With the U.S. on the brink of a major new crisis as Iran-backed rebels threaten to choke a second key shipping route, the Daily Beast reveals one week’s cost of Trump’s war.
Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/Getty/Reuters
Donald Trump thought he could strike Iran and wrap it all up before you could say America First.
It worked in Venezuela, and the United States managed to hit—but not obliterate—Tehran’s nuclear facility the first time around last June.
But now we are more than six months into a war that nobody, not even Trump, really wanted.
In this week alone, 13 separate incidents in the Middle East prove this is not the ghost war the president is trying to convince his MAGA base it is.
This isn’t TV reality. It’s the real thing.
Trump’s biggest bluff didn’t work. He should have folded. Instead, he twisted. Into knots.
Get the best of The Beast delivered right to your inbox
And now he is trying to pretend it never happened.
It’s an operation, a skirmish, a conflict… “small potatoes.”
But with the midterm elections just around the corner, the “war” with Iran refuses to die, even as the casualties mount.
Donald Trump and US service members killed during the Iran war.
Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/Getty/DOD
Lest we forget, 18 U.S. servicemen and women have been killed, and 820 have been wounded since Trump launched his strikes on Iran in February. Countless more Iranians have died.
With the U.S. now on the precipice of another escalation in the hostilities, a Daily Beast analysis has singled out 13 reasons in just one week why Trump cannot hide from the war he created.
Actions have consequences, especially when people’s lives are at risk.
There is no unlucky 13 here. They all came as a direct result of Trump attacking Iran.
Having survived the initial U.S. onslaught, the Iranians and their allies are emboldened. So much so that Houthi forces in Yemen are seeking to take over the turbulent country’s Red Sea coast. If they succeed in strangling the Bab al-Mandab waterway at the southern end of the Red Sea, it will be the second key western shipping route to be choked off as a result of the war.
Houthi rebels had been attacking the Red Sea port city of Mocha for weeks before seizing it on Thursday.
Al Joumhouriya TV/Al Joumhouriya TV/Handout via Reuters
The Iran-aligned group seized the key port of Mocha and is effectively opening a second front in the war, together with the Strait of Hormuz calamity.
Trump and Secretary of “War” Pete Hegseth are trying to tell us we are not at war. We asked them to explain these incidents.
We’re still waiting.
In Iran on Thursday, the United Nations warned about nuclear activity at Pickaxe Mountain, flagged by intelligence agencies as a site likely used to store nuclear material. This came despite Trump claiming the regime’s nuclear capabilities had been nullified in the original 2025 strike. There have also been claims that the Iranians are using underground sites to make ballistic missiles.
Ufuk Celal Guzel/Anadolu via Getty Images
Two days ago, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps bragged they captured an American uncrewed underwater vehicle, an Anduril Dive-LD—and posted a photo of it as evidence.
The same day, the U.S. said it sank several Iranian vessels after a “near miss” ballistic missile attack on a U.S. Navy warship in the Gulf of Oman near Kharg Island.
Also on Thursday, Saudi Arabia said a key oil pipeline was struck in an Iranian attack and “was shut down as a precautionary measure.”
Vessels in the Strait of Hormuz, a vital waterway through which about a fifth of global oil supplies normally flow.
Oil prices subsequently surged past $100-a-barrel.
It also emerged this week that a U.S. military base in Bahrain had been destroyed. “They blew the hell out of Bahrain,” U.S. Navy chief Hung Cao told The Epoch Times on Wednesday.
In response, Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi wrote on X: “Our powerful Armed Forces did indeed ‘blow the hell out of the 5th Fleet HQ in Bahrain,’ as well as other bases supporting US aggression.”
Overnight Iranian attacks on Tuesday also hit the Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan, damaging as many as nine U.S. aircraft. Missiles “struck the maintenance, preparation, and deployment sites of F-35, F-16, and F-15 fighter jets, as well as their shelters, inflicting heavy damage on the enemy,” claimed the IRGC.
In Kuwait this week, Iran claimed it attacked America’s Ali Al Salem Air Base with bombs and drones and struck the rooms of a U.S. commander.
U.S. President Donald Trump salutes as members of the military carry the transfer case of U.S. Army Pvt. Isabella Gonzales of the 1st Battalion, 57th Air Defense Artillery Regiment, 52nd Air Defense Artillery Brigade, 10th Army Air Missile Defense Command, who was killed during an attack at Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan, during a dignified transfer of her remains at Dover Air Force Base in Dover, Delaware, U.S., July 22, 2026.
Off the coast, more details emerged about a 19-year-old sailor who tried to jump to his death from the rusting USS Lincoln as Patriot missile stockpiles were depleted and diesel prices hit an all-time high of $6 a gallon on Friday.
All this in a week that Donald Trump was seeking to convince a midterm convention in Dallas that Iran was handled.
We may not like to think about it, but this war is far from over.
And it could get a hell of a lot worse.
Register below to read this article for free or subscribe
to unlock unlimited access to The Daily Beast.
Best Value
*Substack access provided by the next business day, using your subscription email. Choosing the Premium plan constitutes your permission to share your subscription email with Substack and your agreement to Substack’s Privacy Policy.
Already have an account? Sign In
Looks like you already have a subscription!
You’re all set!
Thanks for subscribing.
Sign in
Login dialog
