The White House lawn was home to a spectacle of muscle-rippling ferocity Sunday night. Testosterone oozed from every pore of the fighters kicking and slugging it out in the “Claw,” a temporary arena set up for President Donald Trump’s 80th birthday celebration. The crowd roared again and again for the Ultimate Fighting Championship matches.

The iconic image of the night came after Diego Lopes, his eye swollen and bloodied, delivered a nasty knockout. He managed to climb up and balance atop the cage just long enough for photographers to capture the moment — his arms outstretched, the White House before him, the crowd on its feet as a huge American flag unfurled in all its star-spangled glory.

Mere hours earlier, Trump had announced on his social media site an agreement with Iran that amounts to a strategic defeat for the United States of America. It’s a bad deal, and one the United States should take.

Wars aren’t won, it turns out, based on a military leader’s physical prowess. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has demonstrated in an impressive fashion that he can complete 100 push-ups and 50 pull-ups in under five minutes and 30 seconds. When it comes to geopolitical strategic thinking, however, he might as well be a 90-pound weakling.

Former White House staffer Sebastian Gorka famously once drove a black Ford Mustang convertible with a vanity plate that read ” ART WAR, ” a reference to the classic military treatise by Sun Tzu. Perhaps Hegseth should borrow his copy: Our military leadership has fumbled on even the most basic aspects of this military conflict of choice.

Despite America’s advantage in the skies, and even with Iran’s conventional naval fleet at the bottom of the seas, Iran held the global economy hostage using its Shahed drones. About the size and cost of a Toyota Camry, these weapons are designed and operated by nerds. Not meatheads.

Despite decades of war games conducted by the Pentagon anticipating that Iran would attempt to close the Strait of Hormuz, along with Iranian leaders’ open threats to do so, the Trump administration was caught unprepared.

Despite having funded much of Ukraine’s success at countering the Russian version of the Shahed, the United States turned down Ukraine’s expertise and technology ahead of attacking Iran.

In this war, Trump achieved none of his major objectives. Iran still has the capacity to launch ballistic weapons at Israel and its Arab neighbors. Iranian people can expect more repression. Iran’s regime and their terrorist proxies are not just intact, they are emboldened and more extreme. Israeli troops remain in Lebanon and their battle with Hezbollah could easily undo the fragile ceasefire between Iran and the United States.

Iran never dominated the U.S. militarily. Their soldiers didn’t KO ours or climb the cage in exultation. Their drones didn’t even sink big commercial ships. What their scrappy, low-cost warfare managed to do was scare shipping companies — and spook their insurers. Some bespectacled actuary in London decided running the strait was too risky. The oil shock that ensued would have been even more catastrophic had it not been for the capacity of the Texas oil and gas industry to boost exports, and for China to curtail its demand.

Oil prices plummeted Sunday, yet even after Iran and the United States make the deal official, somewhere in their byzantine calculations insurers and energy traders will now include in their prices the risk that Iran will once again close the Strait of Hormuz. They’ll bump up the terror premium that the Trump administration claimed would be eliminated by the war. And ultimately, consumers may pay a higher price for fuel, and for everything else.

Trump’s deal with Iran is bad, and the best move for Americans is to take it. The alternative is to lose more blood and treasure, and to what end? Better terms are unlikely without a full-scale invasion and casualties on par with the Iraq War.

Sun Tzu once wrote that victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win.

Hopefully future presidents will keep that in mind.

— Houston Chronicle