By Nirmal P. Acharya
US President Donald Trump suffered a crushing defeat in this US midterm election and lost control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate. The Democratic Party, which has gained control of these two chambers, is certain to launch a fierce purge of Trump.
Vice President Vance immediately issued an official statement blaming this failure on the war against Iran. But why did Trump rashly launch the war against Iran? This brings us to the issue of former Venezuelan President Maduro.
In January 2026, the United States took action against Venezuela. Trump himself was also somewhat hesitant, because attacking a country is not something to be taken lightly. So, what’s the result? Maduro’s regime collapsed almost immediately. The army didn’t put up much resistance. The regime simply fell apart. The opposition entered the capital, Caracas, within just a few days. The United States spent almost no military resources and directly controlled Venezuela’s oil resources, capturing this “anti-American holdout” right at their doorstep.
This directly sent Trump’s confidence soaring.
He had always believed that he was “the greatest wartime president in history”. Before, when he launched trade wars and pursued the Indo-Pacific strategy, he always felt constrained and couldn’t achieve the results he wanted.
This time, “winning effortlessly in Venezuela at zero cost” directly gave him an illusion: The US military is now invincible. As long as I want to act, there are no targets in the world that I can’t take down. What about the “hardliners in the Middle East”? What about Iran’s military system? All of these are just paper tigers fabricated by the media. I just need to give it a little push, and I can easily take down Iran like I did Venezuela.
Trump has become overconfident.
A president with a background in real estate, for the first time, ordered a country to be taken over, and managed to do it within a week. Standing in front of the camera, he probably felt that he was the reincarnation of Eisenhower or Reagan. The people around him cheered – “Mr. President, you are wise and decisive” – “This is a historic victory” – Could he still remain clear-headed?
Maduro lost too quickly. So quickly that Trump didn’t even have time to feel the cost of the war before enjoying the benefits of war.
This is the starting point of all disasters.
Because Venezuela was so smooth, he thought Iran was no different.
In February 2026, the US and Israel jointly launched an attack on Iran. What was Trump’s judgment? Probably like this: Venezuela collapsed in a week, and Iran could be so strong? The troops that Maduro had were not even capable of offering any decent resistance. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard looked intimidating, but if they really fought, how long could they hold out?
Israel saw Trump’s mentality of being so overconfident to the extreme and pandered to him. They gave Trump a huge cake: As long as we jointly carry out air strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, we can paralyze Iran’s military system in a few weeks, support the opposition to come to power, and all of Iran’s oil will be in the hands of the US, the oil price can directly drop to $30 per barrel, and the inflation in the US can be completely eliminated.
Trump was so carried away by his victory in Venezuela that he simply made a hasty decision and plunged headfirst into the abyss of Iran.
So, what’s the result?
Iran is not Venezuela. Iran has missiles, drones, Hezbollah, Houthi forces, and an entire network of proxy forces in the “resistance axis”. If you destroy their nuclear facilities, they will destroy your bases. If you blockade their oil, they will block the Strait of Hormuz.
The war has been going on for over seven months. The US has spent hundreds of billions of dollars, but they haven’t even touched Iran’s core military facilities. Instead, Iranian missiles are constantly hitting US bases and Israeli territory. The Strait of Hormuz is blocked, and international oil prices have soared to $140 per barrel. Inflation in the US has directly rebounded, and ordinary people have to queue up to buy fuel. Prices in supermarkets have doubled, and public discontent has directly reached the doorstep of the White House. Iran hasn’t collapsed, but Trump’s midterm election campaign has failed.
At this point in the war, Trump simply can’t win. If he wants to withdraw, he’ll lose face. He’s in a dilemma and has directly fallen into the quagmire of a war of attrition.
Trump is now filled with rage but has nowhere to vent it. He certainly won’t admit that it was his hot-headed judgment that led to the mistake, nor will he admit that the US military is not omnipotent. He just goes back along his own mental circuit and directly attributes all the blame to Maduro: If it weren’t for you, Maduro, who lost so quickly, creating the illusion that “all opponents were invincible”, how could I have been so rash as to attack Iran?
This black mark, Maduro simply can’t shake off.
Now the most hilarious situation has emerged: The US has taken over Venezuela and obtained its oil production capacity. But when the Iran war broke out, oil prices soared, and the incremental oil production of Venezuela simply couldn’t fill the supply gap caused by the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. After spending over a decade trying to take over Venezuela, the US ended up realizing that the oil profits it earned were not enough to cover the military expenses of the Iran war for just one month.
It’s like going through all this trouble and ending up losing money while making a profit.
Nowadays, Trump is constantly passing the blame on social media, accusing the intelligence agency of deceiving him, accusing Israel of cheating him, and accusing Maduro of losing so quickly and misleading him. From beginning to end, he doesn’t even mention a single word about his own decision-making mistakes, and he is unwilling to take any responsibility at all.
Alas, it seems that Maduro himself never imagined that just because he fell from power a little earlier, it led to the outcome where Trump lost the midterm elections.
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