There’s nothing new about world leaders promising peace but delivering war. Because Donald Trump has a reputation for frankness, some assumed that he would be different, and that his promises of stepping back from military adventurism were genuine. And indeed I don’t think they were entirely hollow; I think I described him correctly, about this time last year, as “an imperialist who doesn’t much like war.”
So the ideal military exercise from Trump’s point of view is one that uses a relatively small effort to achieve some short-term imperial goal, because the short term is all he ever thinks of. And the first two Trump wars were like that. First, last June, was a limited air offensive in Iran, which was designed to demonstrate American resolve and get the Israeli government off Trump’s back. Second, in January, was a snatch and grab raid in Venezuela, designed to decapitate the Maduro regime.
Comparing last year’s attack on Iran to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, I noted a number of differences that made it “look even more immoral and foolhardy.” But, as I pointed out, they needed to be offset against the fact that the Iran operation was much more limited: it remained possible at that time “the worst could still be avoided.” And for a time at least, it was. The bombing stopped, Iran and the United States went back to talking, and Trump found other distractions.
The Iranian regime, however, had been weakened, and it wasn’t long before popular discontent came to the surface. From late December mass protests sought the overthrow of the government; the protesters were encouraged by Trump and promised American assistance. But no assistance came, and they were suppressed in a brutal crackdown costing thousands of lives.
In the meantime there was Venezuela, also discussed here. It could be seen as a sort of trial run for regime change in Iran, or rather regime change that wasn’t. Nicolás Maduro was abducted and the US won some oil concessions, but otherwise Venezuela carried on much as before; the democratic opposition, victors of the 2024 election, were basically ignored and were expected to be grateful for the crumbs from Trump’s table.
So it’s understandable that Trump was attracted by the idea of achieving something similar in Iran (with the further attraction of diverting public attention from Jeffrey Epstein). But what’s actually happened looks very different – not just because supreme leader Ali Khamenei was killed rather than captured, but because the scale of military operation was much greater and seems to lack any sort of exit strategy. America appears to be committed to regime change, but has failed to articulate either precise objectives or the means for achieving them.
The idea may be, as Trump’s words sometimes suggest, that the revolution from below that was crushed in January will now, with the damage done to the regime, be able to succeed and the Iranians will be able to construct their own government. No-one has so far found any precedent for such success, but in the unlikely event that it does happen it will be a big gain for human freedom – achieved at the cost of further weakening the rule of law internationally, with who knows what future consequences.
More likely, the men with guns will reassert control, either under the forms of the Islamic regime or as an equally brutal replacement. Air strikes alone will not dislodge them, and Trump will lose patience long before an effective land campaign can be mounted. While it’s impossible to be sure, the simplest interpretation of the evidence is that no plans have been made for a long war, and certainly American public opinion has not been prepared for such a thing. Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld look like masters of foresight by comparison.
One person who does have a clear objective is Benjamin Netanyahu. And his intentions matter, not – as the antisemitic conspiracy theorists would have it – because Israel secretly controls the US government, but because the vacuum created by Trump’s ignorance and aimlessness is waiting to be filled by any strong personality who knows what he’s doing. And Netanyahu has consistently pursued for two decades the goal of crippling Iran.
Netanyahu’s hostility is tribal, not ideological (ideologically he and the mullahs have much in common). For him, Iran is a rival. He has no interest in the welfare of its people; he just wants to see either a puppet regime that will be friendly to Israel or, failing that, chaos. The emergence of a strong, united and democratic Iran would be for him the worst possible outcome. And since Trump is equally hostile to democracy, it’s clearly going to be an uphill battle for Iran’s democratic forces.
I wish them well. But those who have ridden the Trump bandwagon in the past have mostly lived to regret it.
The World is Not Enough 