‘Battle of the titans’: Trump’s distorted reality on Iran war runs into a brick wall

War is testing operating principle that has guided Trump for decades: construct a narrative, declare it to be true and relentlessly force the world to submit to it

Let me say, we've won," he told a rally in Kentucky on 11 March. I think we've won," he said on the White House south lawn on 20 March. We've won this war. The war has been won," he said in the Oval Office on 24 March. We are winning so big," he promised a fundraising dinner on 25 March.

Donald Trump keeps declaring victory in Iran. But saying it over and over does not make it so. While the US president insists that his military campaign in the Middle East is a historic success, the world is bracing for a conflict that continues to metastasize and could wreak havoc on the global economy.