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America’s “forever wars” has become shorthand for Iraq and Afghanistan — both long, costly military campaigns that ended having achieved, well, not very much.

Donald Trump was elected partly on a promise to stay away from those kinds of wars. But he may already be entangled in another. Today, my colleague Steven Erlanger, who covers diplomacy, writes about whether the Iran war is the next Iraq or Afghanistan.

Another American forever war?

No one starts a war expecting it to last forever.

Yet, American presidents have repeatedly gotten into conflicts that seem as if they could — at least until the next president, or the one after that, decides that the expense and political pain are not worth it, finds a way to declare some sort of victory and goes home.

On Iran, President Trump may have fallen into the same trap.

He campaigned for office vowing to end wars, not start them, and to never get involved in a forever war, let alone one in the Middle East.

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