'Everyone but Trump knows he's lost Iran war - he will keep gambling with lives as Putin blatantly betrays him'

It is nearly impossible to imagine the US-Iran war not exploding again. And yet the most sensible thing to happen would be for the war to end in a peace deal. The problem is that everybody but US President Donald Trump knows America has lost the war. Even if he did know it, he would not have the heart to admit it. He will keep upping the stakes, gambling with the lives of others, threatening more war, until perhaps the power to do so is removed from him, because Iran will not allow him to stop. Tehran has outplayed him at every turn, correctly gambling on Trump being drawn into their trap and withstanding billions of pounds worth of airstrikes. It seems Tehran’s appetite for shaking off deadly US airstrikes grows with every Trump outburst and military action as the regime sacrifices its own people. Why would Trump think Iran was going to give up and surrender, given its willingness to slaughter tens of thousands just for demonstrating? Iran looks set to react and escalate if the US attacks, deploying proxy forces such as the increasingly potent Yemeni Houthis, the Shia pro-Tehran Iraqi militia, even the vastly depleted Hezbollah. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has strangleholded the Strait of Hormuz and is able to attack merchant shipping at will, whilst deploying the Houthis to choke the Bab al-Mandab Strait on the other side of the Yemeni peninsula. Every ridiculous lie from bungling Pete Hegseth - the cosplayer in-chief so called ‘Secretary of War’ - regarding US victory in the Middle East has been exposed. Lawmakers repeatedly asked him recently if his statement that Iran’s military had been destroyed was still true, given its ability to dominate the region and attack US bases. He was flustered as he argued Iran was now unable to attack the US with a nuclear weapon. Perhaps he has not yet noticed that his morally bankrupt boss Trump is cosying up to Vladimir Putin, whose intelligence leaks to Iran is risking the lives of US soldiers, who are under his charge. It is widely believed that Moscow has been sharing location intelligence of US bases with Iran and this has led to a number of bloody targetings of US military installations in places such as Jordan and Saudi Arabia. In March, Iranian missiles slammed into Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia, wounding twelve American troops and damaging an E-3 AWACS radar plane. Two days before the attack fourteen Russian spy satellites passed over the base. U.S. officials later concluded that Moscow’s information made the precision attack possible. Putin is barely even dealing behind Trump’s back - he is making it so obvious that he’s almost doing it right in front of his face as if to mock him. Trump is stretching the patience of the west with his crash and burn diplomacy that is daily stretching the geopolitical piano wire almost to breaking point. It is difficult to know exactly where this is going. But everything Trump touches gets broken. So the tension across the Middle East and beyond is going to increase and whatever does happen, it is likely to involve Britain.