A commentary published on Econbrowser on October 1, 2026, argues that the official withdrawal of U.S. military forces from Iraq this week — the final act, in the author's words, of the Iraq "war of choice" launched under President George W. Bush — carries pointed irony: it comes as Washington wages a separate war with Iran that, in the author's assessment, has strengthened Tehran's hand.

The post, flagged by its writer as "way off topic" for the economics-focused blog co-founded by academic economists James Hamilton and Menzie Chinn, notes that news coverage has often uncritically highlighted the president's pitch to end U.S. "forever wars." The author directs pointed criticism at President Donald Trump — the "felon-in-chief," in the author's words — arguing that a president who campaigned for the White House by condemning Bush's Iraq wars "just had to have a war of his own."

The author traces both U.S. wars with Iraq to the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-1988, writing that the United States supplied Saddam Hussein with weapons and egged him on to attack Iran. Saddam's impunity, the post says, ultimately cost him his life — the Iraqi dictator was toppled by the 2003 U.S.-led invasion and executed in 2006 — while Iran came away knowing "how much war it could survive."

In the author view, the withdrawal stands in "comic contrast" with what the author calls the newer "own-goal" war with Iran. Iran-backed militias have celebrated in the streets across Iraq, and after the United States and Israel moved to wipe out Iranian allies across the Middle East, the departure very likely turned Iraq over to Iran's allies, the post argues. The Houthis, the Iran-aligned movement that has held much of northern Yemen since capturing the capital, Sanaa, in 2014, now control more of Yemen than ever before, the author adds — a direct consequence of the war on Iran.

The author stresses the argument is not that U.S. forces should have stayed, but that the United States should never have fought the Iraq war and should have learned its lessons instead of pursuing a new one.

The commentary concludes that Iran and its allies have lost their grip on Gaza, much of Lebanon and parts of Syria, but have tightened their hold on Yemen and Iraq and taken the Strait of Hormuz — the roughly 21-mile-wide passage between Iran and Oman that carries about a fifth of the world's oil — and Bab-el-Mandeb, the chokepoint between Yemen and the Horn of Africa that links the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden on the shipping route to the Suez Canal. "Looks like Iran is winning this round, and winning big," the author writes.