Trump fought Iran, and Iran won
A fuelish dilemma
Is it time to say “I told you so?”
A few weeks ago, I said that the Iran war was ending with a whimper, rather than with a bang. Even before that, when the war first started, I said that war with Iran was easier to start than finish, noting, “The US excels at tactical warfare. It’s the long-term, strategic thinking that we tend to have problems with.”
Three months later, my observation from early March that the “most likely scenario is that Trump finds something to call a victory and walks away” seems to have hit the nail on the head.
I’ve lost count of the ultimatums that have been demanded and ignored over the last couple of months. Iran hasn’t given an inch to Trump’s demands, and now the president says he “couldn’t care less” if negotiations are over. With no negotiations and no fighting (at least not serious fighting), the war with Iran seems to be in a Korea-like limbo, with the exception that Iran is now strategically better off than it was before the war started.
Yes, Iran maintains a stranglehold on the Strait of Hormuz with only a trickle of shipping running the gauntlet. Both the US and Iran are letting a few ships transit in their respective lanes of protection, but the numbers remain about 90 percent below pre-war levels.
The low number of tankers leaving the Persian Gulf has resulted in steadily declining stockpiles of oil. The price of oil has remained relatively steady since hostilities simmered, based on the assumption that Trump is ending the war and reports that a deal is near.
“When the President forces this conflict to a successful end, gas prices will drop back to multi-year lows and global energy markets will be much more stable in the long term,” White House officials told the Washington Post.
But ending the war is proving to be difficult. Iran has reportedly broken off negotiations, demanding that Israel halt its attacks in Lebanon. Iran’s action has caused a rift between Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu, with Trump confirming that he called the Israeli leader “crazy” in an expletive-filled phone call in which the two discussed their “tactical disagreements.”
If you want to understand who is winning and who is losing, just look at which side is ignoring the other’s demands and which is scrambling to make a deal.
As I’ve pointed out previously, Trump is caught between a rock and a hard place. He can’t afford to openly admit defeat, but he also can’t afford to let the energy crisis drag on. Both are poison for the midterms.
And now the corner that Trump has painted himself into is getting smaller. In a bipartisan vote, the House passed a war powers resolution on Wednesday that would limit the president’s ability to launch new attacks. The measure must pass the Senate to become binding, but does not have to be signed by the president. Even without passing the Senate, the measure’s passage in the House is an indication of the war’s unpopularity and Republican division on the issue.
Many of Trump’s Iran problems are self-made. The Administration’s plan seems to have been to follow the Venezuela model of a decapitation strike, followed by replacing Iran’s leadership with an ally, in this case, former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Whether this was a good idea to begin with or not is moot, because the plan fell apart when Ahmadinejad was injured in airstrikes in the early days of the war. The former president is no progressive, even though he was under house arrest by the current regime, and was a bogeyman of the right for years while in office.
Likewise, Trump created difficulties with Congress and the public by choosing a go-it-alone approach. Trump failed to even attempt to make a case for war before launching the attacks, probably gambling that the Ahmadinejad gambit would win the war before opposition could build. When the secret plan failed, there was no Plan B.
Trump also did not attempt to talk Congress into supporting the war. The end of major hostilities coincided closely with the 60-day limit specified by the War Powers Act, and the Administration made no serious attempt to get congressional approval for extended hostilities.
Large-scale strikes may have ended, but a low-intensity conflict continues. The US maintains a blockade on Iranian oil, an act of war in itself, and Iran continues to threaten shipping in the Strait of Hormuz. Both sides are also still shooting. The US recently attacked Iranian air defense sites, and possibly in retaliation, Iran has attacked Kuwait and Bahrain.
The status quo might last indefinitely if not for the elephants in the room: The energy crisis and the dwindling oil supplies. At some point, Trump is going to have to make a decision to either go all-in and restart the war in a major way to force open the Strait or to make a deal to get oil supplies flowing again.
There really isn’t much question as to which course he will choose. Even without increasing constraints from Congress, the president would likely order the TACO from the menu. If Trump had any intention of escalating the conflict, he would have done so two months ago. The chances of escalation are inversely proportional to the length of time until the midterms.
In the meantime, the Trump Administration has adopted the Alfred E. Neuman attitude of “What? Me worry? with a social media post saying, “It will all work out well in the end - it always does.” Or maybe it’s a dog whistle to the QAnon slogan, “Trust the plan.” There is really no evidence that Trump has a plan, however, and, as Republicans used to tell Democrats, hope is not a plan.
The irony is that Trump was elected in large part because Republicans saw him as a fighter. What will happen to the movement when MAGA realizes that he not only lost the only real fight that he’s ever had but that he backed down in the face of Iranian resistance?
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