The consensus is clear. President Donald Trump, the pundits say, has trapped himself in a pointless war in Iran. He is, we are told, thrashing about blindly and blaming everyone but himself. At least Israel has war aims, even if they differ from America’s. The United States, by contrast, is shooting in the dark.
I would amend that narrative in only one way. There was a war aim. The problem is that it has failed. The original goal, which Israel, the Arab world, Britain, Europe, and pretty much everyone else except Russia and China could get behind, was to replace the ayatollahs’ terrorist regime with something more peaceful and more democratic.
In January, when Iran was rocked by the most intense protests since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, regime change seemed to be within touching distance. Trump told the Iranians that help was on its way, the exiled crown prince announced that he was ready to oversee a transition, and monarchist standards began to replace the regime’s flags on Iranian Embassy buildings around the world.
Then the mullahs hit back with a fury that left onlookers stunned. Some 30,000 civilians were killed. A regime that is so steeped in blood is past the point of compromise. The men who ordered and carried out those massacres know that any transition would leave them facing the noose.
Might a rising yet succeed? It is possible that Trump knows something that the rest of us do not. For what it is worth, though, every security contact I have spoken to tells me that regime change is off the agenda. Indeed, the reason Britain was reluctant to participate in the attacks in the first place was that its intelligence services were convinced there was no chance of a successful revolution, and believed that the only viable option was to push for a gradual transition. It looks as if they were right.
What happens next? However Trump spins it, anything short of the removal of the mullahs is a defeat. Yes, he can degrade Iran’s missile capacity, but at what cost? America’s prestige has suffered a huge blow, Russia is delightedly selling its oil again, and the missiles that might have been needed to defend Taiwan have been squandered. The ayatollahs remain in charge, and they will now see acquiring a nuclear bomb as a matter of national survival.
As well as weakening the U.S. internationally, Trump has weakened himself domestically. His supporters have so far proved astonishingly biddable, reversing their positions whenever he does on everything from trade policy to the release of the Epstein files. Yet, they draw the line at what they see as returning to the neocon forever wars that he was elected to halt.
From Israel’s point of view, all that counts is setting back Iranian rearmament and taking out drone and missile sites. The oil price, the impact on Ukraine, the consequences for American prestige — these things are secondary. From a U.S. point of view, though, the only way to salvage victory would be to depose the ayatollahs altogether and put Iran on track for free elections, possibly under a constitutional monarchy. There is no question that that outcome would be popular with Iranians. Yet, the only way to deliver it would be through a ground invasion, something which neither Trump nor his voters will countenance.
So, for want of any better options, Trump is likely to declare victory and call off the military action. Even that, though, does not necessarily get him out of the mess he is in. He might stop the bombing. He might even lean on the Israelis to stop the bombing, too — though, so far, they have paid little attention to what he wants. How, though, will he convince the Iranians to stop? The president may have initiated a conflict that he has no power to finish.
THE MAIN LOSERS FROM BRITAIN’S ‘ISLAMOPHOBIA’ CODE? MUSLIMS
In any event, this is the beginning of the end for Trump. To start a war of choice, given the platform on which he was elected, was unwise. To lose it — and anything that leaves the mullahs in charge is losing — will be disastrous. In the meantime, NATO is fractured, Russia and China are jubilant, and the Taiwanese, concluding that the U.S. will not defend them, are asking with increasing urgency whether they should simply deal directly with Beijing while they still can.
There is a certain irony to all this. For a decade, Trump’s allies overseas, as well as his critics, have been asking him to step up militarily. Ah, but not like this. Not like this.
