Philip H. Gordon, who served as national security advisor to former Vice President Kamala Harris, said Sunday that U.S. acceptance of Iranian control over the Strait of Hormuz represents an “extraordinary outcome” made possible only by what he described as an administration that “squandered legitimacy, alienated allies” and attempted a regime-change war in Iran without adequate preparation. Writing on X, Gordon argued that the Trump administration is now being forced to accept a “catastrophic outcome without viable alternatives” in the vital waterway through which roughly one-fifth of the world’s daily oil supply and a similar share of global liquefied natural gas shipments have historically passed.
Gordon’s post, published to his account @PhilGordonDC at 7:47 a.m. on August 9, 2026, read in full:
“U.S. acceptance of Iranian control over the Strait of Hormuz is an extraordinary outcome only made conceivable by an administration that squandered legitimacy, alienated allies, attempted regime change in a war it had not adequately prepared for and that is being forced to accept a catastrophic outcome without viable alternatives. Counterfactuals are impossible to prove but in other circumstances Iran’s closure of Strait by brazenly attacking maritime traffic and neighbors’ civilian infrastructure would likely have justified and led to a united, global response–like the U.S.-led naval escort mission during the Iran-Iraq war, the global coalition that reversed Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1991, the multinational naval force enforcing UN sanctions in the Gulf in the 1990s, or the UN Security Council sanctions on the Iranian nuclear program in the 2010s–that led to the JCPOA. Instead US and other countries are now being forced to accept an outcome that would have been unthinkable before the war but seems to have become unavoidable because of it.”
A Former Insider Turned Sharp Critic
Gordon is not a passing commentator on the conflict. He served as Harris’s top national security aide from March 2022 until January 2025, having previously held posts including assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs under President Obama and White House coordinator for the Middle East, North Africa and the Persian Gulf region. He now holds the Sydney Stein Jr. scholar chair at the Brookings Institution, where he has published a steady stream of analysis arguing that President Trump’s war in Iran has left Washington with diminishing options. In a July 23 essay for Foreign Policy, Gordon wrote that “paying off Iran” may be the only realistic way to end the war, framing the administration’s predicament as one of its own making.
Gordon has also taken his criticism to broadcast and print outlets throughout the war. Speaking to AFP in March, as Trump sought allied assistance reopening the strait after more than a year of insulting those same allies, Gordon called the request “an extraordinary demand,” adding that expecting partners to risk lives for “a president who has done nothing but insult and berate you for the last 15 months” was “probably a bridge too far.”
The Strait of Hormuz Crisis, In Brief
The current standoff traces back to February 28, 2026, when the United States and Israel launched strikes on Iranian military targets, including the assassination of then-Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, touching off what is now known as the 2026 Iran war. Iran responded by closing the Strait of Hormuz to shipping, deploying naval mines, boarding merchant vessels and issuing warnings against transit through the waterway. The U.S. launched an aerial campaign on March 19 aimed at reopening the strait, and by April 13 had imposed a naval blockade on Iranian ports. A ceasefire reached in April briefly restored some traffic, but Iranian attacks on ships in late June and early July prompted renewed U.S. airstrikes and collapsed the truce. As of early August, at least 17 merchant ships have been damaged in the crisis, with seven abandoned, two captured and 12 seafarers killed or missing, according to figures compiled by outside trackers of the conflict.
Iran has since moved to formalize its position in the strait, establishing what it calls the Persian Gulf Strait Authority in May and asserting that no vessel may transit without a permit from that body — a claim that runs counter to the fact that the strait’s waters are shared between Iran and Oman. Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf said in late June that “management of the Strait will never return to the way it was before the war,” according to a Congressional Research Service report on the crisis.
Latest Flashpoint: Iran’s New Demands
The backdrop to Gordon’s post is a fast-moving diplomatic breakdown detailed in an August 9 Wall Street Journal report. According to the Journal, Trump had spent weeks laying groundwork to declare victory should Iran fully reopen the strait, and had privately floated to aides that he was willing to walk away from the conflict without securing a nuclear deal. Those plans were upended Saturday when Iran issued its steepest demands yet for allowing free passage through the waterway, including billions of dollars in U.S. payments, the withdrawal of American troops from the region and an end to the U.S. naval blockade.
Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, laid out a fuller list of conditions reported by state news agency IRNA: a permanent end to the war, lifting of the naval blockade, withdrawal of U.S. forces, an end to all sanctions, release of Iran’s frozen assets, war reparations, an end to what Tehran calls threats and insults, and a halt to military action against Iran’s regional militia allies. The demands came just after the United Arab Emirates accused Iran of launching a missile attack on one of its oil tankers transiting the strait — the third such strike on an Abu Dhabi National Oil Company vessel in a single week. The Gulf Cooperation Council’s secretary general, Jasem Mohamed AlBudaiwi, condemned the strike as “a dangerous and unacceptable escalation.”
Analysts See a Narrowing Path for Trump
Foreign policy analysts quoted by the Journal described a White House with rapidly shrinking room to maneuver. Mona Yacoubian, director of the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said Iran’s hardline posture “make[s] it increasingly difficult for the president to manufacture a face-saving off-ramp from the conflict.” Gregory Brew, an Iran expert at the Eurasia Group, said Tehran believes Trump is eager to exit the conflict and is “playing hardball” as a result.
Gordon’s Brookings colleagues and fellow former officials have made similar arguments in recent weeks. Writing with Rebecca Lissner, a senior fellow for U.S. foreign policy at the Council on Foreign Relations who also served as principal deputy national security advisor to the vice president under the Biden-Harris administration, Gordon warned in an April 20 Foreign Policy piece that even with a ceasefire “mostly holding,” the costs of the war were already apparent, pointing to sharply higher oil and gas prices and an International Monetary Fund warning of a possible global recession.
The Council on Foreign Relations has separately published a running assessment of the conflict warning that Trump “risks entering a war whose end may be impossible to control,” comparing the trajectory to Lyndon Johnson’s escalation in Vietnam. A separate CFR analysis published August 9 noted that after Iran’s attacks on merchant shipping killed the ceasefire, Trump said he would reimpose the blockade and resume airstrikes, but “faces the same strategic dilemmas that have defined the conflict from the start.”
Trump and Vance’s Public Posture
The administration has continued to project confidence publicly even as the diplomatic picture darkens. On Thursday, Trump told reporters the U.S. blockade on Iranian ports meant the strait was “sort of open right now,” while acknowledging Tehran could still damage ships with missiles, drones and mines. On Friday, he shared a social media post declaring “Donald Trump Won the Iran War,” suggesting he considered the matter resolved even without a nuclear agreement, according to the Journal’s reporting.
Vice President JD Vance, in an appearance on Fox News, indicated the administration was prepared to settle in for a longer standoff regardless of whether Iran shifts its position. “And if not, that’s fine, too, we’re just going to keep on applying the pressure we can apply, and getting as much oil and gas out of the Middle East so that Americans can enjoy lower gas and energy prices,” Vance said, adding, “We’re in the middle of the game.”
A White House official told the Journal that the administration considers all of its military objectives against Iran to have been completed, and that Trump’s current focus is securing the flow of energy through the strait while keeping military options available if Iran targets additional ships. On the nuclear question, officials said Trump has told senior aides privately that he believes Iran is unlikely to revive its nuclear program during his presidency, citing the destruction of three primary nuclear sites in strikes last year. At last month’s NATO summit, Trump said of Iran’s buried uranium stockpile, “We’ve already got the nuclear material, because it’s so far underground. Nobody’s going to be able to get it except us.”
Money Emerges as a Core Sticking Point
Beyond troop withdrawals and sanctions relief, Iran’s demand for billions of dollars in war reparations and the unfreezing of its assets abroad has become one of the more difficult obstacles to a settlement. Trump has said the White House will not allow taxpayer money to flow to Iran, even as officials acknowledge that any deal is unlikely without releasing at least some frozen Iranian assets, possibly with conditions attached. A related dispute concerns whether Washington will again grant waivers allowing Iran to sell oil on the open market, as it did last June under an interim agreement that later collapsed after Iranian attacks on shipping led the U.S. to reinstate oil-sector sanctions.
Political Stakes Rise With Midterms Approaching
The unresolved conflict carries direct political consequences for Trump with midterm elections now less than three months away. Gasoline prices, a closely watched barometer of economic sentiment, stood at a national average of $4.02 a gallon on Saturday, according to AAA — up from $3.16 a year earlier, though down slightly from the prior week. That backdrop has intensified pressure on the White House to produce a resolution, even a partial one, that can be framed as a victory before voters go to the polls.
Background: Gordon’s Iran Ties Drew Congressional Scrutiny
Gordon’s role as one of the administration’s most visible foreign policy critics comes after his own tenure advising Harris drew scrutiny from Republican lawmakers over his past writing on Iran policy. In July 2024, Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas and then-Representative Elise Stefanik of New York sent a letter to Harris raising concerns about Gordon’s connections to Ariane Tabatabai, a former Pentagon official who had been identified in reporting by Iran International and Semafor as part of an alleged Iranian government influence network known as the Iran Experts Initiative. The lawmakers noted that Gordon had co-authored opinion pieces with Tabatabai arguing against sanctions on Iran, including a 2020 piece warning that continued sanctions would create “catastrophe” in the Middle East.
Cotton sent a follow-up letter in August 2024 reiterating the request for information after what he described as a “pattern of anti-Israel bias” in Gordon’s public statements, writing that he could “only imagine” what Gordon might be conveying privately to Harris. Gordon and the Harris campaign did not substantively respond to the inquiries at the time, according to contemporaneous reporting.
The Broader Debate Gordon’s Post Reflects
Gordon’s Sunday post distills an argument he and other former officials have advanced with increasing urgency in recent months: that the administration’s approach to Iran — launching a war without securing broad international backing, then relying on unilateral U.S. pressure to force a resolution — has left Washington isolated at the negotiating table. His invocation of past multilateral responses to Gulf crises, including the 1991 coalition that reversed Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait and the sanctions regime that produced the 2015 nuclear deal, underscores his contention that a more coordinated international response was available but never materialized this time. Whether the administration can still reach a settlement that avoids the outcome Gordon describes remains an open question as negotiations over the strait continue.