Twenty-five years on, it’s still hard to grasp the significance of 9/11 because it remains a moving target. The repercussions rippling out of that terrible day never seem to stop—or even slow down.
The era of 9/11 began with one misbegotten U.S. war of choice in the Middle East, in Iraq. We are marking its 25th anniversary with another misbegotten U.S. war of choice in the Middle East, in Iran. In between, we’re not quite sure what we have learned, other than Americans never seem to get regime change right, whether we send in troops or not. And Washington still finds itself mired in a region that successive presidents have said they want to distance themselves from.
The Middle East quagmire only seems to grow deeper, the march of U.S. folly more self-destructive. After the expenditure of trillions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of American and Iraqi lives and limbs, a U.S. Army study concluded that “the only victor” to come out of the 2003 Iraq war appeared to be “an emboldened and expansionist Iran.”
Now, in 2026, President Donald Trump’s latest war may have given Iran new advantages, at least for the moment. Though it has hit Tehran hard, the war has further weakened the U.S. role in the region while, once again, seriously draining its military firepower and piling on ever more debt. The prolonged conflict may also be reigniting the fading embers of al Qaeda.
