Why Trump should “declare victory and go home” with Iran.

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President Donald Trump is reportedly having private discussions with senior aides about whether he should end his war with Iran. The story, in the Wall Street Journal, rouses memories of Vermont Sen. George Aiken’s suggestion, early in the Vietnam War, that we should just “declare victory and go home.”

Aiken didn’t really say quite that, but it would have been good if President Lyndon Johnson had taken up the idea then. And it would be very good if Trump followed his instincts—at least this instinct—now.

He could say, as he has said many times, that he’s “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program, that spaceborne cameras are constantly watching the area where its enriched uranium is buried deep inside mountains, and that if the Iranians try to extract it, we’ll bomb the site again. He could also recite statistics on the percentage of Iran’s missiles, ships, airplanes, etc., we’ve destroyed in the six-month war.

These pronouncements would be either misleading or irrelevant. For example, the claim about Iran’s nuclear facilities has been true since his “Midnight Hammer” bombing raid in June 2025, well before the start of this war. The claim about decimating Iran’s military forces neglects the fact that they’re still able to stop traffic in the Strait of Hormuz and inflict damage on U.S. bases throughout the Middle East, which is why the war carries on.

But Trump’s supporters—the only audience he cares about pleasing—will overlook these awkward facts and cheer his declaration of “Mission accomplished.” The rest of us will view these claims as another set of lies—but we will also take some comfort that at least the war is over.

The fact is, the more Trump prolongs the war, the weaker the United States seems. It is pathetic enough that our air and naval forces—by most measures the mightiest in the world—have hit more than 15,000 targets in Iran, yet failed to accomplish any strategic goal. In fact, it did worse than nothing. The barrage, which among other things killed the top echelon of Iran’s political and spiritual leaders, only elevated the senior officers of Iran’s elite military unit, which is much more hard-line and oppressive—and is now in complete control of the country.

Another unforeseen effect of the barrage was to show that America’s military wasn’t as strong as it seemed. In the course of hitting those 15,000 targets, the U.S. Air Force and Navy depleted a stunningly high percentage of the country’s most vital munitions—including more than half of its cruise missiles and high-tech air-defense weapons. The campaign also required replacing the USS Abraham Lincoln, one of the two aircraft carriers mobilized for the war, with the USS George Washington, which had been the only aircraft carrier the Navy had in the Pacific Fleet. (The Lincoln had to rotate out because early in the war, Iranian missiles ravaged the Navy’s supply hub in Bahrain, leaving the crew of 5,000 sailors bereft of fresh food and basic supplies.)

The whole world is watching. What they’re seeing is pretty grim—a onetime superpower that no longer evokes much respect or fear. There’s no sign that appearances will soon brighten. In Iran, U.S. military pressure isn’t working, while economic pressure has its limits, as long as the Chinese keep helping Iran (as they’re likely to do, it being in their interest to keep the United States bottled up in the Middle East, far away from the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea).

Trump doesn’t know what to do. Nor does anyone around him. They are so desperate for ideas that a month ago, a senior intelligence officer in U.S. Central Command, which plans and executes military operations in the Middle East, emailed a broad group of analysts and officers, asking for “new creative and unconventional ways to pressure and punish Iran.”

They—and thus we—are in a trap. The more Trump threatens to destroy all of Iran if they don’t do what he says (as he did again for the umpteenth time this week), and then backs off (which is better than following through but doesn’t do much for our image), the less credible any of our threats or promises seem. It is no surprise, then, that allies are looking elsewhere for supply chains and security—in part out of fear that our common adversaries may be tempted to take aggressive action in this vulnerable moment for America.

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We would all be better off if Trump just ended the war. Stop attacking Iran (and thus provoking Iran to attack us). Let Iran and Oman work out an arrangement to open the Strait of Hormuz; it would probably entail tolls, but that’s better than the uncertainties and grave costs of the current situation. Meanwhile, keep an eye on the potential revival of Iran’s nuclear program—which, for the moment, even the CIA concludes, poses no imminent threat.

It would be better still if Trump then sent the USS George Washington back to the Pacific, fired Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth for giving him lousy advice (it wouldn’t be the first time Trump turned a loyal aide into a scapegoat), and made polite phone calls to all of our allies (whom he’s lambasted for not helping him fight Iran), assuring them that he would consult with them before starting any wars in the future.

This, of course, is fantasy (except maybe the part about sending the Washington back to its port in Japan). It’s certainly what any normal president would do—more to the point, it’s what any normal president would have done all along. That only amplifies how far Donald Trump is from normal.