Bangladesh, April 11 -- The brief but intense confrontation between the United States and Iran was widely expected to produce a decisive shift in the balance of power in the Middle East. Instead, it has achieved the opposite. The 40-day conflict, which ended in a fragile and contested ceasefire, has demonstrated the limits of military coercion, exposed deep divisions among allies, and intensified instability across an already volatile region. Far from resolving long-standing disputes, the war has left every major participant weakened in some way, politically constrained, and struggling to define what success even means in the aftermath.

At the center of the diplomatic turmoil stands the administration of Donald Trump, whose approach to t...