Has Trump’s failure to bomb Iran into capitulation backfired, prompting Netanyahu and MBS to pull Washington in the opposite direction?

Despite US President Donald Trump’s repeated claims that the Iranian regime is on its knees and has all along desperately pleaded for a deal to end the seven-month-long war launched jointly by the US and Israel on 28th February, he has admitted on 9th September, albeit indirectly, that Iran was still standing firm, blaming the midterm elections — taking place on 3rd November — for the spectacular failure of his erratic tactics aiming to compel Iran into capitulation.

According to Trump, the chief reason behind Iran’s steadfast determination not only to hold out in the face of a ferocious US onslaught — which included 40 days of full-blown US-Israeli attacks — but also to fight back was because they are “desperate to try and affect the election, so that we can get a nice weak group of people in there”, meaning the Democrats, adding that “the war’s going to end immediately after the election because they can’t hold out any longer” and also predicting that “Right after the election, oil prices are going to be tumbling downward.”

Clearly, Trump’s claims are nothing short of a desperate attempt to incentivise the American electorate to vote for the Republican Party, as he is acutely aware that the US is stuck in an increasingly unpopular and unwinnable war that he had deliberately triggered without a clear strategy or endgame.

As a result, Trump has been struggling to break free from this war, which has undeniably turned into a new forever war, which he had pledged to end.

As things stand, Trump has been hell-bent on securing a much superior deal compared to US ex-President Barack Obama’s 2015 agreement with Iran. As such, he turned his back on the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) that he signed in June with Iran, as it was widely perceived in Washington as a sellout.

But with Trump running out of patience and options, he sought on 30 August to escalate the war by simultaneously deploying a combination of tactics: a comprehensive blockade of Iran’s ports, intensifying the tit-for-tat US attacks, targeting of Iranian oil tankers and unleashing what Trump has described as the “most crushing economic operation ever taken”.

Iran pulled no punches in its response, targeting not just US bases hosted by its Gulf allies and Jordan but has dangerously widened its targets to include an aircraft carrier and navy destroyers.

On 1 August, Trump threatened to destroy Iran’s civilian infrastructure and power plants, only to cancel the attack, claiming that new talks would begin despite Iranian denials.

READ: Trump says he expects Iran deal after US midterm elections

As part of Iran’s concerted efforts to deprive Trump of any face-saving achievements, Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi announced that an agreement with Oman — instead of the US — on a shipping route through the Strait of Hormuz (SoH) — the vital waterway through which about a fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas usually passes — was imminent.

In defiance, Trump has not just threatened on 14 August to bomb Oman “if it gets in the way of US talks with Iran over the issue” but successfully derailed a meeting on 7 September between Iran and the GCC countries, that was intended to focus on shipping through the SoH, by pushing Saudi Arabia and Bahrain to pull out.

It is worth noting that the SoH was open for shipping before Trump-Netanyahu waged war on Iran.

In retaliation, Iran has persistently blocked the Strait, thereby severely disrupting shipping and leading to soaring energy prices that have not only sparked an adverse impact on the global economy but, more significantly, have undermined the US domestic economy.

On that basis, Trump’s overriding priority has drastically shifted to reopening the SoH instead of the original objectives he had explicitly outlined — such as regime change, ending Iran’s nuclear threat, demolishing Iran’s ballistic missile programme and dismantling its allied or proxy paramilitary groups.

Buoyed by Trump’s glaring failure to claw back control of the SoH — coupled with confirmed reports highlighting perilous shortages in both interception and long-range missiles and an unprecedented decline in the US Strategic Oil Reserve — Iran’s Supreme National Security Council has underlined on 8 August that all of the contentious issues must be resolved before opening the SoH.

By contrast, the MoU requires opening the SoH first.

Benjamin Netanyahu has undoubtedly been the driving force behind Trump’s ill-conceived decision to wage an unprovoked war on Iran, confessing that he has been waiting 40 years for a US president to take the fight to Tehran.

He argued that this was a golden opportunity for Trump to ensure a rapid Venezuela-style triumph.

Even while Netanyahu has all along fiercely resisted halting the invasion of South Lebanon and ending the war on Iran, he had to succumb to Trump’s pressure given that the latest confrontations with Iran had laid bare Israel’s overwhelming reliance on the US both offensively and defensively.

For Netanyahu, any deal with Iran is a bad deal, thus it must be torpedoed.

When it comes to both MBS — Crown Prince and de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia — and MBZ — President of the UAE — they have shied away from openly backing the Trump-Netanyahu war on Iran but, in practice, they have not merely wholeheartedly embraced the war but, far more importantly, sponsored Trump’s implacable campaign to topple the Iranian regime.

During Trump’s trip in May 2025 to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE, he boasted about gaining $5 trillion while also stressing that “Iran should seriously thank the Emir of Qatar, because there are others who want us to deal a hard blow to Iran, unlike Qatar.”

READ: Trump plans $2.8bn sale of 40,000 heavy bombs to Israel

This clearly indicated that both Riyadh and Abu Dhabi have pressed Trump to target Iran.

Indeed, the Washington Post reported in February 2026 that even as Riyadh has publicly advocated for de-escalation, yet privately MBS lobbied Trump to take decisive military action, warning failure to do so would only embolden Iran.

And while MBS agreed in March 2023 to a Chinese-brokered rapprochement with Iran, in reality his aim has centered on stripping Iran of its formidable oil deterrence: closing the SoH and targeting Riyadh’s vast and highly vulnerable oil and energy facilities.

This agreement has unquestionably not merely paved the way for the US and Israel to target Iran with impunity during the 12-day war in June 2025, but also set the stage for Trump-Netanyahu to launch the 2026 war.

Against this backdrop, Trump has openly expressed his shock by Iran’s closure of the SoH and also its targeting of the Gulf states.

There is no doubt that the Trump-Netanyahu 2026 war on Iran that was started off by decapitating the Iranian leadership, including Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and also bluntly declaring that their overarching goal was regime change has provoked Tehran into treating the war as an existential threat, therefore ditching such a fragile agreement with Riyadh.

Although Iran has consistently threatened to enhance its leverage over global energy by extending its control of the SoH to also encompass the key Bab al-Mandab Strait — the southern gateway to the Red Sea — in practice, it was MBS’s reckless decision in July to bomb Sanaa airport — to block a Houthi delegation returning from Tehran from landing — that opened the door for the Houthis to get embroiled in the rapidly spreading regional war by imposing a blockade on Saudi ports and targeting its ships.

In a show of force, the Houthis launched a lightning advance that enabled them to stretch their control along the Red Sea by seizing the strategic port of Mokha and Perim Island in the Bab al-Mandab Strait.

To make matters worse for Trump-MBS, Riyadh was forced on 11 September to shut the crucial East-West pipeline — that it has relied on to pump oil from the Gulf to the Red Sea to circumvent the SoH — due to extensive damage caused by a drone attack, which Riyadh has blamed Iraqi paramilitary groups for.

Unsurprisingly, this raised alarm bells across the global economy as Brent crude surged to $109 per barrel and diesel in the US rocketed to above $6 a gallon.

On 2 August, Trump asserted that MBS dissuaded him from mounting a massive attack against Iran, fearing a devastating Iranian reprisal.

On the contrary, now MBS has urged Trump to intervene by bombing the Houthis.

Trump has so far resisted being dragged into a new confrontation with the Houthis, given that the US is still bogged down in a costly war on Iran.

It is increasingly apparent that Iran’s new Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei’s willingness to adopt a more daring approach by enforcing Iran’s declared red lines has undeniably contributed to Trump’s failure to bomb Iran into capitulation, prompting his staunchest allies, Netanyahu and MBS, into pulling Washington in diametrically opposite directions.

Far from making America great again, Trump’s rash gamble has bolstered Iran’s influence and power while, in comparison, it has eroded US credibility, alienated its allies and empowered its foes.

OPINION: Will Trump subvert Iraq’s 2025 elections by coercing Baghdad into the US–Saudi orbit and away from Iran?

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.