Trump Faces a Perilous Choice in Iran

“The smart money looks at the Iran confrontation as one that won't end soon, that will be President Trump's preoccupation for the rest of his presidency.

 

If the Iranian regime has its way, the war will also decide the 2028 presidential election. Mr. Trump won't be making way for a friendly successor, with partisan and personal loyalty to Mr. Trump. He will be Jimmy Carter after his own Iran crisis, only worse. Mr. Trump will also be Richard Nixon, without the benefit of Gerald Ford, who granted Nixon a pardon more legally bulletproof than any Mr. Trump will likely be able to grant himself before leaving the White House in January 2029.

 

I wonder if he thought of this. He took his big, ill-advised swing at Iran believing he might end the regime. If not, at least he'd get a major degradation of its military power that would somehow deliver a short war.

 

Yes, the next U.S. bomb, the next sanction, one more day of blockade might yet cause Iran's leaders to change tack and negotiate. Or the regime could yet fall.

 

Contrary to axiom, hope can be a strategy and frequently is. But there's a reason the U.S. and Allies sent four million troops to occupy Nazi Germany -- so they didn't have to rely on hope to produce a satisfactory outcome.

 

Mr. Trump got himself into this mess. Until he threw down a regime-survival gauntlet before Iran's leadership personnel, under no other circumstance did it make sense for them to close the Strait of Hormuz. They would have been declaring war on the world, including China, whose oil purchases keep Iran afloat.

 

The U.S. was actually in a strong position before Feb. 28. Iran was at war with itself. The U.S. and Israel had effectively suppressed Iran's air defenses. Under an unwritten deal, the U.S. limited itself mostly to attacks on Iran's nuclear-related targets. Iran responded with limited, well-telegraphed strikes and sought to avoid escalation.

 

If you want a deal with somebody, it helps to have a reputation for keeping the deals you make. Mr. Trump transparently wants a deal, but the odds seem slim unless and until Iran's leaders look out their windows and see U.S. troops. After all, they're still on top. Flunkies still take care of their every need. Like Hitler in his bunker, they don't see an adversary offering a change to the status quo that would leave them more secure and personally comfortable.

 

That said, today's U.S. gasoline prices only appear high to a public not reconciled to Joe Biden's inflation. Even today's supposedly towering diesel price, at $6.28, remains below the peak reached during the housing-construction boom in 2008. In today's dollars, diesel topped out at $7.40.

 

Muddling through is still possible for Mr. Trump without an Iran resolution. To get a friendly successor after 2028, he would need help from Democrats, but he's gotten it before in ways that, perhaps understandably, go unemphasized in the analytical histories of the Trump phenomenon by those who tend to write such histories.

 

His slow-working blockade of Iran's oil exports is proving effective. Even some Iran hawks are telling him to leave it to the next president to negotiate terms with Iran's steadily more impoverished regime. Mr. Trump can always denounce the terms from Truth Social as the "worst deal in history."

 

But right now both sides are signaling escalation after Tuesday's midterms or perhaps as soon as this weekend. The ultra-worst case seems unlikely: Russia or China deciding to intervene more openly on Iran's behalf. That leaves the medium worst case: a full-out infrastructure war.

 

Mr. Trump, in the end, has always shrunk from bombing Iran's wells, pipelines and refineries in a way that would put Iran out of the energy business for years or even decades. If this is about to change, my one piece of advice: Do it quickly. Seeing that their deterrence against the U.S. had failed and that their own facilities now lay in ruins, Iran's leaders might hesitate before retaliating against those of the Saudis and other Gulf neighbors. Those neighbors would be the only practical source for the energy imports, equipment and perhaps drinking water the regime would need to survive.

 

Attacks on Iran's infrastructure would be a giant gamble with the world economy. I personally doubt Mr. Trump has the stomach for it -- or that it would be advisable.

 

In this critical moment, however, it's interesting to recall how much his presidency owes to the miscalculations, frauds and idiocies of his enemies. We live at the end of a long chain of events. How different our world might be if the uncategorizable, unpartisan, mercurial Mr. Trump had been managed differently by U.S. elites after his unlikely 2016 win.” [1]

 

Taking down the world economy by attack on regional infrastructure could be Trump’s decision, or the Iranians’ decision. Or both. Trump’s blockade of Iranian oil increases the pressure and the chances of Depression II, like Trump said. At some point Iran can decide that it has nothing to preserve.

 

1. Trump Faces a Perilous Choice in Iran. Jenkins, Holman W; Jr.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 31 Oct 2026: A13.