TEHRAN – Since returning to the White House in January 2025, Donald Trump has tried to cast himself as a peacemaker, insisting that his second term has brought an end to conflicts that long tied down the United States abroad. He has spoken of breaking with what he calls America’s era of “endless wars,” presenting his foreign policy as restraint, not intervention.

But Trump’s self-portrait as a “president of peace” rings hollow. Throughout 2025, he complained that the Nobel Peace Prize had eluded him, claiming he deserved the honor for his supposed diplomatic triumphs. Yet the facts on the ground tell a different story: U.S. military operations have expanded, not contracted, revealing a gulf between Trump’s words and Washington’s actions. The peace he advertises is more mirage than reality, fading quickly in the smoke of fresh battlefields.

That contradiction came into sharp focus late in December, when Trump confirmed a U.S. strike on a Venezuelan docking facility. Speaking in Florida alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he described “a major explosion” at a dock allegedly used for drug trafficking. It was the first acknowledged U.S. attack on Venezuelan soil in years — a dramatic escalation that undercut his claims of restraint and exposed the widening gap between rhetoric and reality.
The Venezuela operation was not an isolated episode. According to conflict monitors, U.S. forces have carried out or taken part in hundreds of overseas strikes since Trump’s inauguration, targeting at least seven countries across Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East. Rather than pulling back, Washington has widened the map of its military footprint, relying heavily on air power, drones, and naval strikes.

In the Caribbean, the Trump administration has framed its campaign against Venezuelan shipping as a “war on drugs,” even as independent reports question whether Venezuela is a major source of narcotics entering the United States. Human rights groups say approximately 100 people have been killed in strikes on small boats, accusing Washington of lethal force without due process. For critics, the campaign echoes older patterns of U.S. intervention in Latin America, repackaged under new labels.

Africa has also seen an expansion of U.S. firepower. On Christmas Day, American forces launched strikes in northwestern Nigeria, the first known U.S. use of force in the country. The Trump administration claimed ISIL terrorists (also known as ISIS and Daesh) were targeted. The operation followed political pressure from Washington and was wrapped in a narrative of protecting Christians, a claim Nigerian authorities reject. In Somalia, meanwhile, U.S. airstrikes have surged to record levels, surpassing those carried out under several previous administrations combined. Civilian deaths, including children, have been documented, even as the Pentagon declines to publish comprehensive casualty figures. The strikes, which the U.S. says targeted ISIS Somalia and al Shabab militants, have been justified as counterterrorism operations.

The Middle East remains a central theater. In June, Trump authorized strikes on three Iranian nuclear sites during a brief but intense confrontation between Iran and Israel. The White House described the operation as a necessary move to curb a nuclear threat, but it marked one of the most direct U.S. attacks on Iran in decades.

 In Yemen, months of near-daily U.S. strikes devastated infrastructure and killed civilians before a truce was reached in May. In Syria and Iraq, American forces continued retaliatory attacks and targeted killings, despite Trump’s earlier insistence that these conflicts were “not our fight.” Trump himself has long criticized George W. Bush’s wars, calling the Iraq invasion a “big fat mistake” and accusing Bush of lying about weapons of mass destruction.

What emerges from this record is not a doctrine of peace, but a strategy of selective force. Trump has reduced large-scale troop deployments while normalizing frequent, opaque strikes that carry real human costs. Wars may be smaller and more dispersed, but they are no less deadly for those living beneath them.

Trump measures success by the wars he claims to have ended. Yet his own words, spoken in Florida as he confirmed a new strike in Venezuela, underscore a deeper reality: in 2025, the United States has not stepped away from conflict. It has simply learned to call perpetual intervention by another name.