New York Times columnist Bret Stephens went against the grain of his liberal media colleagues Tuesday, telling readers that President Donald Trump‘s war against Iran is “going better than you think” in a piece on Tuesday.

Stephens recalled high gas prices the country faced in 2012, noting at the time that “the price of Brent crude closed the month around $123 a barrel,” which he noted would be $175 a barrel today, and that the current price is “hovering around $100.”

“That ought to provide some perspective on the panic over the war in the Middle East,” Stephens wrote. “To hear the critics’ version of events, an unprovoked and unnecessary attack on Iran, launched at Israel’s behest, is already a foreign-policy fiasco that has put the global economy at risk without any clear objective or endgame.”

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The New York Times columnist Bret Stephens told liberal readers that the ongoing war against Iran is “going better than you think.” (William B. Plowman/NBC/NBC Newswire/NBCUniversal via Getty Images)

He singled out Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., who on Sunday told NBC’s Kristen Welker, “We’ve never seen this level of incompetence in war-making in this country’s history.”

“Really?” Stephens reacted. The Times columnist listed several conflicts beginning with 1991’s Operation Desert Storm, which destroyed dozens of US aircraft in a six-week span, while the current war with Iran has led to just four destroyed within four weeks. He mentioned how 23 soldiers died and 325 were wounded during the 1989 invasion of Panama, while 13 died and 230 were wounded (he noted most had “swiftly returned to duty”) in the current war.

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President Donald Trump continues to tease that the end of the conflict with Iran is near as his administration enters talks with the regime.  (Mandel Ngan / AFP via Getty Images)

Stephens also highlighted how President George W. Bush had minimal support from Arab nations when launching the 2003 invasion of Iraq, while Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is urging Trump to continue the war against Iran, according to a report from Stephens’ Times colleagues.

“I am not blind to the Trump administration’s failures in planning, particularly its unwillingness to make a stronger public case for war and get more allies on our side before the campaign began,” Stephens continued. “Still, if past generations could see how well this war has gone compared with the ones they were compelled to fight at a frightening cost, they would marvel at their posterity’s comparative good fortune. They would marvel, too, at our inability to appreciate the advantages we now possess.”

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Women hold posters of the Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei during a campaign in support of the government at the Enqelab-e-Eslami, or Islamic Revolution, square in downtown Tehran, Iran, Saturday, March 14, 2026.  (Vahid Salemi/AP Photo)

The New York Times isn’t the only outlet that’s offered a surprise report card to Trump. An op-ed published last week by Al Jazeera praised the effectiveness of the military actions taken by the US and Israel.

“When you look at what has actually happened to Iran’s principal instruments of power – its ballistic missile arsenal, its nuclear infrastructure, its air [defenses], its navy and its proxy command architecture – the picture is not one of US failure. It is one of systematic, phased degradation of a threat that previous administrations allowed to grow for four decades,” wrote Muhanad Seloom, an assistant professor at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies.

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