Dr Mohamed Dawo: Sierra Leone Telegraph: 12 November 2026:
When the United States and Israel launched a massive joint attack on Iran on February 28, 2026, the architects of the campaign envisioned a swift, decisive triumph, Operation Epic Fury and Israel’s were designed around a clear premise: decapitate the Islamic Republic’s leadership, trigger a popular uprising in the streets, and watch a new compliant government rise from the rubble.
Instead, eight months later, the war has delivered one of the sharpest geopolitical ironies in modern history. The Islamic Republic remains standing, while the political order in Washington has collapsed at the ballot box.
A bloody Opening and a Miscalculated Collapse
On the opening day of the offensive, joint strikes killed Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatullah Ali Khamenei, alongside his family members, and dozens of senior military and political officers. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu immediately took to the airwaves, urging Iranian citizens to flood the streets and seize control of their government.
Yet the air strikes produced tragedy and defiance rather than liberation. Among the deadliest strikes of that first day was an American missile attack on Shajareh Tayyebeh Elementary School in the southern city of Minab.
The strike killed up to 168 people – overwhelmingly schoolgirls aged seven to twelve, alongside their teachers. United Nations later condemned the bombing as an indiscriminate attack and a likely war crime, severely undermining Washington’s moral standing around the world.
Far from fracturing, the Iranian state absorbed the blow and struck back. Surviving commanders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps rallied the country’s remaining arsenal, launching devastating retaliatory barrages against Israeli cities and American military installations across the Persian Gulf.
The Strait of Hormuz and the Global Price Shock
Iran’s most potent weapon, however, proved to be geography. By effectively closing the Strait of Hormuz, Tehran choked off roughly a fifth of the world’s petroleum and vital liquified natural gas shipments. The International Energy Agency labelled the blockade the largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market.
Crude oil prices surge past 118 dollars a barrel, sending petrol and diesel costs skyrocketing from New York to London and Brussels. Global shipping rates climbed up to 500 percent, reigniting inflation and squeezing household budgets across the United States.
The Ballot Box Revolt
By autumn, American voters had grown exhausted by an open-ended conflict that had drained the Treasury, endangered troops, and emptied their wallets at the petrol pump. In the 2026 midterm elections, the public delivered a historic rebuke to the White House.
The Democratic Party swept to a commanding victory, capturing a decisive majority in the House of Representatives and flipping the Senate, even claiming long-held Republican strongholds such as Kansas and Texas. Even Vice President JD Vance publicly acknowledged that the unpopular war in Iran was the primary driver of the Republican route.
With the Democrats now firmly in control of both chambers, President Trump faces the final two years of his term as a lame duck. His legislative agenda is effectively dead on arrival, and his war powers face relentless congressional scrutiny and funding blocks.
History’s Ultimate Irony
In February, Donald Trump set out to redraw the political map of the Middle East through sheer military force. He promised the Iranian people a new dawn, betting that a few shock and awe would topple a forty-seven-year-old regime.
History, however, has a merciless sense of humour. Bombs can shatter buildings, topple statues, and take innocent lives in classrooms, yet they rarely manufacture democracy out of thin air.
By underestimating a resilient adversary and ignoring the economic pain of a closed sea lane, Washington triggered a chain reaction it could neither control nor contain.
Donald Trump went to war demanding regime change in Tehran, only to watch American voters engineer a regime change of their own in Washington.
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