Aug 21, 2026
I said it.
In my Truth Thursday posts, in my town halls, and in the opinion piece with OC Register columnist John Seiler, I warned about what was coming.
I said this war with Iran would be a war of attrition.
I said regime change would not happen this way.
I said the Strait was the most dangerous and most costly variable in the equation.
I said that the working families here at home would ultimately pay the price.
Unfortunately, I was not wrong. I wish I had been.
There is a deference most of us extend to senior leaders in moments of crisis. We assume that people in elected office, people with stars on their shoulders, and people with access to intelligence that we do not have must know something we do not.
That deference is understandable. However, in this case, it is what got us here.
The assumptions that drove this conflict were not the product of superior knowledge.
They were, in the plainest terms, the product of hubris, short-sightedness and a profound lack of wisdom.
We were told this would be over in weeks. We were told cities would fall, that the regime would fracture, that cutting off the head of the snake would end the threat. Some officials spoke openly about Iran responding the way Venezuela had responded to pressure — that economic pain and leadership removal would produce collapse and capitulation. That comparison was not just wrong. It revealed a fundamental ignorance of what Iran actually is.
Venezuela is a petrostate whose political identity is inseparable from a single strongman.
Iran is a theocratic republic with a deliberately decentralized power structure, built over decades to ensure that no single death — not even the Supreme Leader’s — could bring the whole thing down. The Ayatollahs learned that lesson from history and designed their system around it. Our senior leaders apparently did not learn it from them. The death of the Supreme Leader did not fracture the regime. It produced a successor. The regime reorganized. The snake, as the saying goes, grew several smaller heads.
On February 28, 2026, the United States and Israel launched Operation Epic Fury.
No declaration of war was made. Iran had not attacked American soil, and no specific evidence establishing an imminent attack on the United States was presented publicly before the strikes.
The Constitution gives Congress the power to declare war for a reason. It forces deliberation before American lives, treasure, military readiness, and national credibility are committed to a conflict that may be far easier to start than to end.
That deliberation did not occur before the bombs fell.
Nearly six months later, the most basic question remains unanswered: What exactly is the long-term objective?
Is the objective to prevent an Iranian nuclear weapon, force regime change, secure the Strait of Hormuz, eliminate Iran’s missile capability, protect Israel, regime change or compel Iran to surrender? Those are not interchangeable goals. Each requires a different strategy and a different measure of success.
Congress has debated the war and challenged the administration, but debate alone is not enough. Congress has a constitutional responsibility to determine whether this conflict should continue and under what authority.
What constitutes victory? What is the exit strategy? What happens if Iran simply refuses to capitulate? How do we restabilize the Strait of Hormuz?
The Strait was always the most precarious variable.
Before this war, roughly one-fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas trade moved through the Strait. When that corridor becomes unsafe, the consequences do not stay in the Middle East. They move through energy markets, shipping, manufacturing, fertilizer, food, and household budgets around the world.
Then came the moment that made my stomach drop.
Within weeks of launching the war, President Trump told other nations that they should protect the Strait because they use it too. He told them to “go to the Strait and just take it,” adding that “the hard part is done, so it should be easy.”
It was not– and they did not.
Six months later, here we are. Iran is actively asserting coercive control over the most critical shipping lane in the world.
There is another interest involved here that the American people deserve to understand.
This war was a joint U.S.-Israeli operation. Israel has sought American military action against Iran’s nuclear program for over a decade, lobbying for it, advocating for it, and making the case for it at the highest levels of our government.
Every administration had the wisdom to avoid the pitfalls of what an unnecessary war with Iran could mean for the United States—until now.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio let the cat out of the bag when he all but confirmed that Israel forced our hand by telling the press:
“We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action, we knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces, and we knew that if we didn’t preemptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties.”
It seems clear that we have been forced into war by another country, in the interest of that country.
The costs of this war—depleted munitions, fractured alliances, sailors at sea for months, and economic disruption absorbed by American families—are borne by the United States.
The American people have every right to know whose security calculus drove that decision before the first missile left the ground.
That question leads to an even larger one: Where were the strategists who understood Iran?
Where were the people in the room who understood its history, political structure, military doctrine, culture, geography, and capacity to endure?
Understanding Iran does not require admiration for its government or an excuse for its brutality. It requires knowing the country you are preparing to fight.
Iran has spent decades preparing for exactly this kind of conflict. Its leaders understand the vulnerabilities of the Strait, the value of asymmetric warfare, and the limits of conventional American military power in producing political surrender.
This is where the wisdom to study history matters. This is where chess matters more than checkers.
Bombing a target is checkers. Understanding what your opponent will do after you bomb it is chess.
We entered this war with overwhelming tactical military superiority, but tactical superiority is not the same thing as strategic success.
Military strength is not a strategy. The ability to destroy something does not mean you understand what comes next. The ability to start a war does not mean you know how to end one.
The human cost is not theoretical to me. I have a nephew in the Navy.
When I read about the extraordinary length of the USS Abraham Lincoln’s deployment, the strain placed on sailors and their families, and concerns about living conditions and mental health, I do not process those stories simply as news.
Families feel every extension. They feel every uncertainty. They live with the consequences of decisions made thousands of miles away.
When the President was asked whether the deployment had gone on too long, he responded, “No. No. No—not nearly long enough.”
Long enough for whom, and to what end?
There needs to be answers to those very reasonable questions because our service members should not be asked to carry the burden of political indecision indefinitely.
None of this absolves Iran.
Its attacks on commercial shipping, support for armed proxies, brutal suppression of its own people, and refusal to cooperate fully with nuclear inspectors are real. Iran presents genuine and serious threats.
The question is not whether Iran is dangerous.
The question is whether this war, at this cost and with this lack of planning, has made us safer.
The nuclear program—the stated justification for everything—was damaged, not destroyed. Military force can destroy facilities, but it cannot erase knowledge or the strategic calculations that drive a country to pursue deterrence.
Let’s look back at the longer history…
Iran watched Saddam Hussein’s government fall after Iraq was invaded. It watched Muammar Gaddafi give up Libya’s nuclear ambitions and later be overthrown. It watched North Korea retain its nuclear program and survive.
Iran drew its own conclusion from those outcomes: a credible deterrent may be the difference between survival and regime change.
We may despise that conclusion, but refusing to understand it does not make it disappear. No negotiation can succeed if it ignores the strategic logic driving the other side.
The path forward therefore requires something this conflict has lacked from the beginning: an achievable political objective.
Diplomatic channels through Pakistan, Qatar, and Oman deserve serious and sustained engagement. Also, engaging China as a stakeholder in Strait stability is the most underexplored available move. Beijing brokered the Saudi-Iran normalization in 2023 and has enormous economic interests tied to energy moving through the Strait (It’s certainly better to have them closer to us than to Iran).
A genuine regional security framework should give Iran meaningful sovereignty guarantees in exchange for verified and enforceable nuclear restraint, meaningful inspections, freedom of navigation, and clear consequences for violations.
That is not appeasement. It is a strategy.
The goal is not to reward Iran. The goal is to make the United States safer, prevent an Iranian nuclear weapon, protect freedom of navigation, reduce the threat to our service members, and bring this war to an end.
That requires Washington to decide what outcome it actually needs.
The objective cannot simply be whatever punishment feels satisfying. It cannot be whatever political rhetoric sounds strongest. It cannot be whatever another government wants America to accomplish on its behalf.
The objective must be the outcome that makes America safer.
Once that objective is clear, we work backward from it.
That is what strategy is supposed to be.
Nearly six months later, the war continues without a clear explanation to the American people of what will actually end it.
That is how endless wars take shape.
They begin with one mission. The mission expands. The definition of victory moves. The timeline extends. Eventually, the political cost of admitting that the original strategy failed becomes greater than the perceived cost of continuing.
At that point, continuing the war becomes the strategy.
That is the danger now.
Congress must reassert its constitutional role. The administration must define the objective, establish the conditions for ending American military involvement, and explain why continued war is more likely to achieve those goals than serious diplomacy backed by American leverage.
There must also be accountability for the gap between what was promised and what was delivered.
Without accountability, it happens again.
The next crisis, the next administration, and the next moment of hubris dressed up as resolve will follow the same pattern if we do not demand something different from the people we entrust with these decisions.
The American people deserve representatives willing to ask the hard questions before the bombs fall, not after.
We deserve the truth about whose interests are being served and at whose expense.
We deserve leaders who understand that military strength and strategic wisdom are not the same thing. We deserve a government that earns the deference it asks for.
General William Tecumseh Sherman knew war from the inside. His words belong in every war room before the first shot is fired:
“It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for more blood, more vengeance, more desolation. War is hell.”
I KNOW this to be true.
In Lived Experience….
Nina Linh
True North | WonderSeed Foundation | A New Way Forward
That same deference put us into Iraq. This was never about nuclear weapons, this is a religious war waged by extremists who believe the third temple must be built for the return of their savior, thus the deference to Bibi, thus the war that was sold as easy to an ignorant man and an ignorant crusader leader of the armed forces. We earned this by voting this way, this is our burden to bear, the world is both laughing at us and cowering in fear of our next mindless, ignorant, simpleton move...