question from a journalist on the Houthi situation as he met with Lebanon’s president in the Oval Office.

Donald Trump: What is your level of concern over a blockade of the Red Sea by the Houthi rebels, opening up another front in the war?

This is what happens. So far it hasn’t happened. It might happen, but we take care of things. If something like that happens, we take care of it.

You know, we’ve done that with the Houthis before, and we haven’t heard from them in a while since we did what we did originally. That was about 45 days of very powerful action we took against the Houthis.

We’ve had no problem with the Houthis. They’ve had no problem with us for a long period of time, including during this conflict.

I think that if there is something like that, we’ll just have to take care of business.

Mina Kim: Vivian, “we’ll just have to take care of business.” What’s your reaction to how he’s approaching the potential impact that Max has laid out — the Houthis choking off yet another alternative route for oil exports?

Vivian Salama: The president, of course, in his public rhetoric tends to downplay the severity of these threats. Obviously, it goes against exactly what he had predicted, which was a swift end to a war with an adversary that would essentially be brought to its knees very easily.

He even made a comparison while talking to the press today in that same Oval Office spray, where he said, “Iran has been challenging, but it’s worked out as well as Venezuela,” referring to his military operation to remove Venezuela’s president in January.

I can tell you there’s almost nothing similar about those two operations, but he’s definitely casting this optimistic light in public.

I know for a fact, speaking to a number of people close to the president, that he’s deeply frustrated with how this is going behind the scenes. He realizes this is not going to be over anytime soon.

Mina Kim: We’re talking with Vivian Salama, staff writer at The Atlantic, and Max Boot, Jeane J. Kirkpatrick Senior Fellow for National Security Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and a columnist for The Washington Post.

We’re also talking with you, our listeners, about whether you think this is becoming a forever war. Why or why not?

We’ll have more with them — and with you — after the break. Stay with us.