ANALYSIS: Trump has launched a war against Iran. Here’s what he didn’t achieve.

2018: The Withdrawal from the JCPOA as the Catalyst for the Crisis

To understand the nuclear objective of the war against Iran, we must go back to 2018. That year, Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew the United States from the JCPOA—the Iran nuclear deal signed in 2015 after years of negotiations involving the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Russia, and China. This agreement had imposed strict limits on Iran’s uranium enrichment, centrifuges, and stockpile of fissile material, in exchange for a gradual lifting of sanctions.

After the U.S. withdrawal, Iran gradually abandoned its own commitments. The centrifuges started spinning again. Enrichment resumed. The stockpile of enriched uranium grew. In other words: the Iranian nuclear program that Trump wanted to eliminate by 2025 is largely the one that his own 2018 decision helped rebuild. This causal sequence—withdrawal from the JCPOA in 2018, the revival of the Iranian program, and then a war to eliminate it—is one of the most grotesque in contemporary diplomacy.

I can’t think of a more accurate word than “circularity” to describe this. Trump destroys an agreement that contained Iran’s nuclear program. Iran’s nuclear program expands. Trump launches a war to eliminate it. The nuclear program is not eliminated. The MoU is signed. And in American discourse, the “Iranian nuclear threat” is presented as something that existed independently of any U.S. decision. That is not true. The 2018 decision cannot be erased from this history.

What the MoU Says—and Does Not Say—About Iran’s Nuclear Program

The Memorandum of Understanding signed between the United States and Iran makes no mention of dismantling Iran’s nuclear program. The facilities—notably in Natanz, Fordow, and Isfahan—have not been destroyed. Stocks of enriched uranium have not been transferred. No international verification agency has announced expanded access to confirm nuclear disarmament. This does not mean that there were no negotiations on verification mechanisms. But the stated objective—eliminating Iran’s nuclear program—has not been achieved.

It should also be noted that the sources available at the time of writing do not provide a complete picture of the MoU’s provisions. Some remain classified. But the absence of any visible sign of nuclear disarmament—no announcement from Iran, no confirmed international inspections, no transfer of materials—leads to the provisional conclusion that this objective remains unmet.

What “wiping out the missile industry” meant

Donald Trump’s third stated objective was to “wipe out” Iran’s missile industry. Iran has one of the most advanced ballistic missile arsenals in the Middle East. These missiles are capable of reaching Israel, U.S. bases in the region, and the capitals of the Gulf Emirates. This arsenal has been built up over decades. It is geographically dispersed, partially underground, and involves production facilities spread across the entire territory of Iran.

This arsenal still exists. U.S. strikes caused damage to certain facilities. But “wiping out an industry” and “damaging sites” are two different realities. Iran continued to use its missiles during the conflict. Iranian missiles hit their targets. This proves, by definition, that the industry was not wiped out. A country whose missile industry has been destroyed no longer fires missiles.

There is an ironclad logic to this. If Trump had “wiped out” Iran’s missile industry, Iranian missiles would not have been launched during the conflict. They were launched. Therefore, the industry was not wiped out. This is elementary deduction. And yet, no one in circles close to the U.S. administration articulates this syllogism so clearly.

The doctrine of airstrikes and its structural limitations

The idea of “destroying a military industry” through airstrikes and cruise missiles runs up against well-documented physical and strategic constraints. The lessons of decades of conflict—Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Syria—show that dispersed and underground military industries resist complete destruction by external strikes. Iran has had decades to anticipate this scenario. Critical facilities have been relocated, duplicated, and buried.

The “decisive strike” doctrine—strike hard, strike fast, force a surrender—has once again run up against the reality of a state that was unwilling to surrender and had the means to hold out long enough to negotiate. This comes as no surprise to military analysts. It was a predictable limitation that U.S. planners either ignored or dismissed.

A goal born of the problem created by the war

Before February 28, 2025, the Strait of Hormuz was functioning normally. Approximately 20% of global oil trade passed through this 33-kilometer-wide maritime corridor between Iran and Oman. Tankers were sailing through. Marine insurance covered the passage. Oil markets treated the strait as a stable reality.

The war changed that. Disruptions in the Strait emerged as a direct consequence of the conflict. Iran had the capacity—and strategic reasons—to close or threaten the passage. Oil prices soared. Insurance companies reassessed the risk. Tankers were rerouted. And Donald Trump then included among his war objectives the “reopening of the Strait of Hormuz”—a phrasing that implicitly acknowledged that the war had created the problem that now needed to be resolved.

It’s a form of real-time rewriting. The Strait was open. The war disrupted it. Trump then presented the resolution of this disruption as a war objective. If we follow this logic to its conclusion: any problem created by a war can be transformed back into an objective, and then into a victory once it is partially resolved. It’s a circular narrative structure. And it doesn’t hold up.

The Economic Cost of a Self-Inflicted Disruption

The economic data available for the period of the conflict show the impact of disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz on global energy markets. Crude oil prices rose significantly. Importing economies—particularly in Asia and Europe—suffered shocks to their energy bills. Industrial supply chains that depend on petroleum products were affected.

This economic cost was not caused by Iran alone. It was caused by the war itself. And the MoU—by establishing the conditions for stabilizing passage through the Strait—does not compensate global economies for the losses incurred during the period of disruption. The reopening of the Strait is a reality. So are the costs incurred by its closure.

The Difference Between Ending a War and Winning One

A Memorandum of Understanding is, by definition, a document of principle. It establishes a framework, intentions, and general commitments. It is not a treaty of surrender. It is not an instrument of dismantlement. The Islamic Republic signed this document as an intact sovereign state, with its institutions in place, its army operational, and its military and nuclear programs ongoing.

Ending a war is an achievement. It would be absurd to deny it. Every additional day of fighting would have cost more lives. But ending a war is not the same as achieving the objectives that justified its launch. These two realities can coexist: the agreement put an end to the fighting, and the stated objectives were not achieved. Both are true at the same time.

In the coming weeks, we will hear people presenting this MoU as a victory. This will be politically understandable. It will be factually inaccurate. An agreement that ends a war without achieving the war’s objectives is a way out of a crisis, not a victory. This is no disgrace—ending a war without exacerbating its costs is sometimes the best one can do. But not confusing the two categories is a basic obligation of honesty.

What Iran Gained

While U.S. objectives were not achieved, Iran secured something tangible: the survival of its regime. This is, in fact, the most fundamental objective of any state engaged in an asymmetric conflict against a superior military power. The Islamic Republic withstood a U.S. military campaign. It signed a crisis-resolution agreement as a sovereign negotiating partner, not as a defeated regime.

This does not mean that Iran emerged unscathed. The U.S. strikes caused real destruction. The Iranian economy, already weakened by decades of sanctions, suffered further setbacks. Iranian casualties are well documented. But there is a clear distinction between suffering damage and capitulating. Iran suffered damage. It did not capitulate.

How Wars Rewrite Their Own Goals

The history of modern armed conflicts is full of wars whose objectives have shifted along the way. The mechanism is well documented: when initial objectives prove unattainable, policymakers seek more achievable substitute objectives and then present them as if they had always been central. This practice has a name in strategic literature: “goalpost shifting.”

In the case of the U.S.-Iran war, the pattern is clear. Overthrowing the regime was the primary objective. This was impossible to achieve without a ground occupation, and no such occupation was launched. The missile industry was to be “wiped out.” It still exists. The nuclear program was to be eliminated. It is still active. So reopening the Strait—a problem created by the war itself—has become an objective presented as a victory.

This mechanism is as old as war itself. And it works because collective memory is short, and because the media covering the end of a conflict are often different from those that covered its beginning. The objectives of February 28, 2025, are no longer the same as those presented when the MoU was signed. The task of journalism is to reject this organized amnesia. To lay out the two lists side by side. That is what this article does.

The precedents that help contextualize the sequence

This is not the first time the United States has launched a war with specific objectives and then issued a final assessment that no longer mentions them. The war in Iraq began with the promise of finding weapons of mass destruction and dismantling the Al-Qaeda network in Iraq—a network that did not exist before the invasion. The war in Afghanistan began with the promise to capture Osama bin Laden and dismantle the Taliban. Bin Laden was killed in 2011 in Pakistan. The Taliban have governed Afghanistan since 2021.

These precedents do not prove that the war against Iran is an exact repeat of these failures. Every conflict has its own logic. But they do show that shifting objectives and recharacterizing outcomes are established institutional practices in U.S. war communication. Recognizing this is not anti-Americanism. It is reading history.

Ormuz, Oil, and the Global Bill

Disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz during the conflict had measurable repercussions on global energy markets. Crude oil—about one-fifth of global trade in which passes through the strait—saw significant price increases during the period of disruption. These increases affected transportation costs, industrial production costs, and consumer costs in economies as far away as Japan, South Korea, India, and Europe.

This global economic cost is a direct consequence of a war launched with objectives that were not achieved, which disrupted a previously functioning maritime route, and which required a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to restore some of the initial stability. The bill will not be presented to the White House. It will be spread across millions of households and businesses in countries that played no role in the decision to launch this conflict.

Someone will pay for this. Not Trump. Not the strategists who mapped out the strikes. The families heating their homes with heating oil in Poland. The fishermen filling their boats in South Korea. The farmers in India whose fertilizer costs more. These people did not vote for this war. They are footing the bill. And their names will not appear in the official records of this war.

Businesses and Supply Chains

Beyond the price of crude oil, disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz have affected supply chains in sectors that depend on raw materials and petroleum products transiting through the Persian Gulf route. Delivery times have increased. Marine insurance costs have soared. Some companies have rerouted their shipments to longer and more expensive routes. These logistical costs do not disappear with the signing of a MoU. They have accumulated in corporate balance sheets and consumer prices throughout the duration of the disruptions.

The global economy, interconnected by energy flows that pass through a few critical chokepoints, is structurally vulnerable to this type of disruption. The war against Iran has exacerbated this vulnerability. The MoU mitigates its effects for the immediate future. It does not compensate for past losses.

The Comparison No One Wants to Make

In 2015, when the JCPOA was signed, Iran agreed to limit its uranium enrichment to 3.67%, reduce its stockpile of enriched uranium to 300 kilograms, dismantle two-thirds of its centrifuges, and accept regular inspections by the IAEA. These limits were verifiable. They were verified. The IAEA certified Iran’s compliance with its commitments on several occasions after 2015.

By 2025, before the war, Iran’s nuclear program had far exceeded these limits. Enrichment had reached 60% at times, approaching weapons-grade levels. The stockpile of enriched uranium was incomparably larger than in 2015. The centrifuges had been restarted. Everything that the JCPOA had covered had been rebuilt after 2018. The war did not restore the JCPOA. It did not reestablish the 2015 limits. It created a MoU whose precise nuclear framework is not yet known.

The comparison is inevitable and harsh: Iran’s nuclear program is less under control in 2025 than it was in 2015. That is a fact. This fact has a cause. The cause is the withdrawal from the JCPOA in 2018. And the person who made that decision is the same one who launched a war in 2025 to “eliminate” Iran’s nuclear program. This causal sequence is not an opinion. It is documented.

What “eliminating the nuclear program” would have required

Completely destroying a nuclear program by military force is an extremely complex task. Iran has had decades to anticipate preemptive strikes. Its most sensitive facilities are buried dozens of meters beneath bedrock, designed to withstand armor-piercing munitions. Some facilities are located in urban areas, making it difficult to carry out strikes without massive civilian casualties. Scientific and technical knowledge—the engineers, physicists, and blueprints—cannot be destroyed by bombs.

What the strikes can do: damage facilities, delay the program, and destroy certain equipment. What they cannot do: eliminate expertise, destroy the deepest buried facilities without penetrating nuclear munitions, or make it impossible to rebuild the program in the long term. This gap between the stated objective and the physical limitations of airstrikes is well known to all nonproliferation experts. It was known before the war began.

What Official Statements Have Said and What the Data Show

During and after the conflict, official U.S. statements emphasized tactical successes: facilities struck, capabilities degraded, objectives “achieved.” This messaging is consistent with institutional practices in military communications. It is not necessarily misleading regarding tactical details. Facilities were struck. Equipment was destroyed. Capabilities were temporarily reduced.

But communication about tactical successes does not answer the strategic question: Were the war’s objectives achieved? Regimes are not overthrown by statements of tactical success. Nuclear programs are not eliminated by press releases about “degraded” facilities. Missile industries are not wiped out simply because a few launchers were destroyed. The gap between tactical communication and the strategic assessment is the focus of this article.

There is a very specific language used in wartime communication. “Significantly degraded” means: still there, but in worse condition. “Objectives achieved at this stage” means: certain secondary objectives, perhaps. “The mission continues” means: we’ve changed our objectives. This language isn’t outright lying. It’s a rhetorical device that allows partial results to be presented as complete successes. Reading this language and interpreting it is a necessary exercise.

The Media’s Responsibility in Assessing the Outcome

The question of whether the war’s objectives have been achieved should be central to coverage of the conflict’s end. It requires keeping the original stated objectives in mind, comparing them side by side with the visible results, and resisting the temptation to follow the framing of official communications. This work is not consistently done. Media outlets covering the end of a war are often caught up in a dynamic of “normalization”—moving away from crisis mode and returning to other topics—which encourages superficial assessments.

This article attempts to do just that: list the stated objectives, list the visible results, and conclude that the gap between the two is real and verifiable. It is a basic exercise in journalism. The fact that it needs to be pointed out says something about the surrounding noise.

Archives as an Antidote to Rewriting History

February 28, 2025, is a date that will go down in history. Donald Trump’s speeches announcing the war’s objectives have been archived. Official press releases are archived. Statements by U.S. officials on the overthrow of the regime, the elimination of the nuclear program, and the destruction of the missile industry—everything is archived. In ten years, in twenty years, historians will compare these stated objectives with what the MoU actually established.

This article is a contribution to those archives. A modest contribution, but dated, sourced, and based on the information available at the time of writing. It says: this is what was promised. This is what is visible. The gap is there. Named. Documented. Resistant to rewriting.

The archives do not lie. They may be ignored, but they do not lie. In twenty years, someone will open Trump’s transcripts from February 2025 and read the objectives. Then they’ll open the MoU. And the comparison will be there, clear, relentless. That moment will come. This article attempts to render it unnecessary—to lay out now what the archives will reveal later. So that someone reading this today won’t have to wait twenty years to see the reality laid bare.

Wars and Their Founding Fictions

Almost every modern war produces a founding fiction: a narrative that transforms the actual outcome into something more presentable. The Korean War ended in an armistice, not a victory, but it was presented as the successful defense of South Korea. The Vietnam War was lost militarily but presented, decade after decade, as “unfinished rather than lost.” Afghanistan was abandoned amid chaos, yet some officials still speak of “twenty years that changed Afghan society.”

The war against Iran will undoubtedly produce its own narrative. It will be built around real tactical successes, the reopening of the Strait, and a MoU presented as a “game-changer.” This narrative has not yet fully taken shape. It will be written in the coming months. But it will be written against a backdrop of unmet objectives that this article has attempted to document before the rewriting begins.

What the Numbers Don’t Show

Every war has a human cost. The war between the United States and Iran is no exception to this reality. Combatants have died. Iranian civilians have died in U.S. strikes. U.S. personnel have been killed or wounded in Iranian attacks. Workers in transit countries have lost their livelihoods due to disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz. Families have been torn apart.

This human cost is real, regardless of political objectives. But the question of the outcome demands that we ask: were these lives sacrificed to achieve the stated objectives? If the objectives were not achieved, then the question of the price paid for a result that was not obtained arises with all the gravity it deserves. This is not a rhetorical question. It is the central question of accountability in a democracy.

Someone decided it was worth it. The objectives were worth the lives. That is the calculation made when a war is declared. And when the objectives are not achieved, that calculation leaves behind something unbearable. “Deaths for nothing” is not a phrase one utters easily. But it is sometimes true. And the honest thing to do is not to avoid it.

Accountability and Its Demands

In a democracy, wars are decided by elected or appointed officials. These officials must be held accountable—to Congress, to the voters, and to history. Accountability for a war requires evaluating its stated objectives against its actual results. It requires someone to ask the question: Does what we have achieved justify what we have spent—in money, in lives, in diplomatic credibility?

This question will be asked in the U.S. Congress. It will be asked in future election campaigns. It will be asked by the families of those who were killed. It deserves an honest answer, based on the available facts, not on the narrative of official communications. This article has sought to contribute to that discussion.

A Real Agreement on a Real Defeat of Objectives

The Memorandum of Understanding between the United States and Iran is real. It has put an end to active hostilities. It has created a framework for stabilizing the situation in the Persian Gulf. It may—if its terms are honored—serve as a foundation for lasting stability. These positive elements deserve to be acknowledged.

But the MoU does not erase the list of objectives declared on February 28, 2025. It does not erase the fact that the Islamic Republic is still in power. That Iranian missiles still exist. That Iran’s nuclear program is still active. That the Strait of Hormuz was open before the war and that its disruption was self-inflicted damage. That Iran’s 2025 nuclear program is, in large part, a consequence of the U.S. withdrawal from the JCPOA in 2018.

I’ll conclude this article with a question I cannot answer. How long will it take for the true toll of this war to be clearly stated—without spin, without foundational fiction? How many years before someone in a position of responsibility in the United States says: “We did not achieve what we set out to do”? This is not a question about Trump specifically. It’s a question about the ability of democracies to examine their own war records without lying to themselves. This ability, when exercised, is a strength. When it isn’t, it’s a vulnerability—for all the conflicts that will follow this one.

The list will remain there

The list is there. Overthrow the regime. Eliminate the nuclear program. Wipe out the missile industry. Open the Strait. These objectives were declared. The results are visible. The gap between the two is documented. No MoU can bridge it. No official communication can erase it. No rewriting can make it disappear from the archives.

And in the not-too-distant future, when someone opens these archives to understand what happened in the first weeks of spring 2025, this list will be there. Intact. Alongside it, what the MoU actually established. The comparison will be obvious. It’s already happening.

Signed, Maxime Marquette