Trump is unlikely to increase pressure on Russia beyond what he has already done. But he could help move things along if he were to present President Putin with the true picture of what is happening on the battlefield. Just as the US showed Putin the intelligence on his pending attack, Trump could present the US understanding what is happening on the battlefield to counter the mis-information that Putin is getting from his generals who don’t tell him the truth.

The largest, most capable military in the world has consistently lost the wars it starts since Vietnam. Iran is no different. I spoke with NPR’s Scott Simon this weekend about why American war-fighting strategy keeps failing — and why bombing Iran may actually increase, not decrease, the nuclear threat we set out to eliminate.

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SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

President Trump says some kind of deal to extend the ceasefire with Iran may soon be signed, but he has yet to make any decisions - now, three months after the U.S. and Israel began to bomb the country. And so while many Iranian leaders have been killed, the hard-line regime remains in power, and Iran’s control of the Strait of Hormuz has increased oil prices, setting off economic crises across the globe. Ivo Daalder is a former U.S. ambassador to NATO, now a senior fellow at Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. He joins us now. Ambassador, thanks so much for being with us.

IVO DAALDER: Always a pleasure, Scott.

SIMON: You have written recently that America’s war-fighting strategy is wrong and has been, really, since Vietnam. What’s your reasoning?

DAALDER: Well, here is the largest military and the most capable military in the world consistently losing the wars that it starts. And I wanted to figure out, what’s the paradox? How does the paradox get explained? And the reason is that we’ve forgotten to remind ourselves what war is about. War is, as the great Prussian theorist, strategist Karl von Clausewitz said, the continuation of politics by other means. And we tend to look at war as somehow a failure of policy, not its continuity. And so we resort to massive use of force in the hope that somehow the political ends that we seek will magically appear. And we see in Vietnam, of course, but more importantly in Afghanistan and Iraq and now in Iran, that that just doesn’t work.

SIMON: You cite the 1991 Gulf War as maybe the lone U.S. military success in recent history. I covered both of the Iraq wars. Wasn’t President George H.W. Bush criticized then for letting a cruel regime stay in power?

DAALDER: Yeah. He was, but then the goal he had set was not to overthrow a regime. The goal he had set was to restore the status quo that existed before Iraq had invaded Kuwait. He marshaled a global coalition. He received a remarkable degree of global support, including a U.N. Security Council resolution. He got domestic support. And together, they restored the status quo ante.

Yes, a brutal regime remained. But importantly, because of the victory, because of the way in which this war was fought, the United States was able to work with the international community to put in charge a inspection regime to find and destroy the weapons of mass destruction that Saddam Hussein possessed. Indeed, it was so successful that when, in 20 - in 2003, the United States went to war because there were these weapons of mass destruction supposedly hidden, we found out that they had all been destroyed.

SIMON: The Trump administration says that this current war is about making certain that Iran doesn’t possess nuclear weapons. Doesn’t the U.S. and the world, for that matter, have a powerful interest in ensuring that Iran is free of nuclear weapons?

DAALDER: Absolutely. And the question is, how do we best achieve that? We had an agreement in 2015, negotiated by President Barack Obama in concert with our European allies, the Russians and the Chinese, that prevented Iran from acquiring the capabilities necessary to build a bomb and, if it were to break out of that agreement, to take more than a year to do so. And look where we are today. If this agreement had still been in force and President Trump had not walked away from it in 2018, today Iran would have had no more than 300 kilograms of enriched uranium enriched to 3.67%, which is sufficient for fueling its research reactor. That would be the case today.

What is in fact the case is that Iran now has 8,500 kilograms of enriched uranium, some of it - 500 kilograms - enriched to 60%, other material enriched to 5% and 20%, sufficient to build not one but perhaps 10 and perhaps even more nuclear bombs. And that’s the situation we find ourselves. This has been created by the president deciding to walk away from an agreement that was working and replacing it with, frankly, nothing other than now the use of force, which still hasn’t fundamentally altered the nature of the Iranian threat - nuclear threat - as it is today.

SIMON: Well, let me ask you about the whole idea of trying to reach some kind of an agreement with the Iranian government. From the Iranian point of view, wouldn’t having nuclear weapons be the best way to guarantee the survival of their regime? To cite the obvious, there have been countries in Europe, for example, who gave up nuclear weapons, and they got invaded.

DAALDER: Yeah, Ukraine being, of course, the obvious example. Indeed, I think the fact that the United States has now launched two wars - one in June and again now this time - against Iran increases the incentive for the Iranians to maintain the capacity, if not the actual building a nuclear weapon. And I think that’s the legacy of this war. Rather than eliminating the nuclear threat, it is more likely to aggravate it over the long run.

SIMON: Former U.S. ambassador to NATO Ivo Daalder, now at the Belfer Center at Harvard University. Mr. Ambassador, thanks so much for being with us.

DAALDER: Thank you for the opportunity.

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Whether deliberate or not, it doesn’t matter. The drone attack on Romanian territory is a direct consequence of Russia’s ongoing war of aggression against Ukraine. As Russia loses ground on the battlefield — British intelligence now estimates 500,000 Russian casualties — and its economy continues to contract, Putin is looking for ways to distract attention from his failures and test Western resolve.

The US-Europe divide is a gift to Putin. Since 1945, Moscow’s strategic goal has been to get the United States out of Europe. The current level of division between Washington and its European allies — fueled by presidential rhetoric questioning NATO’s value and reduced U.S. military commitments — plays directly into Putin’s hands. He’s testing how NATO responds to these provocations, and crucially, whether Washington reacts at all. So far, the answer has been silence.

Putin appears to have given up on Trump. As former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt also noted, Putin no longer seems to believe Trump can deliver what Russia wants — namely, Ukraine ceding the Donbas territory it currently holds. Having failed to get that through U.S.-mediated negotiations, Putin is now signaling he may prefer European interlocutors. That’s a worrying sign: when Europe negotiated alone before, Putin got a lot of what he wanted then.

The bottom line: Russia is under pressure, but a cornered Putin is a dangerous one. Europe needs to stay united, and Washington needs to decide which side it’s on.

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Trump was characteristically blunt: the Strait is international waters, nobody controls it, and we’ll “watch over it.” That sounds reassuring. The reality is more troubling.

Iran Already Controls the Strait

Here’s the hard truth: Iran has effectively controlled traffic through the Strait of Hormuz since it closed it on February 28th, at the outset of the war. Geography is destiny — Iran sits right along the Strait and has the capacity to attack shipping through it. Short of a U.S. military occupation of large parts of Iran, that isn’t going to change. The president can declare the waters international all he wants. The Iranians have a different idea, and so far they have been able to dictate the terms.

The Nuclear Question

On the nuclear front, things are no better. All reporting suggests the memorandum currently being negotiated doesn’t seriously address Iran’s nuclear program — at best it lays down vague parameters for a future negotiation. Secretary Rubio was right when he said you can’t negotiate the end of an Iranian nuclear program in 72 hours on the back of a napkin. It took the Obama administration 16 months. It took the Europeans a decade of negotiations, from 2003 to the final agreement in 2015.

And then Trump walked away from that agreement.

That was strategic folly: if the JCPOA had remained in force, Iran today would have no more than 300 kilograms of uranium enriched to 3.67%. Instead, Iran now has roughly 8,500 kilograms of enriched uranium — some enriched to 60%, some to 20% — enough material, if given time, to potentially build not 1 bomb but closer to 100.

“They Weren’t Complying”? The Record Says Otherwise.

Trump’s standing defense is that Iran wasn’t serious about the deal and would have had a nuclear weapon by now if he hadn’t pulled out. The record simply doesn’t support that. Until the day the United States withdrew, Iran was abiding by the terms of the JCPOA — no serious analyst disputed that at the time.

Yes, the agreement had sunset provisions. Yes, a follow-on negotiation would eventually have been needed. But Trump had years to pursue a better deal from a position of strength, with Iran constrained. Instead, he chose confrontation — and in doing so, gave Iran every reason to conclude that the only real deterrent against American or Israeli military action is a nuclear weapon.

We are not better off. We are substantially worse off. And the window to fix it is narrowing fast.

I was on Bloomberg TV earlier this week, and the conversation kept circling back to the same uncomfortable truth: in both the Iran standoff and the war in Ukraine, Washington is stuck in a game of chicken — and may be the side more likely to swerve.

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Here are the three points that I think matter most right now.

Iran is playing a longer game than Washington thinks

The administration seems to believe that the economic blockade will eventually force Tehran to cry uncle. Iran believes the opposite — that rising prices, including what we saw in today’s inflation report, will force Washington to back down first.

This is a classic game of chicken. And my bet is that the Trump administration is systematically underestimating Iran’s leverage and, as it has from the very beginning of this conflict, their willingness to absorb devastating damage — to their military, their economy, their people — rather than capitulate. This is a regime that came to power through revolutionary struggle. And its new leaders have come to power because of this very war. Suffering is not a deterrent to them; in some ways, it is a source of legitimacy.

The minimum objective right now is just to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and get back to the status quo ante of February 28, before the war started. That alone should tell you how far we’ve fallen.

We have the wrong negotiators

When the Obama administration negotiated the Iran nuclear deal, the U.S. delegation wasn’t just led by the Secretary of State. It included the Secretary of Energy — a Nobel Prize-winning nuclear physicist — along with a deep bench of technical experts who understood enrichment levels, centrifuge cascades, and verification mechanisms.

What we have now are real estate professionals who are used to drafting term sheets and leaving the details to lawyers. In arms control, the details are the agreement. You cannot close a nuclear deal the way you close a property transaction.

Ukraine is holding — but that doesn’t mean peace is near

The president has been saying for over a year that he can end the Ukraine war in a day. We are no closer to a solution than the day he returned to office.

What I will say is this: Ukraine has demonstrated remarkable resilience. They survived a brutal winter with Russian missiles and drones systematically targeting their power grid. And their drone warfare capability is now inflicting 35,000 Russian casualties per month. Their precision strikes deep into Russian territory are hitting oil refineries and military infrastructure, bringing the war home to the average Russian.

Is Putin feeling pressure? Yes. Is that pressure translating into serious peace negotiations? Not yet. Every time Trump presses him, Putin says the right things and then does nothing. Until Moscow genuinely believes it cannot achieve its maximalist war aims, we will remain in a stalemate.

The through-line in both conflicts is the same: maximalism on all sides, combined with a fundamental misreading of relative leverage. That’s a recipe not for resolution, but for prolonged, costly standoffs — with the U.S. bearing more of the cost than the administration currently wants to admit.

I joined Stephanie Ruhle and my colleagues Peter Baker and Michael Crowley of The New York Times last night to discuss where things stand in the U.S.-Iran war and the fragile situation in the Strait of Hormuz. Here are the three points I made.

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The situation is dangerously confused — especially in Washington. The pace of developments is dizzying: one hour a deal is done, the next both sides are shooting at each other. Peter called this a “ceasefire with lots of firing.” What worries me most is that Washington appears far more disoriented than Tehran. That asymmetry — one side confused, the other not — is precisely the condition under which escalation becomes most likely.

Trump wants out, but the off-ramp isn’t there. The president clearly doesn’t want to escalate. He didn’t even respond when Iran struck energy facilities in the UAE. But Iran is not going to hand over its uranium or end enrichment for nothing. The one-page framework being discussed is remarkably thin — it leaves all the hard questions for later. We are in a standoff, and at some point one side is going to have to blink.

My money is on Trump blinking first. Given everything we know about the president’s desire to declare victory and move on, and Iran’s demonstrated willingness to absorb punishment and hold firm, I argue that the United States is the more likely side to make the first significant concession.

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Seventy-seven years ago today, 12 nations signed the North Atlantic Treaty. NATO today faces the gravest crisis in its history. This week, Secretary General Mark Rutte will visit the Oval Office to try and convince President Trump to remain a member of this vital Alliance and to end his near-constant criticism and threats to leave.

I spoke with Christine Ruffini and Joe Mathieu about the visit, the importance of NATO more generally, and why the Iran War threatens America’s global standing and influence.

But don’t take this absence as an indicator that all is well in the Alliance, I told CNN News Central earlier today. The rift between the Trump Administration and our NATO allies is deep, with both sides taking actions to indicate the ties are fraying.

Mark Rutte, NATO’s secretary general and all-around Trump Whisperer, is headed to Washington next week. My advice to him: Tell Trump the European allies are determined to pick up much more responsibility for the defense of Europe. They are increasing spending, buying more capabilities, and fielding the forces necessary to reduce the burdens on the United States.

Watch the entire interview.

A sobering conversation.

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• NATO’s Role and the Threshold for Involvement I want to be very clear on the Alliance’s position: while the United States is a central actor in this crisis, NATO as an organization will remain on the sidelines. The North Atlantic Treaty is a collective defense pact designed for the protection of member territory against an armed attack. Unless we see a direct attack on a NATO member, this remains a “coalition of the willing” led by Washington, not a NATO operation. Maintaining this distinction is vital for European stability even as the Middle East reaches a boiling point.

• The High Probability of Further Escalation I explained why I thought escalation was much more likely now than before. Neither side feels they can afford a climb-down that looks like a fundamental loss of face, which naturally pushes both toward the next rung of the escalatory ladder.

• The Danger of Miscalculation My primary concern right now is “escalation by accident.” We are in a cycle where military actions meant to signal resolve to a domestic audience can easily be misread by the adversary as a prelude to total war. The margin for error has disappeared, and the diplomatic off-ramps are becoming increasingly difficult to find as the rhetoric on both sides hardens.

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So, when Diane reached out the other day to ask whether I would come on her show, DIANE’s Substack, I immediately agreed. Our discussion ranged widely — including my take-away from the Munich Security Conference, the Ukraine war, Greenland, the Board of Peace, and how are allies view the state of our democracy. You can watch the full discussion here.