When President Trump released his National Security Strategy in November 2025, the document was pitched as a break from the past—a rejection of the “forever wars” that had bogged the U.S. down in the Middle East for two decades. The strategy warned that American elites had “badly miscalculated America’s willingness to shoulder forever global burdens” and that the nation could not sustain a massive military complex alongside a sprawling welfare state.
Less than a year later, as the U.S.-led coalition, including Israel and neighboring Sunni states, continues its blockade and military pressure campaign against Iran, that strategy already appears “dated and somewhat nostalgic,” according to a recent essay by Mark C. Hansen, a retired reservist and former prosecutor, published this week in American Thinker.
Hansen, writing from the perspective of someone who has served and watched the conflict unfold, offers a pointed assessment: the administration’s own words may be out of step with what is actually happening on the ground.
Three levels of war, one big question
To make sense of the Iran conflict, Hansen reaches for the classic framework of strategic, operational, and tactical levels of war—synonyms, he says, for three levels of foreign policy. He quotes Clausewitz, albeit in paraphrase, that war is a continuation of politics by other means.
At the strategic level, the big picture is clear: the U.S. wants safe passage for international shipping through the Strait of Hormuz and the elimination of Iran’s nuclear program. The reason for the conflict, Hansen writes, is that Iran’s leadership will not agree to those terms.
The National Security Strategy, which is publicly available, says plainly: “We want to prevent an adversarial power from dominating the Middle East, its oil and gas supplies, and the chokepoints through which they pass while avoiding the ‘forever wars’ that bogged us down in that region at great cost.”
That is a noble goal, Hansen acknowledges. But he wonders whether, by February to August of 2026, the U.S. is already dangerously close to the “bogged down” territory the strategy explicitly sought to avoid. The blockade of Iran continues, and shipping has not returned to pre-February levels. Whether Americans support the strategy, he notes, will be tested in the November elections, which he calls a “barometer” for the administration’s approach.
Operations: The gap between theory and reality
Below strategy lies operations—the execution of strategy against a focused target. Hansen says his own experience in Afghanistan taught him that even the most well-intentioned operational plans can miss the mark.
He recounts a bribery problem with local Afghan officials that was “solved” by simply increasing their pay. The theory, as explained to him, was that higher salaries would remove the incentive to take bribes. Hansen, a former prosecutor and defense attorney, was skeptical. “Once an official is willing to take a bribe,” he writes, “he has done the math and realizes that a salary plus the bribe is always more than just the salary.”
That skepticism, he argues, applies to the current approach in Iran. When the U.S. launched “Epic Fury”—the operation that eliminated the Iranian leadership—many media voices predicted it would force Iran to conform to American demands. Hansen is not so sure.
He warns against what he calls the “World War II trap” of foreign policy, in which every enemy is cast as Hitler and every hesitation as appeasement. He draws a pointed parallel: Epic Fury, he argues, was treated as if killing Hitler and his inner circle would have caused the Germans to throw off totalitarianism and avoid World War II. “That may be great science fiction,” he writes, “but it does not meet the reality of our lived experience.”
He notes that the U.S. itself would not simply capitulate if a foreign power eliminated its entire leadership. As for the frequent protests in Iran, he points out that the U.S. has its own protests—and that protests do not necessarily lead to armed revolt on a scale sufficient for regime change.
Tactics: Economic chicken in the Gulf
At the tactical level, Hansen describes an on-again, off-again blockade aimed at inflicting economic pressure, punctuated by occasional tactical strikes. Iran, for its part, appears to stall and inflict shipping damage using low-cost drones on slow-moving vessels, along with occasional drone or rocket attacks on infrastructure targets of those perceived as supporting the U.S.
Hansen highlights a stark cost disparity: a single Patriot missile can cost around four million dollars, far more than an Iranian drone or rocket. “Iran is well aware,” he says, of that difference. The conflict, he writes, has “devolved into a game of economic chicken,” with the question being whether imposing the blockade costs more than the deployment of U.S. military forces, air defense, refueling, and logistics.
Even as the West reaches for World War II analogies, Hansen notes, it is not actually prepared to use World War II tactics. A General LeMay–style mass bombing of urban centers to break an enemy’s will is simply not on the table in this day and age.
The wager of the November elections
Without a land invasion, Hansen outlines three oversimplified scenarios: the U.S. imposes its will on Iran, Iran holds out indefinitely, or the U.S. gets bored and leaves. In any of these, he says, the U.S. redecorates the Middle East once again.
What remains clear to him is that the Trump, Hegseth, and Rubio National Security Strategy should be revisited. He points to the document’s own definition: “A ‘strategy’ is a concrete, realistic plan that explains the essential connection between ends and means: it begins from an accurate assessment of what is desired and what tools are available, or can realistically be created, to achieve the desired outcomes.”
With diesel shortages predicted and the cost of transported goods—including food—rising, Hansen suggests the administration may not be reading its own statements. “An election looms,” he writes. “It seems questionable if the current administration reads its own statements.”
Source: www.americanthinker.com — https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2026/08/what-to-make-of-trump-s-national-security-statement-now/