Amid a deepening crisis of the US war against Iran, leading Democrats have intensified their critique of the Trump administration from the right, accusing it of having failed to secure the interests of US imperialism.

“Donald Trump has lost this war,” Democratic Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut said Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press. “America is weaker. Iran is stronger.”

Blaming US President Donald Trump for mismanaging the war, Murphy made clear: “I and my colleagues will be ready to provide the funding to replenish the stores of munitions.”

The war, he warned, has “allowed Russia and China to imagine things that they couldn’t have imagined earlier.”

Murphy’s statements echoed those of Democratic Senator Gary Peters of Michigan, who demanded of Secretary of War Pete Hegseth at a Senate hearing on July 21: “You don’t have a long-term plan to actually win this war. Win the war.”

Republican criticism follows similar lines, although Republicans are even more direct advocates of military escalation against Iran. Mark Esper, Trump’s defense secretary in his first term, told ABC’s This Week that Iran’s leaders “believe they’re winning” and proposed the siege of a country of 93 million people: a blockade “of all entry points, air, ground and sea routes,” to “slowly strangle it until they come back to the negotiation table in a serious way.”

Both parties are fully committed to the aims of US imperialism in dominating the Middle East and the escalating war with Russia in Ukraine. On Friday the Senate passed, 86-11, the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act, which authorizes tariffs of up to 100 percent on the largest importers of Russian oil and gas—China and India among them—and strengthens sanctions on Iran’s energy sector. The vote joined the war against Iran and the war against Russia in a single bill.

The Democratic Party’s “progressive” wing remains largely silent about the Iran war. Abdul El-Sayed, who won Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary Tuesday, appeared on the same program as Murphy and never named Iran. He praised former President Barack Obama—who armed Israel and bombed Libya—for serving “with a level of class, a level of elegance that we could only pine for now.”

Asked how he could oppose military aid to Israel while supporting it for Ukraine, El-Sayed answered: “In Ukraine, you’re talking about attacks from a leader of a neighboring sovereign country who clearly violated international law in attempting to breach the sovereignty of the Ukrainian public. ... So when we’re talking about taking on Putin and his violation of international law, I do believe we have a responsibility to uphold international law and therefore to support Ukraine in its efforts.”

The New York Times published a report on the war Saturday under the headline “The U.S. Is Burning Through Weapons in Iran. Russia and China Are Taking Note.” Bombing Iran, the Times wrote, “burned through thousands of multimillion-dollar missiles that contain precision parts from a global web of suppliers and can take years to produce.” The shrinking supply of air defense missiles “could also leave Russia and China feeling emboldened should they contemplate a potential conflict with the United States,” the newspaper wrote, citing experts.

The war is in its sixth month, and the Iranian government has neither capitulated nor fallen. The Strait of Hormuz remains closed: 33 ships passed through from Monday to Thursday, against a typical 130 to 140 before the war, Reuters reported Friday, citing the tracker Kpler. Gasoline averages $4.01 a gallon, up from $3.15 a year ago, with the midterm elections less than three months away.

The war has consumed nearly 80 percent of the military’s THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense) interceptors and about half its Patriot stock, CNN reported August 4, citing sources familiar with the Pentagon’s latest inventory report. On Friday CNN reported that General Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is “looking for an off-ramp” and has raised winding down the war with Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and CIA Director John Ratcliffe; Caine’s spokesman did not deny the report. Deputy Defense Secretary Steve Feinberg has given arms manufacturers no more than 21 days to produce plans to accelerate production, the Associated Press reported Saturday.

The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday that for weeks Trump has been “laying the groundwork to declare victory in the Iran war should Tehran fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz,” floating privately to senior aides that he is “willing to walk away without a nuclear deal.”

The Associated Press reported Sunday, citing two people familiar with the talks, that shipping would run inbound along a lane close to Iran and outbound along one close to Oman, “without paying fees or tolls during the interim period.” But Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, said Saturday that “the Strait of Hormuz will not open until America corrects its behavior,” demanding among other things that Washington permanently end the war, lift the blockade and sanctions and withdraw its warships and warplanes from around Iran.

Sixty-four percent of Americans say the war has not been worth it, according to an AP-NORC poll published July 30. That opposition had no voice in Sunday’s interviews. The dispute within the political establishment concerns only how the position of US imperialism in the Persian Gulf can be salvaged.

Whatever terms emerge in the Persian Gulf, the content of American policy in the Middle East is visible in Gaza, where the killing continues under a ceasefire that took effect on October 10, 2025. Israeli forces have killed 1,257 Palestinians and wounded 4,131 since the truce began, Gaza’s Health Ministry said Saturday; about 300 of the dead are children, according to UNICEF.

At his cabinet meeting Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected the Gaza plan Trump’s Board of Peace put forward July 30 which Hamas has accepted: “I want to be precise here: Israel rejects the 15-point document.”

On Tuesday, mourners in Gaza City’s Sabra neighborhood buried 112 members of the Abu Sharia and al-Hasayna families, recovered from beneath the rubble where they had lain since an Israeli airstrike on November 22, 2023, which killed 308 members of the two families. Gaza’s Civil Defense called it the largest mass funeral in Palestinian history.