John Menadue's Public Policy Journal
March 30, 2026
The US-led war on Iran lacks clear objectives or strategy, accelerating the erosion of American credibility while exposing failures in political and media judgement.
Why is it only now that the world’s markets, the masters of statecraft in the democracies and even some of US President Donald Trump’s cultists are beginning to realise that the undeclared war on Iran is demented?
Those who declared it justified can only offer the wan excuse that it seemed like a good idea at the time. But it was always a bad idea, with no clear objective, no exit strategy, and no true cause ever offered – Trump even said he might bomb Iran’s Kharg Island “just for fun”. More recently, Trump on Friday told a Saudi-backed investment forum that while he didn’t think the Iran war was a “big risk”, conceded there were surprises with war.
The damage the US is delivering to its power, prestige, credibility and self-confidence is becoming apparent, while the rise in influence of its declared enemies and rivals Russia, China and North Korea is enormous.
Ask yourself this: who in a capital regarded as an enemy of Trump (such as Brazil or South Africa) could now not recognise a nuclear ICBM as their only defence? Kim Jong Un in North Korea must caress even more tenderly his nuclear button at night, while Japan and South Korea will surely move closer to accepting that the nuclear option provides their only true deterrent.
Not to mention the death and misery imposed on the population of Iran, for whom Trump and his supporters have expressed cynical and hypocritical sympathy.
The conflict is being covered as if a tennis match, and an endless stream of claims and counter-claims ribbons its own arc of confusion between Washington and Tehran.
Trump talks of conversations with the Iranians in the last two days that will lead to “a complete and total resolution of our hostilities in the Middle East”, while an Iranian spokesman says “we have had no direct or indirect contact with US representatives”.
In the 1930s as Hitler’s Germany rearmed, Stalin slaughtered his own people and Mussolini flexed his strategic muscle in Africa, the American foreign affairs journalist Walter Lippmann noted that regardless of whether the country was at war or not, “the news of the day as it reaches the newspaper office is an incredible medley of fact, propaganda, rumour, suspicion, clues, hopes and fears”.
And he added that “the task of selecting and ordering that news is one of the truly sacred and priestly offices in a democracy. For the newspaper is in all literalness the bible of democracy, the book out of which a people determines its conduct”.
Lippmann’s observations should be borne in mind as this war stretches into its fifth week.
Consider the extraordinary euphemisms that abound in reporting it. “Off ramps” are being searched for, as if war with a Gestapo-ruled high-technology nation of deep religious fervour was akin to a fun ride on a freeway.
An acceptable “off-ramp” is often seen as something that first must save face for Trump, while simultaneously leaving 90 million Iranians living in a ruined nation, the world economy on a knife-edge, and Trump declaring “victory”. The instinct in the reporting is that any solution must stroke Trump’s ego.
In fact, this war, whatever the sordid nature of the Iranian dictators, is classically demented. There is no clear objective and no strategy to end the war at a point short of dismantling the world economy. Likewise, there is no understanding of the diminishing of US influence and power that this incompetently prosecuted war has delivered.
In a crazed way, talking – as the world’s press and statesmen do – of a “deal” is an acknowledgement that they think Trump organises his war policy in the mode of his past property deals, where he often dudded his investors but preserved his own hidden wealth.
The US press, on which the Australian press relies for more than 50 per cent of its war reporting, routinely sees the war through the extremely narrow focus of a possible negative electoral response to Trump’s war in the November congressional elections.
And the US, largely self-sufficient in hydrocarbons, sees the major casualty of the war as a 30 per cent rise in the petrol price.
There remains a deep illusion in the US that its international influence remains. In fact, few of the most gushingly supportive allies of the US privately place any trust in Washington’s assurances or believe in any policy objectives declared. Just ask Kyiv.
The multinational force called upon to clear the Strait of Hormuz is another example of press release diplomacy. What is being offered to Iran?
We hear often of the fanaticism of the Iranians and their Shia faith. But listen to Pete Hegseth’s call for Americans to pray for victory “every day, on bended knee, with your family, in your schools, in your churches in the name of Jesus Christ”.
This is, of course, more than matched by the poisonous religious fanatics in Tehran who refuse to let the truth out about the numbers of Iranians killed and fail to provide an explanation for why it attacked its neighbours (other than, of course, the presence of US military bases there).
In Tel Aviv, Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu is just as demented yet escapes serious criticism because of Trump’s prominence. But his reckoning will come: perhaps in the form of a nuclear-armed Saudi Arabia.
From all sides comes a deliberate smokescreen, only highlighting the difficulties and failures of the media in trying to grasp what is going on. The world is caught in a hurricane of misinformation and ignorance.
The US-led war on Iran lacks clear objectives or strategy, accelerating the erosion of American credibility while exposing failures in political and media judgement.
Why is it only now that the world’s markets, the masters of statecraft in the democracies and even some of US President Donald Trump’s cultists are beginning to realise that the undeclared war on Iran is demented?
Those who declared it justified can only offer the wan excuse that it seemed like a good idea at the time. But it was always a bad idea, with no clear objective, no exit strategy, and no true cause ever offered – Trump even said he might bomb Iran’s Kharg Island “just for fun”. More recently, Trump on Friday told a Saudi-backed investment forum that while he didn’t think the Iran war was a “big risk”, conceded there were surprises with war.
The damage the US is delivering to its power, prestige, credibility and self-confidence is becoming apparent, while the rise in influence of its declared enemies and rivals Russia, China and North Korea is enormous.
Ask yourself this: who in a capital regarded as an enemy of Trump (such as Brazil or South Africa) could now not recognise a nuclear ICBM as their only defence? Kim Jong Un in North Korea must caress even more tenderly his nuclear button at night, while Japan and South Korea will surely move closer to accepting that the nuclear option provides their only true deterrent.
Not to mention the death and misery imposed on the population of Iran, for whom Trump and his supporters have expressed cynical and hypocritical sympathy.
The conflict is being covered as if a tennis match, and an endless stream of claims and counter-claims ribbons its own arc of confusion between Washington and Tehran.
Trump talks of conversations with the Iranians in the last two days that will lead to “a complete and total resolution of our hostilities in the Middle East”, while an Iranian spokesman says “we have had no direct or indirect contact with US representatives”.
In the 1930s as Hitler’s Germany rearmed, Stalin slaughtered his own people and Mussolini flexed his strategic muscle in Africa, the American foreign affairs journalist Walter Lippmann noted that regardless of whether the country was at war or not, “the news of the day as it reaches the newspaper office is an incredible medley of fact, propaganda, rumour, suspicion, clues, hopes and fears”.
And he added that “the task of selecting and ordering that news is one of the truly sacred and priestly offices in a democracy. For the newspaper is in all literalness the bible of democracy, the book out of which a people determines its conduct”.
Lippmann’s observations should be borne in mind as this war stretches into its fifth week.
Consider the extraordinary euphemisms that abound in reporting it. “Off ramps” are being searched for, as if war with a Gestapo-ruled high-technology nation of deep religious fervour was akin to a fun ride on a freeway.
An acceptable “off-ramp” is often seen as something that first must save face for Trump, while simultaneously leaving 90 million Iranians living in a ruined nation, the world economy on a knife-edge, and Trump declaring “victory”. The instinct in the reporting is that any solution must stroke Trump’s ego.
In fact, this war, whatever the sordid nature of the Iranian dictators, is classically demented. There is no clear objective and no strategy to end the war at a point short of dismantling the world economy. Likewise, there is no understanding of the diminishing of US influence and power that this incompetently prosecuted war has delivered.
In a crazed way, talking – as the world’s press and statesmen do – of a “deal” is an acknowledgement that they think Trump organises his war policy in the mode of his past property deals, where he often dudded his investors but preserved his own hidden wealth.
The US press, on which the Australian press relies for more than 50 per cent of its war reporting, routinely sees the war through the extremely narrow focus of a possible negative electoral response to Trump’s war in the November congressional elections.
And the US, largely self-sufficient in hydrocarbons, sees the major casualty of the war as a 30 per cent rise in the petrol price.
There remains a deep illusion in the US that its international influence remains. In fact, few of the most gushingly supportive allies of the US privately place any trust in Washington’s assurances or believe in any policy objectives declared. Just ask Kyiv.
The multinational force called upon to clear the Strait of Hormuz is another example of press release diplomacy. What is being offered to Iran?
We hear often of the fanaticism of the Iranians and their Shia faith. But listen to Pete Hegseth’s call for Americans to pray for victory “every day, on bended knee, with your family, in your schools, in your churches in the name of Jesus Christ”.
This is, of course, more than matched by the poisonous religious fanatics in Tehran who refuse to let the truth out about the numbers of Iranians killed and fail to provide an explanation for why it attacked its neighbours (other than, of course, the presence of US military bases there).
In Tel Aviv, Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu is just as demented yet escapes serious criticism because of Trump’s prominence. But his reckoning will come: perhaps in the form of a nuclear-armed Saudi Arabia.
From all sides comes a deliberate smokescreen, only highlighting the difficulties and failures of the media in trying to grasp what is going on. The world is caught in a hurricane of misinformation and ignorance.
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