More than six and a half months have passed since U.S. President Donald Trump, with the help of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, launched a war against Iran. Trump's critics on both the left and the right now fear he has drawn the United States into the kind of "ver war" he campaigned against. And according to international relations professor Nicholas Grossman, recent leaks show that the "damage" from the war is even more far-reaching than previously reported.

Grossman delivered the assessment during an appearance on The New Republic's podcast, "The Daily Blast," as documented in the show's transcript and in accompanying reporting on newly leaked photographs.

Podcast host Greg Sargent, a former Washington Post columnist, laid out the stakes: "It's a widespread assumption among political strategists that foreign policy rarely matters in U.S. elections. But what if Donald Trump's failures on this front are so disastrous and destructive that he's about to break this rule too? Trump's Iran fiasco is getting worse, and newly leaked photos show dramatic damage to the U.S. abroad. On Russia and Ukraine, he buffoonishly proclaimed that he'd secured an agreement that neither would attack the other's energy sources, but then, that blew up in his face."

Grossman warned that, through both the Iran war and the ongoing Russia/Ukraine conflict, Trump "has disrupted the international system by removing" the "bedrock idea of American credibility."

Grossman told Sargent, "And another — perhaps the biggest current example of Trump's blown credibility — is the way that the United States has not been providing security to its Middle Eastern allies, to all these different Gulf Arab states, especially Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia has had to deal now with the biggest attacks against it of the war so far, where an Iran-backed militia attacked its east-west pipeline, and they went and asked Trump for help. MBS (Saudi Crown Prince Muhammed bin Salman) reportedly called Trump twice and asked him to get involved in this Yemen conflict and clear it up. And both times, the United States said no."

According to Grossman, the Gulf Arab states are reportedly shocked by the refusal — a development that, he said, "upends the entire Middle East architecture." Trump, he added, "just simply isn't there, and also isn't able to stop either the Houthis or the Iranians."

When Sargent asked why the situation with Iran was "stuck," Grossman described a grinding stalemate: "So, they're both blockading each other, occasionally bombing each other, but largely holding back from full-scale war. So nobody's giving in, and nobody is letting ships go through. The U.S., under Trump, has tried bombing a few more times, but it hasn't really accomplished anything. And the Iranians aren't giving in because their allies are on the march, like against Saudi Arabia — because while they're feeling economic damage from this squeeze, they are also able to impose a lot of economic damage … The United States has bases all throughout the Middle East, and this is the big geopolitical architecture that is changing. Trump has lost the Gulf."

"He's lost freedom of navigation," Grossman added. "It seems like he's losing Saudi Arabia and losing the Middle East. And it's not clear where the chaos of it will go, but it's clear that they do not have a handle on it at all."