Trump has no way out on Iran
He can’t win; he won’t say he’s lost. So he dithers.
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On May 18, President Trump posted some fan fiction about his ill-fated war against Iran and got pre-mad at the “Fake News Media” for not covering his imaginary victory in a sufficiently fawning manner.
Eight days later, still locked in the same spiral of self-pity and spite — and with an actual Iran peace deal apparently no closer — Trump posted the exact same thing again.
Did Trump just forget he’d posted his self-aggrandizing thought experiment and pull it out of drafts to post it again? Was he so impressed with his own flight of whimsy and penetrating sarcasm that he just wanted to see it on his screen again? There’s no way to know.
But whatever his reason for repeating himself, one thing is clear: the reiterated nonsense posts accurately reflect Trump’s current Iran policy, which is locked in a doom loop of stasis and failure.
You lost a war. Now what?
Trump, as PN has discussed before, launched a war of aggression against Iran without clear goals, without building domestic political support, without coordinating with allies, and without logistical preparation.
This was not a formula for success, and sure enough, when Iran seized and closed down the Strait of Hormuz instead of capitulating immediately, Trump and his team of dunderheaded and cowardly fascists hesitated briefly and then gave up. Ever since, the president has been searching for a way to back out of his enormously unpopular war in a way that doesn’t make him look like the cowardly dunderheaded fascist he is.
Unfortunately for Trump, though, the people who won the war (that is, Iran) have little to no incentive to let him set terms to make himself look good, or even adequate. Neither do other leaders in the region. As foreign policy scholar Elizabeth N. Saunders explains, Trump has two choices: “Humiliation or (increasingly futile) escalation.”
Escalation is a terrible option for Trump. The US has already shown that bombing alone cannot defeat the Iranian regime. That leaves a ground invasion as the only possible path to something like victory. But a YouGov poll at the end of March found that only 14 percent of US adults support sending ground troops into Iran. Among independents, nine percent support ground troops against 66 percent who oppose, and even among Republicans an invasion is a loser, with 30 percent support against 37 percent opposition.
These figures are dismal enough to suggest that significantly ramping up the war could actually cause Trump’s terrible overall approval to fall even further — especially with Republicans (73 percent of whom support the war), and especially if significant numbers of US service people are killed in combat.
So that leaves accepting humiliation.
Unfortunately for Trump, taking the L is also a bad option, because while analysts and experts recognize that he’s lost the war, most of the public hasn’t yet gotten the message. In a poll last week, 32 percent believed that the US is winning the war, while only 16 percent thought the US was losing; 37 percent believed the US would eventually win. That is a significant number of people who are going to be startled if Trump negotiates a “deal” and there are weeks of headlines about how the US lost.
Alas, the status quo is also bad for Trump; Iran’s control of the strait, and the uncomfortable truth that they are likely to continue to control it for the foreseeable future, have together sent gas prices spiking to an average of almost $4.50 a gallon. That in turn has pushed consumer sentiment to an all-time low. That’s not likely to be good for Republicans in the midterms.
To sum up, if Trump escalates, people are going to hate him. If he surrenders, people are going to hate him. If he dithers, people are going to hate him. He has no good options, which is why he’s spinning in place, hoping someone, anyone, will rescue him.
The calvary isn’t coming
Trump is a giant orange bag of entitlement and grievance who believes other people exist solely to cater to his ego. Iran is supposed to fall to its knees and surrender because that would be convenient for Trump; the media is supposed to praise him for winning no matter what he does. When other people fail to do what Trump wants (as in the 2020 election) he spins fantasies and conspiracy theories and/or whines endlessly about how he is being treated unfairly.
This is why ever since the ceasefire on April 8, Trump has repeated a cycle over and over of announcing a vague deal, then vowing to escalate, then backing down, then announcing a vague deal again.
“In many cases he has made claims of major diplomatic progress that later proved unfounded, fueling criticism that he is trying to calm markets and relieve political pressure,” The New York Times observed drily.
It’s quite possible that Trump is trying to manipulate markets or shore up polls by lying. But there’s also reason to believe he has trouble distinguishing his own fantasies from reality. He wants there to be a deal; he wants there to be some way out so he can go back to focusing on his real love, his expensive and unpopular White House ballroom construction project. And so he says the Iran war is over, and expects everyone else and reality itself to play along.
Reality hasn’t played along, though. You can see that very clearly in the most recent round of Trump’s Iran deal that wasn’t.
Over the weekend, Trump claimed to be close to a settlement. Iran, supposedly, had agreed to open the strait, clear it of mines, and charge no tolls. It had also agreed maybe to some sort of promise to not develop nuclear weapons. In return, the US agreed to lift sanctions on Iranian oil (which would be a financial bonanza for the regime) and to a ceasefire between Israel and Iranian proxy Hezbollah in Lebanon. Oh, and Trump also told Arab leaders they should join the Abraham Accords and unilaterally recognize Israel as a gesture of gratitude for his awesome Iran peace deal.
No sooner did details of the deal start to leak, though, than the deal itself started to sink. Iran said it made no concessions on nuclear development. There was media speculation that Trump might be considering unfreezing Iranian assets to the tune of $100 billion — a huge humiliation if true considering how often Trump has criticized Obama for offering $1.7 billion to cement his nuclear deal.
Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia and other Arab nations are, unsurprisingly, completely uninterested in rewarding Trump for embroiling them in his disastrous military misadventure. Israel’s warmongering Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who pushed hard to get Trump into the war with Iran, of course does not want to stop his war in Lebanon, and escalated strikes there, in part it seems in an effort to derail the US-Iran peace process.
The unkindest, and deepest kick in the self-regard for Trump, though, was delivered by his own ostensible domestic allies. Sen. Ted Cruz panned the deal; so did Sen. Lindsey Graham, who said it would empower Iran and “over time will be a nightmare for Israel.” Sen. Robert Wicker, chair of the Armed Services Committee, warned that the deal would mean “everything accomplished” in the war “would be for naught!”
But nothing really was accomplished by the US in the war, which had the result of strengthening Iran. This is part of what it means to lose a war.
Again, Trump doesn’t want to be perceived as losing a war. But he doesn’t want to escalate either. So he is stuck insisting that his deal will be awesome and then scurrying away when details emerge that reveal the truth that he lost a war. That’s why, after getting pushback, he retreated into his safe space on on Truth Social to burble: “I have informed my representatives not to rush into a deal.” He also dropped more bombs because he wants the Cruzes and Wickers of the world to think he’s tough and to stop telling everyone that he lost a war.
It’s over, but it’ll never be over
Trump has trapped himself in a cul de sac of humiliation with no feasible way out. He may well keep posting his same delusional grievances (“If Iran surrenders … ”) once a week, every week, until his term ends or the heat death of the universe, whichever comes first.
But no matter how often Trump posts the same whiny bilge, no matter how often he claims he is making the best deal ever, and no matter how deeply he spirals into his own narcissistic orange skull, he can’t change the facts on the ground.
He lost. Iran won. His polls are going to keep dropping because he is a loser and everyone hates losers. There is no solution — only a singularity of bluster, rage and failure dragging Trump, the country, and the world inexorably towards the next disaster.
That’s it for today
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I expect Noah is right. If Trump was going to escalate militarily he would have done it by now but he probably realizes no amount of bombing is going to effect regime change, that requires troops on the ground and that's a non-starter. He therefore wants a peace deal that he can present as a win and the Iranians aren't going to provide him one (funny that).
While Trump's political troubles provide some solace (I'll admit I'm enjoying them) the important point is the Strait of Hormuz remains closed (bar a trickle to countries Iran favours). More imporatantly every passing day means more misery and impoverishment for hundreds of millions (perhaps billions) of people around the world. Many people are going hungry today because Trump launched a needless war.
I'm a little concerened that the politicallly sophisticated observers seem very focused on Trump's travails and hardly seem to notice the suffering of vast numbers of ordinary people.
And while Trump, oaf supreme, has embarrassingly lost this embarrassing war, let’s not forget the contributions of Major Oaf Hegseth … who has reduced a once mighty armed force to sneak attacks, indiscriminate bombings and vast exhaustion of bombs and missiles at extraordinary cost.