America’s Vanishing Resolve

Iran’s parliament speaker is mocking the United States. On Thursday, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf posted on social media that President Donald Trump’s Iran strategy amounts to nothing more than “Massive attack coming … wait, never mind, they want to negotiate.” He dismissed this strategy as “theater diplomacy on loop,” accused Washington of relying on “bullying + broken promises + fake news,” and declared, “We don’t need more theater.” He wants the U.S. to accept Iranian control of the Strait of Hormuz.

You read that right. The world’s greatest military power is now the punch line in an Iranian tweet.

Ghalibaf is acting presumptuously because he can see what many refuse to admit: America’s will to fight is gone. Just look at the pattern. President Trump says gasoline could drop to $1.85 or $1.95 a gallon “as soon as the war ends.” Yet he has been making versions of that claim for months. Meanwhile the vital waterway that once carried roughly a fifth of the world’s oil and gas remains only “sort of open,” in the president’s own words. Iran and Oman are negotiating who controls the strait, with little American input.

Reports indicate that, going forward, Iran might control ships entering the Persian Gulf while Oman controls those exiting. This means the U.S., which spent decades guaranteeing free passage through this choke point and is literally at war with Iran, is helpless as Iran and another small-time military assert power over one of the most important sea gates on Earth.

Now consider the munitions picture. The Trump administration insists America has a “virtually unlimited” supply of munitions, but it has also asked Congress for $21 billion specifically to restock. The Washington Post reported that President Trump confronted Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth at Camp David over who had misled him about depleted stockpiles; Hegseth reportedly blamed subordinates. The White House press secretary called the entire account “100 percent fake news” and said it “literally never happened.” Somebody is not telling the truth.

But less controversially and more importantly, we are now six months into a conflict we were told would be over in weeks, we are depleting our munitions and spending billions of dollars, and the result is somehow that Iran now asserts more power over the Strait of Hormuz, not less, and its politicians’ insults against U.S. military effectiveness carry a ring of truth.

Journalist Lee Smith, whom we’ve had as a guest on the Trumpet Daily, wrote that President Trump called off what he described as the largest planned military strike since World War ii after pressure from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, Pakistan—and Iran. Smith’s conclusion is that there is almost no daylight left between certain U.S. allies and America’s adversaries.

They have reached the same verdict about American resolve.

Hamas has noticed too. It continues to celebrate October 7 while positioning itself for a share of Gaza reconstruction funds and regional leverage.

Columnist Melanie Phillips wrote that these are not the acts of a president of peace. They are the acts of a superpower negotiating its irrelevance.

This instability is not confined to the Middle East. Germany recorded 8,725 anti-Semitic incidents in 2025, more than triple the figure from three years earlier, and ranked first among the seven nations tracked by the J7 task force. Hackers penetrated American water utilities and caused pressure loss and flooding. Ukraine has become the world leader in drone warfare, producing millions of attack drones a year while the U.S. plans far smaller orders for the world’s largest military. Every one of these stories points to the same reality. The foundations of the current world order are shifting under our feet.

Psalm 82:5 names these conditions directly: “They know not, neither will they understand; they walk on in darkness: all the foundations of the earth are out of course.” That is a diagnosis of what you are seeing.

“The Old Testament book of Haggai is filled with prophecy about this end time, and it specifically talks about the nations being shaken in our day,” my father wrote in “Why the Nations Are Shaking.” “In this prophecy, God claims ultimate responsibility: ‘And I will shake all nations, and the desire of all nations shall come: and I will fill this house with glory, saith the Lord of hosts’ (Haggai 2:7). God says He will shake all nations! He says He is allowing or even causing this suffering because of our sins!”

One of the ways God shakes the nations is by breaking the pride of America’s power (Leviticus 26:19). Iran’s parliament speaker knows America is not willing to fight for peace, so he is pushing for war!