Trump’s military is at breaking point – and he’ll pay for it at the ballot box

The attack by US drones on Iran’s Larak Island reveals that Donald Trump’s mission control, like Houston and Apollo 13, has a major problem. Sunday’s strike has led to the resumption of open hostilities between Iran and America after a relative lull since July. The war, which was intended to last six weeks at most, has now run for more than six months. To say there is no credible peace settlement in sight might qualify as the understatement of the year. The markets quickly got the message – within minutes of the news of the attacks on the island in the Strait of Hormuz, oil prices moved up two per cent on world markets. The Larak mission comes only four days after Trump had announced that the Strait was free of mines, thanks largely to US clearing efforts, and that shipping lanes were open. The Iranians responded by calling this a “blatant lie”. Shorts Trump’s follow-up to the Larak strike was to post an AI-generated video on his Truth Social platform showing the major Iranian oil loading facility on Kharg Island, at the northern end of the Gulf, “being blown to smithereens” in an air attack. The latest exchange of fire means that there is little chance of meaningful peace talks before the US midterm elections in early November, and Israel’s general election on 27 October. It means rising prices on the international energy markets and at the petrol pumps for US voters. Trump is facing a serious military credibility gap. Not only have his forces been using up ammunition at an alarming rate – in keeping with Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s indulgence of video wargame culture – but they are overstretched in terms of personnel, too. The carrier USS Abraham Lincoln has just headed back to port after operations in the Gulf. It had been at sea for more than 205 days at one point, and crew wrote home about depression, anxiety and even suicide. Hegseth is criticised for his constant purges of the officer corps of the services, promoting those loyal to the Maga cause. Important elements of the reserve have been cancelled – which means the air and naval services are becoming short of vital maintenance and supply crew, according to critics. He recently fired the editor and publisher of Stars and Stripes, the services’ in-house newspaper. Trump published a Truth Social post accompanied by an AI-generated video purporting to show Kharg Island engulfed in flames (Screengrab: Truth Social/@realDonaldTrump) Trump himself has recently insisted that the US Navy goes back to using steam catapults on aircraft carriers, instead of the cutting-edge magnetic rail launchers currently being fitted. Steam catapults take up huge amounts of space – and consume huge amounts of steam energy. Meanwhile, the Navy is tasked with designing the new Trump-class battleship, a class of two dozen at least, at a cost of $29bn each at today’s prices – roughly a third of the total UK defence budget. In Iran, Trump faces an adversary more like him than he realises. Neither likes to play by the rules. On the day Trump resumed attacking Iran, the new Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, called for “all Muslims to unite against their common enemy”, adding: “and you all know who that is”. In six months of war with Iran, Trump has stretched US military capability and credibility as never before this century. He faces a more ruthless foe in Tehran than he did before he invaded on 28 February. The cabal of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) generals led by the force commander Ahmad Vahidi, security chief Mohsen Rezaei and speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, is uncompromising. They seem indifferent to the desperate plight of most Iranians as the economy lies in ruins. But they recognise the advantage Trump has given them in their control of the Strait of Hormuz. They also seem to understand how to play Trump’s peculiar habit of insulting and alienating his allies, from the Gulf to the UK, Denmark and Canada. They know he does this as his diplomatic and military resources grow ever thinner. The Strait now risks becoming a tollbooth for a new toughened Iranian regime. It is reported that the IRGC has been charging a about $2m to let oil tankers through. Pedestrians pass beneath an anti-US billboard displayed in Tehran as tensions between Iran and the United States continue (Photo: Fatemeh Bahrami/Anadolu via Getty Images) On Monday morning, Iranian media reported that a tanker had hit a sea mine at the approaches to the Strait because it was taking “an unauthorised route”. This has not been confirmed. The attack on Larak Island was intended to stop Iran from launching rockets and laying mines across the Gulf. Larak sits at the apex of the Strait of Hormuz, in the narrows between the peninsula of Oman and the UAE and the major Iranian port of Bandar Abbas. The reporting of the follow-up to the attack by US Reaper drones is a familiar brew of fact and fantasy. The Iranian regime reported that it had retaliated by attacking two US-run air bases in Jordan with cruise missiles. Reports from Jordan suggested the missiles had been shot down, though no evidence was supplied. The UAE official media reported that there had been no attack on Jordan. Projectiles streak across the sky in this screengrab from footage published by Iranian authorities purporting to show missiles launched at US military targets in Jordan from an unknown location, released on Monday (Screengrab: Wana News Agency via Reuters) Unease has been growing for weeks, not least among some Republican supporters, about the profligacy and wastage in the way Trump and Hegseth have run the war in the Middle East. Huge numbers of rockets, missiles and air defence systems have been expended. The despatch of at least 50,000 extra US military personnel, at least two aircraft carrier groups, plus Marine Expeditionary Units with their air wings and light aircraft carrier support, is deemed to have weakened American military capability and posture worldwide. Two-thirds of all Patriot air defence missiles have been used. Only 600 or so are made each year, though this is about to increase, at a price of around $4m each. Stockpiles of Tomahawk land attack missiles are running low, as are the sophisticated, precision-guided, air-launched missiles and rockets used profligately by Israeli and US air forces in the attack on Iran last March. These did a lot of damage and killed a cohort of the Iranian leadership, including the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and his most adroit diplomat Ali Larijani. But it failed strategically, landing much of the world with a problem: the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. Before this war, Kharg handled roughly 90 per cent of Iran’s oil exports, with 20 per cent of global energy exports, both oil and gas, passing through the Strait. Israel prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, perversely, is likely to play further confrontation with the Ayatollahs to his advantage at the hustings. But for Trump, the mess he has created in Iran has caused him irreparable damage – he will see just how much at November’s elections.