Aalmost everything in Wait, what? The president wants to invade Greenland? Is Marco Rubio wearing the wrong size shoes? And what is this about Bobby Kennedy and the dead raccoon?
standing nearby in Switzerland while Donald Trump announced that Iran needs missiles and the new members of the ayatollah are demanding more compensation. The whip is so over-the-top, the results so ridiculous, that no sane screenwriter would try to sell any of this as a solid story.
At least a few people in Trump’s inner circle they tried to calm the president’s enthusiasm, but glory is a seductive drug, and Trump decided to move forward. In a video issued on the first night of the bombing, Trump affirmed that the government would never be allowed to acquire a nuclear weapon. But the final part of the message suggested that Iran’s past transgressions and future ambitions were all beside the point: The regime would cease to exist.
Finally, to the great, proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand. Continue to protect yourself. Do not leave your home. It is very dangerous outside. Bombs will be thrown everywhere. When we’re done, take over your government. It will be yours to take.
For years, you have asked for American help, but you have not received it. No president was willing to do what I am willing to do tonight. Now you have a president who gives you what you want, let’s see how you respond. America supports you with great power and evil power. Now is the time to take control of your destiny and unleash the prosperous and glorious future that is within your reach. This is the time to take action.
The regime, in fact, did not fall, and soon the regime was giving new goals. Trump and his aides began cycling, as my colleagues Marie-Rose Sheinerman and Isabel Ruehl noted, through “buffet” of information for war, including terrorism, violence, and even the will of God.
Trump, for his part, began to deny that regime change was a goal – “I’ve never cared about regime change,” he said. he said a few weeks ago—while insisting at the same time that he had, in fact, effected regime change by killing many of Iran’s top leaders. Trump has since left even that argument behind: He is negotiating with members the same Iranian regime that existed four months ago, but now Trump to call them
Trump has engaged in a surprising abandonment of his other war aims. For weeks, Trump claimed that Iran’s missile capability—the arsenal that rightly worries Israel and the Gulf States—had been, like so much else in Iran, “obliterated.” But Iran, as it turned out, was able to save most of its missile forces, as well as the drones that patrol (and threaten) the Strait of Hormuz. So Trump quickly switched from destroying missiles to standardizing them. Iran, you see, should have missiles; everyone else has theirs, after all. “I mean, they should have some,” he said he said while in France more than a week ago“because some people have some. Besides, the president added, “missiles are not the problem.” Comparing missiles to nuclear weapons, Trump said: “Missiles, they hurt a little bit, but they don’t blow up the planet.”
A small place? Where, one wonders, can be counted as a small area to get hit by Iranian missiles? The Israelis didn’t have to guess, because Trump soon abandoned another putatively important part of the American casus belli: Iran’s support for terrorism in the region. When the United States went to war in Iran, Israel went to war against Iran’s proxy Hezbollah, in Lebanon. But now Hezbollah – at least according to Trump – is just annoying”handle he said the prime minister “is a very difficult man, and to tell you the truth, he should be very grateful to us for doing this.” In fact, the US president is siding with Iran and telling the Israelis that they must stop retaliating against Hizbullah.
While the Americans were bringing conventional war to Iran from the air and sea, the Iranians engaged in an asymmetrical strategy and closed the Strait of Hormuz—something anyone paying attention knew that Iran would do except Trump and his secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth. Not only did the Iranian regime remain intact; now it was wrapping its hands around the throat of the world economy. Trump accordingly added a new war aim, declaring that America would force the strait back open for all to use, with no tolls or fees or anything else going to the wicked regime in Tehran. Loads, Trump he said– which of course was free before
Not so fast. A few days ago, Iran and Oman he announced that they would create a working group on “the future management of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz and the services to be provided in this regard and the costs associated with them in accordance with international standards.” The Omanis are still sticking to Trump’s line that the passage will be free, but the Iranians are actually insisting on ownership of the channel—a level of control over the waterway they didn’t have four months ago—and Trump doesn’t seem to know or care that any of this is happening.
So much, likewise, for the idea that the Iranian government can be kept in its stronghold by beating it into poverty. At the beginning of the war, Trump and his deputies shouted that Iran was being “wiped out,” “destroyed,” and other words from a theory that did not reflect the situation on the ground. And while Iran has suffered major damage to its military and general infrastructure, it is about to get a lot of money to help it recover.
Trump has now swallowed the condition that Iran will get some $300 billion, and a bin investment as part of the construction plan. The money will not come directly from America—thank heaven for small favors—but the Iranians have tacked on the proviso that what they do with the money is up to them and that the Americans can go and mind their own business.
When pushed about all this, Trump resorted to the nonsense claim that the Iranians were “two weeks” from developing a nuclear weapon. They they weren’t. Neither Trump nor anyone else has presented evidence that Iran is building a nuclear device; for almost anything.
Still, let’s admit that Iran was somehow closer to the bomb than America could bear. Reportedly, this program was destroyed (again, in Trump’s favorite word, “destroyed”) last summer. Weeks ago, Trump demanded that “nuclear dust” – his term for fissile material – be handed over to the United States. He even considered operation to go to Iran and get, a very stupid idea that his advisors, for once, talked him out of pursuing. Now, however, Trump doesn’t care: He’s basically willing to accept something like President Obama’s Comprehensive Plan of Action (the so-called Iran nuclear deal). But at least international inspectors will return to Iran to confirm the location and status of Iran’s nuclear stockpile.
Or maybe not. Iranians are ready to limp to the idea of the auditors, while it remains open to to talk about the inspection. In other words, Trump—who pulled America out of the JCPOA—is now poised to sign on to a far worse incarnation of the same deal while other nations pay much more money to Iran than Obama’s deal ever conceived.
The answer is that Trump is doing his business completely, and does not show any guiding principle other than his personal interests. Just as Trump drops friends and allies if they become a nuisance or a burden (often with the declaration that he didn’t like them anyway), the president also drops policies and programs for the same reason. If something looks like it will benefit him in some way – glory, fame, money – he will do it. And if the plot goes wrong, he will do anything to get out, regardless of the cost to others.
Trump’s weakness means that the US has no real foreign policy. The American nation—with all of its considerable economic and military resources—is now like a massive robot that has had its programming deleted and its memory wiped. Trump, the new owner who did not bother to read the instructions, twiddles the knobs of his remote control, spinning dials and jabbing at buttons while the gigantic and powerful United States of America lumbers about, walking in circles, bumping into walls, and smashing things, without direction or purpose.
Trump doesn’t think he surrendered, because surrender means giving up important beliefs. He doesn’t. For Trump, Iran’s capitulation is just another deal. For the rest of us, it will be something more dangerous.
