The failed Trump regime wants Americans to believe the United States won the war against Iran. The reality is considerably more humiliating. Iranian strikes have devastated American military infrastructure across the Gulf, destroying hundreds of structures and damaging aircraft, radar systems, communications equipment and critical facilities. These bases are not merely places to park soldiers. They are the logistical backbone of American military power, supporting aircraft, supplying warships, storing fuel and ammunition, maintaining equipment and coordinating operations. Destroy that infrastructure and even the world’s most expensive military becomes increasingly difficult to sustain thousands of miles from home. Trump can declare victory from Washington. He cannot declare destroyed infrastructure back into existence.

The greatest intelligence failure in American history may not have been a foreign operation. It may have been America's inability to protect itself from its own president. For years, the evidence of Trump's extraordinary loyalty to Moscow has been mounting. His admiration for Putin, his attacks on NATO, his possession of highly classified American defence secrets, and his repeated willingness to advance Russian interests. Yet the most extraordinary part of this entire scandal is the American state itself. The FBI, the intelligence community, Congress and the entire national security apparatus have proved incapable of protecting the country from a president whose conduct has repeatedly raised profound questions about his loyalty. Russia spent decades trying to defeat the United States from the outside. Now Putin can watch an American president dismantle the Western order from within. And the institutions built to defend America have been unable to stop him. What an extraordinary national humiliation.

Tonight, fires are raging around St Petersburg after another Ukrainian drone attack. All because a 74-year-old man in the Kremlin decided that conquering his neighbours was more important than giving his own people a future. Imagine what Russia could have been. Your children studying at universities in Paris, Oxford or Berlin. Families spending summers on the Mediterranean, skiing in the Alps, discovering Rome, Barcelona and Copenhagen. Russian scientists working alongside Europe's finest minds. Businesses flourishing, borders opening, young Russians falling in love, travelling freely and building prosperous lives in the world's most extraordinary neighbourhood. And Russia's vast oil wealth could have continued filling the national savings account, building a financial cushion for a rainy day and securing the prosperity of future generations. Instead, that fortune has been drained by war, and the country's financial future has been mortgaged to one man's imperial ambitions. You had an entire continent on your doorstep, ready to trade, cooperate and prosper. Instead, you have sanctions, burning oil facilities, military funerals, censorship and a generation sacrificed to one elderly man's imperial fantasies. Children raised on militaristic propaganda, families struggling with poverty and alcoholism, and young men sent to die in Ukrainian fields. And your great international friendship? North Korea. A miserable dictatorship famous for prison camps, hunger, compulsory displays of loyalty and children taught to march in formation. Now Russia's future is increasingly tied to the failed Trump regime. And if you believe a man whose business empire has seen six corporate bankruptcies involving casinos and hotels is going to rescue the Russian economy, you may be in for another disappointment. Sorry, but Donald Trump is not Russia's financial salvation. You could have shared Europe's prosperity. Instead, Putin has brought you closer to Pyongyang, with a bankrupt casino magnate as your supposed lifeline. What a catastrophic waste of a great country's future. Oh well, anyway.