Trump and Rubio dismantled U.S. diplomacy. It’s making the Iran War harder.
Since the start of 2026, President Donald Trump has taken the wheel of American military power and pressed hard on the accelerator – from a military operation targeting Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro in January, to threatening NATO ally Denmark over Greenland, and now a war against Iran begun with Israel in late February. A week later, Trump told CNN that “Cuba is gonna fall pretty soon.”
The Iran war has already spread far beyond Iran’s borders. Iranian drones and missiles have struck Israel and countries throughout the Persian Gulf. Israel has expanded the war into Lebanon. The United Kingdom is scrambling to evacuate citizens and protect its base in Cyprus. The Strait of Hormuz – long a geopolitical concern because it is a chokepoint for global oil – is effectively closed.
The problem is that Trump and his advisers have declared war on a crucial tool of war-fighting: diplomacy. In the first year of his second term, Trump has seriously damaged U.S. diplomatic capacity and sidelined what diplomatic tools remain. That will make it harder for the United States to manage every conflict it now faces, including the Iran War. It will also make it immeasurably more difficult to pick up the pieces when the fighting stops.
