In his first year in office, Donald Trump made several major mistakes that made his second year more difficult.
Three errors stand out:
- Aid offered to Russia, meant to maximize its posture in the so-called peace negotiations, counting on the idea that it will force Ukraine to a quick surrender. Trump’s help to Putin consisted in: harassing Zelensky (which also included venting stridently narrative of delegitimizing the Ukrainian president); suspending military support, turning it into a simple and cynical arms trade, with Europeans as captive clients on behalf of Kyiv; suspending intelligence aid for Ukrainian forces operating in Russia’s Kursk region (a year ago), allowing Russia to unexpectedly gain ground and blowing up Ukrainian plans to use captured Russian territories to recover captured Ukrainian territories.
- Imposing tariffs around the world, but this approach was finally invalidated by the Supreme Court; something that will put significant political pressure on the White House and the Republican Party at the most difficult moment – the 2026 election year; which leaves Trump little room to peacefully manage clashes with Xi.
- The alienation of European, Canadian and even Asian allies led to a dramatic change in their attitude towards the US. Today, in the context of the war in Iran, President Trump is feeling the boomerang effect of his dishonest and surprisingly unpragmatic attitude towards the US’ old and loyal friends on the North American and the Eurasian plateaus.
These three errors, committed by Trump in 2025, hung heavily and in the long term in the balance of US foreign policy, even if the next three remaining years of Trump’s presidency were to be spared extraordinary and disruptive events.
But they were not spared, because on February 28, the US president entered an all-out war with Iran – a geopolitical, political, economic, security and humanitarian cataclysm. This means that the impact of the errors listed above can only be amplified by the new context.
Donald Trump started the war with Iran apparently without taking into account the fact that Iran has two huge allies on its side, both deeply interested in prolonging their resistance to America and capable of doing so: Russia and China.
For Iran’s two allies, Trump went to war as follows:
- Regarding China, not fully prepared, because the Supreme Court removed the US president’s only ace in relation to Beijing – tariffs.
- Related to Russia, he failed to take advantage of the opportunity to weaken it to relative irrelevance on the front in Ukraine and internally. On the contrary, through his friendly approach to Putin in the year before the conflict with Iran, Trump managed to pump oxygen into the lean body of the Moscow regime, revitalizing an actor who was almost comatose.
In doing so, the U.S. president has both encouraged and empowered Russia and China to sufficiently help Iran, with terrible consequences for U.S. forces engaged in combat and with similar consequences for America’s allies in the region, who are directly affected by the fighting.
Future historians will rack their brains to understand how it was possible that, just before the war started, the leader of the world’s superpower blew them right into the sails of the most dangerous allies of his mortal enemy.
Of course, studying Trump’s strategy, the same historians will also rack their brains to wonder what the reason was for alienating their allies in the year leading up to the biggest war initiated by the US in the last quarter of a century.
It is foreseeable that the difficulties those historians will encounter in finding a reasonable kernel of meaning won’t be able to find one even if they resort to infinitely more evolved forms of artificial intelligence than those available today.
In the case of Russia, the irony of fate is as macabre as it gets: thanks to Trump’s help to Putin, in 2025, Putin is able to help Iran shatter critical infrastructure and American lives and to shatter critical infrastructure and lives among America’s allies in the region.
Thanks to Trump’s incompetence, in terms of the economy and international trade, China has been assured a relevant margin of maneuver in 2026 to be able to directly and indirectly help Iran, and support Russia to support Iran.
Finally, due to his immeasurable ego and deep gaps in history and geopolitics, the same Donald Trump has determined the US’ strategic allies, in the case of Iran, a policy of discouraging America’s approach.
Trump forgets (or maybe he doesn’t actually know) that in the last century and more, America has had to pay a price in blood and allocate colossal resources whenever Europe has been in trouble. This was the case in the two world wars and was also the case with the Cold War. Russia’s war in Ukraine risks opening a similar new horizon, if it is further managed by America and Donald Trump’s narrow logic.
In Trump’s words, we are geographically separated by a “big and beautiful ocean”, but distances mean less in the age of super-technology, and geopolitics have always involved something more than just geography.
Everything has a price, but mistakes, missed opportunities, and infatuation are often the most costly.
In Iran, Donald Trump, after his Ukraine adventure, has just met a deadline that threatens him with insolvency.
