The Journal has an article today about the increasing unreality of the strategy, if one can call it that, the U.S. is using to approach Trump’s war with Iran. The headline tells the story: Trump is Losing Patience Over an Iran War with No Clear End in Sight. The article appears to be based on accounts from various advisors who’ve been present at planning meetings with Trump. It’s filled with quotes about how he’s out of patience, mad, fed up, has lost confidence in diplomacy, etc. One advisors says he’s moved into “revenge mode.” He’s telling advisors he thinks he can “break the Iranians’ will through an aggressive bombing campaign.”
A constant through-line in the article (and based on this account of Trump’s private White House rants) is that the Iranians can’t be trusted and that Trump keeps making deals with them that they simply break. I certainly don’t see the Iranian government as very trustworthy either. But this whole set of claims is a fantasy. Trump has never had any agreements or deals with the Iranians. What he’s had is a series of notional ceasefires in which nothing of substance or consequence is actually agreed to — you might sum them up with the famous Bill & Ted’s maxim to “be excellent to each other.” The point of these deals has been to calm international oil markets and give Trump space to moonwalk away from his totally self-inflicted debacle. But since these ceasefires are only “deals” to begin negotiations the actual war aims and demands of each side eventually seep through. Then they go back to fighting. Each deal really amounts to a temporary or contingent U.S. surrender. Trump needs them to calm oil markets and lower the U.S. price of gas. Iran wants it to consolidate its gains and get a break for aerial bombardment.
As I’ve argued too many times by now Trump lost this conflict in its first days. Everything since then has been his struggle to deny that reality, either with bogus “deals,” more bombing or various threats. Indeed, in recent days, while Trump rants and continues bombing raids, it’s Iran which is opening meaningful new fronts in the conflict. Having the Houthis (an Iranian proxy force) menace the Red Sea sea lanes is tightening the stranglehold Iran has with it’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.
If we take these internal accounts at face value — not at all a certainty — it seems like Trump isn’t getting honest accounts of what his aides are negotiating. (The rapid turnabout on his Saudi nuclear deal lends weight to that possibility even if they are different negotiations.) You’ll remember that during the lead up to the signing of the “MOU” the U.S. side was claiming that Iran was making side promises to absolutely definitely shut down its nukes program. It just wasn’t willing to put it in writing. End the war and we’ll totally do it, the Iranians were purportedly saying.
Whether these were straight up Iranian lies, wishful thinking by the U.S. side, or just happy talk Kushner and Witkoff were telling Trump almost doesn’t matter. If you believe something like that you deserve to be lied to. But in addition to dragging the country through months of war to avoid accepting his own failure, Trump seems to be coming up with new theories of betrayal within the negotiations themselves. Diplomacy failing; the Iranians lying, etc.
I saw a clip of Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) saying that of course diplomacy is failing because he’s got his doofus son-in-law Jared and Steve Witkoff handling the negotiations on the other side of the table from seasoned Iranian diplomats who’ve been negotiated with on the nuclear issue for decades.
Of course, they’re morons. They’re also corrupt. But as much as I appreciate the gotcha it’s actually misplaced. Effective war diplomacy can get you the best and most creative agreement that the circumstances warrant. But that last part is key. Kickass diplomacy is never going to get the side that won the conflict to agree to a deal in which they lost. But that is essentially what’s being asked of the diplomacy here.
Of course, much as he flounders Trump still controls the most powerful military in the world. He might be able to break the Iranians’ will with a ground invasion and a sufficient number of war crimes. But that means doubling or tripling down on a war that is already hugely unpopular and driving fuel prices through the roof. For all Trump’s bluster he almost never does something like that when the threat to his own popularity is so straightforward. But he doesn’t have any other way out.
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