So.... What the fuck did the orange shit accomplish????

Six months on, Trump’s Iran ‘excursion’ risks igniting crises far beyond the Middle East

Analysis by Ivana Kottasová, Brad Lendon

When US President Donald Trump launched his war against Iran, he called it an “excursion” that would take just a few weeks. Six months later, the conflict has become a nightmare for almost everyone even remotely involved in it.

It’s been a disaster for the Iranian people, for the millions living elsewhere across the Middle East, and for consumers around the world who are struggling with higher costs.

Yet Trump’s war goals remain unfulfilled, even though the goalposts keep shifting: from initially demanding a complete Iranian surrender, regime change and the abandoning of the Islamic Republic’s nuclear ambitions, to more recently simply demanding the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz and putting the brakes on Tehran’s nuclear program.

But the war’s unintended consequences have spread far beyond the Middle East, affecting global security, diminishing America’s global standing, and potentially providing its adversaries with an opportunity to expand their influence.

As the Trump administration focuses all its energy on trying to get out of the self-inflicted crisis in Iran, it has taken the eye off the ball of other potential global flashpoints the US has long been involved in, including Ukraine, Taiwan and the South China Sea, and the Koreas.

From Trump’s decision to scale back the annual joint military exercises with South Korea and pulling out the only US aircraft carrier in the Western Pacific, to the critical shortages of ballistic missile interceptors in Ukraine, many of the war’s most consequential geopolitical and security effects may ultimately be felt far beyond the Middle East, and have yet to materialize.

Emily Harding, a vice president of the Defense and Security Department at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a US-based think tank, said that while none of the potential flashpoints have developed into a full-scale crisis yet, there is good reason to be worried.

“This is the kind of thing where the global adversaries are going to be taking note of the situation and learning more about how the US reacts in certain moments and then folding that into their planning. But we haven’t seen anybody take advantage of it yet,” she said.

“It’s more that some foundations are being weakened, not that we’re actually seeing the building start to shake.”

Ukraine and Russia

The US-Israeli attacks have sparked a furious retaliation from Tehran. Iranian drones, ballistic missiles and other projectiles have been raining down on US bases and allies across the Middle East.

As the US and its allies burned through their weapons stockpiles, some ammunition originally slated for Ukraine had been redirected.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told CNN this month that his country had only a tenth of the interceptor missiles it urgently needed to stop surging Russian ballistic missile attacks.

The shortages are having devastating consequences for the Ukrainians: This summer has been the deadliest period for civilians since May 2022.

The global oil crisis caused by Iran’s decision to effectively shut the Strait of Hormuz has also undermined the Trump administration’s economic pressure campaign against Moscow. Faced with the rising cost of gasoline at US pumps, Trump took the controversial decision to lift some sanctions on Russian oil exports to cool the market. In doing so, the US effectively helped Russia earn more cash to fund the war effort in Ukraine.

The global disruption to oil, gas and fertilizer trade caused by the closure of the strait has also helped Russia make inroads on finding new customers.

Alexander Gabuev, the director of Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin, said this was demonstrated when Russian President Vladimir Putin hosted the leaders of Southeast Asian countries in the Russian city of Kazan in June.

“The turnout in Kazan was impressive: Nine of 11 heads of state from ASEAN were present, along with the Indonesian foreign minister and a special representative from Myanmar. Above all, these men decided to make the long journey to Russia because of US and Israeli attacks on Iran causing higher prices for energy and fertilizer,” he said.

In some ways, the Iran war has benefited Ukraine. It has made the rest of the world realize that the more than four years of war have turned Kyiv into a drone superpower and led to an array of security cooperation agreements and ammunition promises with a number of nations.

The Koreas

The Iran war is now casting a shadow over another potential flashpoint: the Korean Peninsula, which has technically been at war for more than seven decades in the absence of a peace deal following the 1950-1953 conflict South and North Korea.

The US has been deeply involved in the region, with some 28,500 American troops stationed in South Korea. But the decades-long relationship suffered a hiccup this year when Trump sharply curtailed the annual Ulchi Freedom Shield joint military exercises with Seoul, partly citing South Korea’s lack of support for the Iran war.

The US president has also signaled openness for talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, who has been overseeing a steady increase in his country’s nuclear arsenal and regular missile launches.

Analysts said the consequences of cutting military exercises impacts readiness if war were to resume on the Korean Peninsula in the short term, and its more distant effects include lengthening the time needed for Seoul to assume wartime control of its troops, something sought by both the South Koreans and the US.

South Korean officials said this week that a second exercise, for amphibious landings scheduled for September, was canceled in June. Those exercises were to have involved US Marines stationed in the Japanese island of Okinawa, units of which were involved in the blockade of Iranian ports.

There is also the question of supplies and logistics, including the reallocations of some US missile interceptors from South Korea to the Middle East during the fighting. The Pentagon hasn’t revealed how much of the interceptor inventory was moved, but analysts say possible long-term shortages of key interceptors like the Patriot system are likely.

Taiwan and the South China Sea

The deployment of the Japan-based aircraft carrier USS George Washington to the Arabian Sea to relieve the beleaguered USS Abraham Lincoln leaves the US without any aircraft carriers in the Pacific for an indeterminate time should the need for one arise.

The US has had a continuous presence in the Pacific for more than two decades with the exception of a gap of several weeks in 2024.

That lack of a carrier in the US 7th Fleet’s area of responsibility raises questions for other regional allies.

The Philippines will be particularly worried given the increasing Chinese activity in the South China Sea, around disputed features like Scarborough Shoal, which lies in the Philippines exclusive economic zone but is effectively controlled by Beijing.

Tensions between Manila and Beijing extend to Second Thomas Shoal which, like Scarborough, is in the Spratly Islands. Both have seen at-sea clashes between Filipino and Chinese personnel.

The US and the Philippines have a mutual defense treaty, and if the tensions with China were to escalate, not having a carrier in the region could put US forces at a distinct disadvantage, especially given the current issues with munition stockpiles.

“The big thing that I’m worried about is what it looks like for the US in a potential conflict with China,” Harding said. “We’re not seeing that turn up anytime soon … but if there were to be a conflict with China, we would be in a state of ammunition shortage, specifically the ones that we’re going to need for that conflict.”

Global chokepoints

There could be other devastating consequences of the war – for example if other players try to weaponize other international shipping chokepoints.

“We’re not yet seeing this, but if it got to a point later on where one of those countries wanted to, they could certainly point to this as a (precedent),” Harding said.

She added that the severity of the war’s impact will depend chiefly on how long the US keeps fighting it.

“The Trump administration has to decide what’s good enough for an outcome here and if the only thing that’s good enough is a complete destruction of the nuclear program and, what Israel wants, which is an Iran that’s internally broken and divided, then that is a long commitment of both blood and treasure and the world economy is going to feel the consequences of that long term,” she said.

But Trump could also decide that it could be enough to make the nuclear program “unusable,” she added – something he suggested could be done by keeping the key sites, currently destroyed and under the rubble, inaccessible to Iran by striking whenever Tehran tries to access them.

“That’s not a great solution, but it’s a workable solution. And if that’s enough, and if (Iran’s) weakened proxy network is enough, then what you really have to deal with is the Strait of Hormuz, and that’s hard and a little bit expensive, but nowhere near as expensive as what (the US is) doing right now,” she said.

“From the Iranian perspective, all they have to do is survive, and they’re doing that. So they can kind of keep this going for as long as they want.”