US victory cry rings hollow

US President Donald Trump gestures as he arrives at Palm Beach International Airport in West Palm Beach, Florida on February 27, 2026. Picture: Mandel Ngan / AFP So much winning. Many of those in the American camp – led by cheerleader Donald Trump – are crowing that the war with Iran is won, or almost won.

What I find interesting is that no-one on the side of US ally Israel – which has decades of fighting tough Middle East wars – has said anything like that. We have all seen the braggadocio of Trump, as the King of the World (as he believes he is) wielding the Big American Stick. But we have also seen his flip-flopping, so we have to wonder, how the hell can we believe you when you say Iran is finished?

How is it that a country whose missile sites have been destroyed, at least according to the US, still manages to launch ballistic missiles and swarms of drones at both Israel and countries across the Gulf region? How is it that a country which has supposedly lost all or most of its maritime fighting ability, manages to block the Strait of Hormuz and threaten shutdowns and chaos across the oil and other markets? How is it that if the war is “almost over” – Trump says it is just a case of deciding when – that the International Energy Agency released a record 400 million barrels of crude oil to help stabilise the global market?

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That was the largest in the history of the agency, which was set up to provide a safety net for the world energy network after the Arab-Israeli War in 1973. Previous crises saw only fractions of that amount put onto world markets. In 1991, as Kuwait’s oil fields burned from Saddam Hussein’s sabotage in the first Gulf war, the release was just 65 million barrels.

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