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You Can't Judge the Iran War by Its Stats - David Corn
Last week, New York Times columnist Bret Stephens penned an article that captured the rah-rah-ness of the pro-war crowd and was breathtaking in its short-sighted triumphalism. Headlined “The War Is Going Better Than You Think,” Stephens called for “perspective on the panic over the war in the Middle East” and scolded critics who depict the Iran war as “an unprovoked and unnecessary attack on Iran, launched at Israel’s behest” that is “already a foreign-policy fiasco that has put the global economy at risk without any clear objective or endgame.” Not so, he cried.
His evidence? Comparisons to the past. In 1991, during Operation Desert Storm against Saddam Hussein, the US-led forces lost 75 aircraft. So far not a single piloted plane has been shot down over Iran. At the start of the invasion of Iraq 12 years later, President George W. Bush tried but failed to mount a strike to decapitate Saddam’s regime. This time around, Donald Trump killed Iran’s supreme leader and many high-ranking officials in the initial bombing. And in 2012, when Barack Obama was president, the price of Brent crude oil hit $123 a barrel ($175 in 2026 dollars). So the price of $108 a barrel this past week shouldn’t be such a bother.
Stephens presents a couple of other markers to suggest this war is proceeding just fine, while acknowledging the Trump administration’s “failures in planning, particularly its unwillingness to make a stronger public case for war and get more allies on our side before the campaign began”—which are hardly quibbles. Overall, his advice is to buck up and not be Debbie Downers: “If past generations could see how well this war has gone compared with the ones they were compelled to fight at a frightening cost, they would marvel at their posterity’s comparative good fortune. They would marvel, too, at our inability to appreciate the advantages we now possess.”
Looking at the number of bombs dropped or Iranian leaders killed or the fluctuation in the price of oil is not the best way to evaluate this war—especially in these first weeks of the conflict.
Stephens is grasping at tactical straws. Perhaps the US military is putting its hundreds of billions to effective use in terms of the prosecution of the war, though we probably won’t know for certain until there are after-action reports and investigations (if there are any). We do already know that a missile strike that was attributed to US military forces hit a girls’ school and killed about 175 Iranian civilians, most of them students. But looking at the number of bombs dropped or Iranian leaders killed or the fluctuation in the price of oil is not the best way to evaluate this war—especially in these first weeks of the conflict.
His evidence? Comparisons to the past. In 1991, during Operation Desert Storm against Saddam Hussein, the US-led forces lost 75 aircraft. So far not a single piloted plane has been shot down over Iran. At the start of the invasion of Iraq 12 years later, President George W. Bush tried but failed to mount a strike to decapitate Saddam’s regime. This time around, Donald Trump killed Iran’s supreme leader and many high-ranking officials in the initial bombing. And in 2012, when Barack Obama was president, the price of Brent crude oil hit $123 a barrel ($175 in 2026 dollars). So the price of $108 a barrel this past week shouldn’t be such a bother.
Stephens presents a couple of other markers to suggest this war is proceeding just fine, while acknowledging the Trump administration’s “failures in planning, particularly its unwillingness to make a stronger public case for war and get more allies on our side before the campaign began”—which are hardly quibbles. Overall, his advice is to buck up and not be Debbie Downers: “If past generations could see how well this war has gone compared with the ones they were compelled to fight at a frightening cost, they would marvel at their posterity’s comparative good fortune. They would marvel, too, at our inability to appreciate the advantages we now possess.”
Looking at the number of bombs dropped or Iranian leaders killed or the fluctuation in the price of oil is not the best way to evaluate this war—especially in these first weeks of the conflict.
Stephens is grasping at tactical straws. Perhaps the US military is putting its hundreds of billions to effective use in terms of the prosecution of the war, though we probably won’t know for certain until there are after-action reports and investigations (if there are any). We do already know that a missile strike that was attributed to US military forces hit a girls’ school and killed about 175 Iranian civilians, most of them students. But looking at the number of bombs dropped or Iranian leaders killed or the fluctuation in the price of oil is not the best way to evaluate this war—especially in these first weeks of the conflict.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2026/03/iran-war-trump-bret-stephens-times-stats-bush-hussein/]