A former State Department official has summed up what he described as the “problem” with President Donald Trump’s Iran war.

Daniel Fried — who served as U.S. ambassador to Poland during Bill Clinton’s second term — told Bloomberg Radio on Tuesday that he isn’t optimistic about diplomacy prevailing in the conflict but didn’t rule out that the U.S. and Iran would “negotiate something” one way or another.

“But ask yourself, ‘What then?’ If this war becomes about opening the Strait of Hormuz, we’ve already lost because the Strait of Hormuz is only closed because we started the war,” said Fried of the strait that’s effectively been shut down since the U.S.-Israeli deadly offensive on Iran roughly one month ago.

“We started the war for the purpose of regime change or obliterating Iran’s military, and we have not succeeded in doing that.”

He proceeded to call out Trump’s “improvising” ways in the Middle East, a nod to the administration’s grab-bag-like approach to rationalizing the conflict.

“[That’s] another way of saying making it up,” Fried explained. “Starting a war is to enter a dark cave. You never know what you’re going to find. We’re still in that cave.”

Fried stressed that he has “no sympathy” for the Iranian regime, now headed by Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, following the U.S.-backed assassination of his father last month.

“The question is whether our objectives can be met in a reasonable way that leaves us better off, and that is not clear,” he said.

“The war was supposed to be quick and easy. My sense of it is that the president gambled that he would attack Iran, decapitate its leadership, there would be a quick rebellion and regime change and he would claim a glorious victory, a bigger version of what he achieved in Venezuela.”

He continued, “Well, if that had happened, he might have bragging rights. But it didn’t happen, that’s the problem.”

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