One reason people fear this is that, on the face of it, President Trump seems to have lost the war. Then President Trump initiated the war on February 28 on the apparently nonexistent intelligence that, if he did not start the war when he did, “Israel would have been blown off the face of the Earth.” That specious assertion implied that Iran was on the brink of nuclear weapons breakout. Then, Trump argued that the war was necessary because the US needed to obliterate all the Iranian ballistic missile and drone threats. The Americans, despite their air war against Iran, had demonstrated an inability to end the Iranian threat in these areas, too.