At the start of a ceasefire with Iran, Trump has failed by his own standards

“Total and complete victory, 100%,” the American president said. “No question about it.” There are plenty of questions about it.

By Steve Benen

As a tenuous two-week ceasefire in Iran begins, it’s easy to breathe a sigh of relief. Whether or not the pause endures, the suspension of combat operations means less death and bloodshed, less destruction and reduced odds of Donald Trump committing deliberate war crimes.

But as the dust settles on the agreement and highly relevant details start to come into focus, the American president would have the public believe the unnecessary war he launched is a triumph. “Total and complete victory, 100%,” the Republican told AFP. “No question about it.”

In reality, there are plenty of questions about it.

To begin with, did this war actually achieve anything?

On Feb. 28, when Trump announced the start of the U.S. offensive in a prerecorded video filmed at his glorified country club in Florida, the president didn’t explain why he’d decided to launch the war, but he did present the public with five objectives:

The White House’s stated objectives in Iran then evolved as the war continued — a problem that was itself emblematic of the administration’s incompetence and misguided policymaking — but roughly 39 days after Trump’s remarks, if the U.S. mission were in fact a “total and complete victory,” we’d expect to see check marks alongside each of those five goals.

But that’s simply not the case. Iran’s navy has certainly been decimated, but the other four objectives have plainly not been met.

What’s more, just a few days into the conflict, the president said his “worst case scenario” was that Iran, five years down the road, would remain in the hands of radical clerics and Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. Six weeks later, Trump is prepared to accept a near future in which Tehran is still controlled by radical clerics and Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.

And that’s not all he’s prepared to accept. Despite Trump’s chest-thumping, Iran’s control over the Strait of Hormuz is now stronger than it was at the start of the war and poised to generate enormous profits for the Iranian treasury.

The White House is also prepared to allow Iran to move forward with its uranium stockpile intact, despite the president’s occasional rhetoric about that being the whole point of the war.

The United States, meanwhile, has suffered horrible losses, including fallen U.S. service members, a badly tarnished global reputation and tens of billions of tax dollars, on top of the economic and energy sector consequences. Lingering overhead, meanwhile, are ongoing questions about the mental stability of the Republican who thought this was a good idea in the first place.

To see this as anything but a colossal strategic failure would be a mistake. By any fair measure, the U.S. is worse off now than before it began its war of choice.

As for the road ahead, there’s great uncertainty about whether the ceasefire can hold and what to expect from delicate diplomatic efforts.

In the meantime, White House officials will respond to the developments with a victory lap, playing the public for fools. The only people who’ll believe them are those who choose not to acknowledge what’s actually happened.

Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."