Trump's claimed victory is “beginning to look like a military defeat.” Critics draw an unpleasant comparison with a key moment in history

The war in the Middle East is calling into question Washington's argument that its global supremacy is vital to the security of international trade and world order, the main justification for many US bases around the globe, and some are wondering if this is a “Suez” moment for the United States, marking the decline of American power and credibility in the world, The New York Times wrote in an analysis Thursday.

The publication compares the current context with the Suez Canal crisis of October 1956, considered a symbol of the period when Great Britain, exhausted after the Second World War, ceded the status of global power to the United States.

At the time, the United Kingdom, France, and Israel had attacked Egypt to force the opening of the canal, but then-US President Dwight D. Eisenhower ordered them to stop.

On the other hand, the NYT notes a number of differences – the Suez Canal is man-made and lies entirely within Egyptian territory, unlike the Strait of Hormuz, an international waterway. Furthermore, there is currently no global power capable of replacing the US in the region.

“It's starting to look like a military defeat”

Although Donald Trump and his administration claimed victory in the war with Iran following the ceasefire announced by the US president, a former European official believes that the situation is “starting to look like a military defeat” for the United States, “worse than Iraq or Afghanistan”.

“The myth of America as all-powerful is important,” added Bruno Maçães, Portugal's former secretary of state for European affairs, who believes it is a “basic requirement” for a “global hegemon” to keep the Strait of Hormuz and oil and gas flows open.

“This belief in an all-powerful America that can solve anything is disappearing,” he said, amid problems that persist in the Strait of Hormuz even after Trump's announced truce.

Iran will not allow more than 15 ships a day to pass through the Strait of Hormuz under the armistice agreement with the United States, a senior Iranian source was quoted as saying on Thursday by Russian state news agency TASS.

The Iran war demonstrated “in a single incident the danger of American misgovernance and poor judgment,” said Stephen Wertheim, a researcher at the Carnegie Endowment think tank in Washington, who believes the analogy with the Suez crisis fits.

“A concern shared by countries around the world” about the “decline of governance in America”

In the analyst's view, the war and its uncertain outcome “only accelerate an existing concern, shared by countries around the world, about what the decline in the quality of governance in America means for what they can expect from the United States.”

Many of the allies, especially those in the Persian Gulf and wider Asia, have few alternatives to the role of security partners, but the war in Iran and the ceasefire have diminished American influence and how they perceive the extent to which they can rely on the US, said Charles A. Kupchan, a political scientist and director of European studies at the Council on Foreign Relations think tank.

In his view, the war and its economic impact “reinforces this sense that the US has become unpredictable at this point.”

Poland on a possible decline of American hegemony: “We fear that it may be so”

Constantly criticized by the current US president, Europeans have distinguished between trust in Donald Trump and trust in the US, which still exists because it is vital to their security, the NYT says.

Asked recently whether American hegemony has waned, Poland's foreign minister, Radoslaw Sikorski, said: “We hope not, but we fear that it may be so.”

The Wall Street Journal wrote, citing sources in the US administration, that Trump is considering a plan to sanction some NATO members whom he blames for not providing the United States and Israel with the necessary support during the war with Iran.

Two European diplomats told Reuters on Thursday that NATO's secretary general has informed some European chancelleries that Donald Trump wants concrete commitments in the next few days regarding contributions to secure the Strait of Hormuz.

Ahead of the meeting between Rutte and Trump on Wednesday in Washington, the White House announced that Trump would address the subject of a possible US withdrawal from the alliance.