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"This War Is Already Lost": Spencer Ackerman & Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi on Trump's Iran Debacle

2026-04-02 News & Politics
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Support our work: https://democracynow.org/donate/sm-desc-yt President Donald Trump gave a primetime televised address Wednesday to discuss the war on Iran, his first since the United States and Israel launched attacks on February 28. Trump gave few clues about when or how the war could end, but he boasted about killing top Iranian leaders and degrading the country’s military. He threatened to bomb Iran “back to the stone ages, where they belong.” Despite the grandiose claims, built on “lies and delusions,” Trump “did not add anything new,” says Iranian American scholar Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi, who calls Trump’s shifting justifications an admission of “defeat in the war of narratives.” We also speak with journalist Spencer Ackerman, who says the U.S. has already lost the war. “Iran has changed the entirety of this conflict,” he says. “It has pivoted this conflict onto its own territory and its own goals, and the United States does not have a military mechanism to redress that, primarily the throttling of the Strait of Hormuz.” Subscribe to our Daily Email Digest: https://democracynow.org/subscribe

Top Comments (10)

@ssb1056 2026-04-02

He is so tacky and all those imbecilic sycophants cheering him on…

249 10 replies
@roberthaile1210 2026-04-02

How did we end up here? It feels like a bad dream.

198 40 replies
@sahrtown 2026-04-02

Until someone has experienced war in their homeland, they will never truly appreciate peaceful ways to settle conflicts.

150 17 replies
@beautifuldetails 2026-04-02

Hey! Remember when he said he was doing this to "save" the Iranian civilians?

117 9 replies
@JS_Precision 2026-04-02

I am happy that the guest brought up the normalization of war crimes. It is one of the worst consequences of this era.

115 3 replies
@Sadhu1 2026-04-02

Amy my folks enjoyed watching you through the years. When you were hurt and jailed in Minneapolis my mother cried saying, “Look what they did to my Amy!” Good memories and I want to thank you for being a part of our lives. Smiling and loving you.

107 11 replies
@h.h.3102 2026-04-02

The American problem IS-RAEL They really said “let’s run the JFK model one more time” and expected nobody to notice.

57 3 replies
@ccspt-z2r 2026-04-02

They don’t hit the oil because he doesn’t want to damage his rich friends interests

28 4 replies
@debrawhitlock6340 2026-04-02

NO MORE WAR‼️Bring our troops home NOW…no more weeks🇺🇸❤️‍🩹

23
@KeithGeorgeSR 2026-04-02

The whole thing is criminal

20

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