Blindsided by personal feelings, some of Trump's most vocal critics can only see the worst possible outcomes.

Several long months from the beginning of the conflict, and only a few scant weeks before the U.S. midterm elections, two starkly different accounts of the Iran war are emerging.

In one, President Donald Trump has stumbled into a disastrous conflict that is draining American military resources, destabilizing energy markets and destroying U.S. credibility. 

Every Iranian missile attack is evidence that American power has failed. Every increase in oil prices is another strategic defeat.

In the other, Iran has been militarily devastated and economically strangled by a president who found a way to exert overwhelming pressure without outright invading the country.

Neither account tells the complete story. But Trump’s naysayers may be missing more of it.

Antipathy toward him can produce its own distortion: the assumption that anything he attempts must be reckless, incompetent or doomed.

That may explain the peculiar way some critics interpret the war. When Iran attacks an American ship or a Saudi pipeline, they see proof that Tehran remains formidable and Trump’s strategy has failed. They rarely consider the equally plausible explanation that Iran is lashing out because the blockade is working and its options are disappearing.

Iran cannot defeat the United States in a conventional war, as even Trump’s critics must know. It cannot reopen its ports by force. Its attempts to replace maritime trade with land routes are faltering because of border congestion, inadequate infrastructure and extraordinary costs. Transporting containers overland from China now reportedly costs four times as much as moving them by sea, potentially adding $18 billion annually to Iran’s expenses.

That is not exactly evidence of an American strategy in collapse.

The latest Treasury sanctions offer another example. 

The administration has targeted an Iranian cryptocurrency exchange accused of processing hundreds of millions of dollars in payments for safe passage through Hormuz and funneling money to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Iran’s dependence upon digital currencies, front companies and smuggling networks suggests that the conventional financial system is increasingly closed to it.

The strategic picture is equally revealing. 

China and Russia have provided Iran diplomatic cover, including vetoing continued independent UN monitoring of sanctions. But neither has broken the American blockade. Neither has replaced Iran’s lost export income or restored its damaged military capacity.

China, Iran’s most important oil customer, is now privately urging Tehran to restrain the Houthis after Saudi Arabia appealed to Beijing for help. China may oppose Trump’s pressure campaign, but it also depends on secure energy routes and does not want an Iranian proxy threatening the global trade upon which the Chinese economy depends.

This does not mean Iran’s attacks are harmless. The Houthis have expanded their control along Yemen’s Red Sea coast, while a drone attack damaged three pumping stations on Saudi Arabia’s East-West Pipeline. That pipeline had been carrying 4 million to 5 million barrels of oil per day, allowing Saudi Arabia to bypass the disruption at Hormuz. Repairs could take weeks, although partial operations may resume sooner.

But Iran’s ability to impose costs is not the same as its ability to prevail.

The regime’s strategy at the moment seems to be to spread its pain. Misey loves company. If Iran cannot export oil normally, no one else will either.

Iran is attempting to make Saudi exports less reliable. If it cannot reopen Hormuz, it will threaten the Red Sea alternative. If it cannot defeat American forces, it will try to increase casualties and exhaust expensive interceptors.

These are dangerous asymmetric tactics. They are also the tactics of a government unable to lift the blockade that is constricting its economy.

Nor is there an endless supply of these tactics.

Trump’s critics are right to demand a clearer endgame, however. His political allies are equally likely to want one. Military damage is not verified nuclear disarmament. Economic collapse does not automatically produce regime change. Iran retains missiles, proxies and enough internal coercive power to survive conditions that would topple a democratic government.

The low American death toll does not erase the hundreds reportedly wounded, nor does it settle whether the benefits of the campaign justify its human and economic costs. Iran can remain dangerous even while losing.

Yet the same standards should apply in both directions. If Trump’s claims of imminent victory deserve scrutiny, predictions of imminent American disaster deserve it too.

Trump has avoided the central catastrophe of previous Middle Eastern wars: a large American ground occupation. 

So far.

U.S. air and naval power has damaged Iran’s military, restricted its trade and forced the regime to depend upon costly evasive measures. Tehran’s regional attacks have caused serious disruption, but they have also alienated Saudi Arabia and other governments whose cooperation Iran needs.

Perhaps the U.S. campaign will still ultimately fail. Long stalemates, fragile truces, and pyrrhic victories are frequently produced by conflicts in the Persian Gulf. A country can be devastated without surrendering, and pressure without diplomacy can become an indefinite war.

But surely it is increasingly difficult to argue that Trump has accomplished nothing. His critics may be so focused on every danger, setback and imperfection that they are overlooking the central development: Iran is under extraordinary pressure, its allies are not rescuing it, and it has yet to demonstrate any reliable way out.

That is not strategic victory — not yet. But neither is it the economy-shattering failure Trump’s naysayers appear determined to see.

(Contributing writer, Brooke Bell)