Published on: September 29, 2026 at 11:40 am
Since a joint U.S. and Israeli airstrike killed Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in Tehran on February 28, 2026, oil and gas prices have sharply risen, and Iran appears to be in a stronger position than it was before the war began. In retrospect, it seems that U.S. President Donald Trump and his Secretary of Defense (or War), Pete Hegseth, did not have clear objectives or an exit strategy—and many Republican members of Congress are saying war and high gas prices are hurting their chances of being reelected in the 2026 midterm election.
According to Academy of Management Scholar Jeffrey Sonnenfeld of the Yale School of Management, who moderated the panel “The Framers of 1776 vs. The Nation’s Leadership In 2026; Is the Vision Now Vivid or Blurred?” at the 2026 AOM Annual Meeting in Philadelphia, it is likely that Trump approved bombing Iran as a way to distract people from the Epstein files Sonnenfeld is also a coauthor, with Steven Tian of Yale, of the book Trump’s Ten Commandments: Strategic Lessons from the Trump Leadership Toolbox.
“After the oil and gas company executives didn’t back him up on his rationale for his Venezuela intervention, he gets the idea of Iran,” Sonnenfeld said. “Now, nobody’s saying that Iran having enriched uranium is a good thing or the IRGC [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] or any of the religious zealots in Iran should have power as they’re threatening their Persian Gulf neighbors and others, but still, the Iran war has been a disaster.
“When you have your naval assets in the Caribbean and in the South Pacific, you’re not ready to occupy Kharg Island, where most of Iran’s oil production is, or to enter the mainland of Iran and take over the deeply embedded uranium, which is stored in heavily fortified underground complexes and deep tunnel networks,” he said. “So, we opted for a military attack that was well executed, given the resources they had, but they weren’t lined up for the next step or a prolonged war—it was Trump’s pivot again, just to try to change the subject, and now he’s caught in this quagmire in the quicksand.
“He can’t get out of it, and he’s undermining some of the great triumphs of Trump 1.0.”
What’s that? A Trump critic giving him credit for some of his accomplishments during his first term in office? In addition to COVID-19 vaccines, the Abraham Accords reshaped Middle Eastern diplomacy by normalizing relations between Israel and several Arab nations, including the UAE, Bahrain, and Morocco. The historic framework, announced in September 2020, suspended Israel’s planned West Bank annexation, generated billions in bilateral trade, and integrated Israel into U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) to enable unprecedented regional security and intelligence coordination.
“You have to give credit where credit is due: Operation Warp Speed produced the COVID-19 vaccines in less than a year, and then there was the great success of the Abraham Accords, where I actually helped him—Jared [Kushner] had me go over to Bahrain and work with the Middle Eastern and European leaders who helped and joined the negotiations to bring about that agreement,” Sonnenfeld said. “But he’s undermining the confidence that our Arab allies have in us as they feel vulnerable now, and even Israel sees President Trump throwing them under the bus by offering Iran certain concessions.
“What is he doing by bombing Iranian attack points in the most half-hearted fashion? It’s attack, retreat, attack, retreat, and he’s made these nonsensical statements about how we’ve destroyed their military and they can’t attack us anymore, and they keep attacking our ships and our Gulf allies, and with the Straits of Hormuz being closed off, they’re now making more money than they did before,” he said. “And for Trump 1.0, another great triumph was when he shut the spigot off—they produced 5 million barrels of oil a day and were selling 3 million of it. He cut it down to basically zero. Now it’s up to 2 million barrels that they’re selling a day, so they’re making $40 billion a year just on oil they didn’t have before he attacked them.
“But now Iran has shut off the Straits of Hormuz and nobody else is getting through. As a result, Iran is making another $12 billion or $15 billion at least from tolling on the few ships it lets through. So, it now has this flow of around $60 billion coming its way, on top of what Trump was offering in a deal, $300 billion of frozen funds—this is way worse than the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), widely known as the 2015 Iran nuclear deal negotiated under the Obama administration, which some people criticized.”
