Malik: Trump’s ‘sunk-cost logic’ driving conflict as Pentagon requests $67 billion more
The US-Iran conflict, now entering its sixth month, has devolved into a costly stalemate driven by President Donald Trump’s “sunk-cost logic,” Guardian columnist Nesrine Malik wrote Monday, imposing a mounting economic toll on the US and global economies.
Malik’s column, published as the war approaches its sixth month and the US and Iran trade strikes, details a conflict she argues has no clear path to resolution, with the US unable to secure a favorable peace or escalate to a decisive victory.
The US has expanded airstrikes against Iran in what the Pentagon described as “major military punishment,” while Iran has struck US bases across the region, Malik wrote. The Houthi movement has claimed a blockade over a second shipping chokepoint, extending the theater of operations from the Gulf to the Red Sea.
“The whole war is only five months old but is already settling into a sort of permanent feature of life,” Malik wrote. She described the conflict as repetitive theater, with contradictory statements emerging from the administration.
Malik wrote that the US is caught in a strategic trap. “Trump cannot end the war… He can’t withdraw on terms that merely restore the prewar status quo. And Trump can’t go all in,” she wrote, citing the risk of a bloody ground campaign that would claim many lives.
The human toll has sparked outrage, Malik wrote, with 18 US troops killed and the Pentagon appearing to “undercount” the number. The financial cost of the war has reached nearly $40 billion, she wrote, with the Pentagon asking Congress for an additional $67 billion. The White House’s overall budget request for the fiscal year is $1.5 trillion.
“We’re fighting wars,” Malik quoted Trump as saying earlier this year. “It’s not possible for us to take care of daycare, Medicaid, Medicare… We have to take care of one thing: military protection.”
The global economic fallout has been severe, Malik wrote. Brent oil prices are nearly 40% higher than before the war broke out. A gallon of gasoline in the US costs 37% more, and diesel is 40% higher. In the UK, gas prices have risen nearly 50% in July alone, with the lag between higher oil prices and pump prices expected to show up in a fortnight, she wrote.
Protests over rising fuel costs have flared up and paralyzed transport from Ireland to Kenya, according to the column.
Malik also noted that Trump’s tariff regime expired last week, replaced by a new one imposed on the grounds that countries were not doing enough to tackle forced labor.
“We are all held hostage by a regime in the US that has pressed its military and economic prowess in service of ego and ignorance,” Malik wrote. She concluded that the war is “the most hazardous manifestation” of this dynamic, with no signs of abating.