French Media Skewers Trump Over Iran War 'Glaring Gap'

(MENAFN) US President Donald Trump’s public posture on the Iran war bears little resemblance to what is actually unfolding on the battlefield, French media argued in a sharp editorial published Thursday.

The newspaper identified a “glaring gap” between Trump’s expressed confidence in the conflict’s trajectory and the ground-level realities of a war that shows no clear path to resolution. While Trump has signaled further strikes over the coming “two or three weeks,” Le Monde noted that no concrete exit strategy or diplomatic framework has been put forward to accompany the military escalation.

Framing the conflict as a “war of choice,” the editorial contended that airpower and military pressure alone would be insufficient to neutralize Iran as a long-term threat. Diplomacy, it warned, had been rendered virtually obsolete — the road to negotiations, in the paper’s assessment, now lies “buried under American and Israeli bombs.”

Despite measurable battlefield damage inflicted by US and Israeli forces, Tehran has shown a capacity to absorb punishment and strike back, most visibly through its maneuvers in the Strait of Hormuz. The editorial pointedly noted that what Trump once dismissed as a routine military venture had since taken on a far more intractable character.

“Tehran has turned what Trump described as a ‘small excursion’ into the beginnings of a quagmire,” it added.

The media outlet also took aim at Trump for quietly stepping back from earlier rhetoric around regime change and for deflecting accountability over the question of who bears responsibility for reopening the Hormuz corridor. His recent broadsides against NATO, the paper argued, were themselves a tell.

“If the war were as successful as Trump claims, he would not be seeking scapegoats so erratically,” it said.

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