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During the first days of the war launched by the US and Israel against Iran on 28 February, US President Donald Trump boasted that he had won a crushing victory by killing the top Iranian leadership, destroying its air force and navy, and compelling the country to beg for a peace deal. After a shaky ceasefire was put in place on 28 April, the President insisted that the US naval blockade of Iran would prove even more effective than his bombing campaign in ensuring Iran’s total defeat.
Trump is not the first national leader in history to make embarrassing claims about having overcome a much-despised enemy, when all the world can see it is not true. Writing about the prolonged and unsuccessful attempts by the British prime minister, William Pitt, to defeat revolutionary France in the 1790s, the great 19th-century historian Lord Macaulay, wrote that “it was pitiable to hear him, year after year, proving to an admiring audience that the wicked [French] Republic was exhausted, that she could not hold out, that her credit was exhausted,” and the French currency was not worth the paper it was printed on.
