As is so often the case with Donald Trump, a quantity of sound thinking can be found mixed in with the madness and chaos. The dominant narrative, helped along by JD Vance, is that the Republican midterms drubbing was a result of the Iran conflict, a campaign that is now regarded as the “wrong decision” by six in 10 American voters.

“The reason we lost is the war,” Vance stated, apparently suggesting that the White House’s close relationship with Israel should be unravelled. To you and me, the idea of the United States going soft on the Ayatollah in addition to Vladimir Putin is a dreadful one, and 59 per cent of Republican voters (according to a poll by ABC News) believe that America’s support for Israel is “not strong enough”.

But to the beleaguered Maga base, many of whom pump Tucker Carlson into their veins daily, the distinction between good and evil has flipped.

This is where Trump got it right. In the aftermath of the spectacular midterms defeat, when journalists quizzed him about Iran – which now faces the deployment of tens of thousands of American troops, hundreds of warplanes and three aircraft carriers – he insisted: “I did the right thing. I would have done it again.”This was a rare (maybe unique?) example of Trumpian moral clarity. The man has recognised the danger of the regime in Tehran ever since it seized power in 1979 and has consistently said so in public.

In an interview with NBC in 1980, he demanded military action to rescue the 52 American hostages. In a speech in 1987 he suggested that the US should seize Iran’s oilfields. The following year he told The Guardian that as president he would “be harsh on Iran” and “do a number on Kharg Island”.

In Trump’s first term, he pulled out of Barack Obama’s nuclear deal, strangled Tehran with “maximum pressure” sanctions and assassinated its iconic terror mastermind Qasem Soleimani. Unlike the mainstream political elites, he has always been clear-eyed about the threat that the theocracy – known for its rabid chants of “death to America, Israel and Britain” (or its variations) – poses to the West.

Seemingly, the man had cometh for the hour. It might not seem like it today, but launching the campaign against Iran in February was a canny strategic decision.

After the 12-day war with Israel the previous June, the regime’s air defences had been destroyed and many of its nuclear sites were buried in rubble. Hezbollah, long the loaded pistol at Israel’s temple, had been castrated, in some cases literally, by Mossad’s “Grim Beeper” operation; Bashar al-Assad had fallen in Syria; and Russia was bogged down in Ukraine.

Moreover, amid a growing economic crisis in Iran, tens of thousands of protesters had taken to the streets, forcing a rattled and desperate regime to mow them down in their tens of thousands. The foundations of the Islamic Republic were wobbling as never before; history would present no better opportunity to bring it down.

The problem, therefore, is not so much Trump’s decision to go to war but the cretinous way he went about it. From the start, aside from Israel’s characteristic audaciousness and lethality, the execution of the campaign was amateurish, hubristic, capricious, pig-headed and undermined by the president’s fondness for malign strongmen.

Most seriously, although Western military planners had wargamed a struggle for the Strait of Hormuz for decades, securing this crucial choke-point was simply overlooked, seemingly in the overweening assumption that the regime would fold once its leadership had been decapitated. That alone set the conditions for failure.

Plans were altered or cancelled in mid-flow, such as when a Kurdish ground invasion was suddenly halted, reportedly because of pressure from Turkey’s Islamist leader, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

The White House allowed the cunning Islamists of Qatar, Turkey and Pakistan to mediate negotiations rather than, say, allied Britain, France or Germany. As a result, Trump was easily manipulated.

This was underpinned by utter diplomatic and political incompetence. For one thing, the United States neglected to make the case for war to its democratic allies and secure their buy-in prior to the assault. After Trump’s profound betrayal of Nato and Ukraine, Britain and the European powers were doubly disinclined to get involved. The president’s self-harming response? Mockery and venom.

Even more serious was Trump’s dismissive attitude towards the American people. No attempt was made to explain to the public why this war was necessary, and why the cost of such a campaign at the petrol pump was worth paying to defeat one of the world’s worst and most hostile regimes before it went nuclear.

At first, buoyed by his own self-absorption, Trump was able to prosecute his war regardless. But the problem with the American people is that every couple of years, they turn into American voters.

A weak president fears that no war is worth a cost-of-living squeeze, leaving the country undefended and its interests un-pursued.

A hubristic president, however, ignores voters amid spiralling prices, and the people will exact their revenge. That is the true tragedy of the thing. When it comes to Iran, it was a case of right war, wrong president.