Ex-U.S. Ambassador Nails Exactly How Trump Has ‘Already Lost’ Iran War

Daniel Fried, who once served as U.S. ambassador to Poland, called out the president over his “improvising” ways in the Middle East.

A former State Department official has summed up what he described as the “problem” with President Donald Trump’s Iran war.

Daniel Fried — who served as U.S. ambassador to Poland during Bill Clinton’s second term — told Bloomberg Radio on Tuesday that he isn’t optimistic about diplomacy prevailing in the conflict but didn’t rule out that the U.S. and Iran would “negotiate something” one way or another.

“But ask yourself, ‘What then?’ If this war becomes about opening the Strait of Hormuz, we’ve already lost because the Strait of Hormuz is only closed because we started the war,” said Fried of the strait that’s effectively been shut down since the U.S.-Israeli deadly offensive on Iran roughly one month ago.

“We started the war for the purpose of regime change or obliterating Iran’s military, and we have not succeeded in doing that.”

He proceeded to call out Trump’s “improvising” ways in the Middle East, a nod to the administration’s grab-bag-like approach to rationalizing the conflict.