If that was the best case President Donald Trump could make for why launching a war against Iran was necessary, it’s clearer why he didn’t bother to make it before he started the war a month ago.
In a prime-time address from the White House, a decidedly lethargic president argued both that the war was necessary — lest Iran rain destruction down on America and much of the world — and that the war is going great and will soon be over. If there is anyone not already on board with Trump’s war who would have been convinced by that speech, it’s hard to imagine who and where they are.
If there is anyone not already on board with Trump’s war who would have been convinced by that speech, it’s hard to imagine who and where they are.
The speech featured many of Trump’s familiar rhetorical tics. The military, he said, has delivered “victories like few people had ever seen before,” while Iran was about to obtain “a nuclear weapon like nobody’s ever seen before.” Everyone, apparently, is in awe: “The whole world is watching, and they can’t believe the power, strength, and brilliance, they just can’t believe what they’re seeing.” And before you know it, the war will be just a memory. “We are on track to complete all of America’s military objectives shortly, very shortly. We are going to hit them extremely hard over the next two to three weeks. We’re going to bring them back to the stone ages, where they belong.”
And the global energy crisis the war touched off? Not Trump’s fault, certainly. “This short-term increase” in gas prices, he said, “has been entirely the result of the Iranian regime launching deranged terror attacks at oil tankers.” It’s hard to consider those attacks “deranged” when they were both utterly predictable and have given Iran the best leverage it has to force an end to the conflict on favorable terms.
Trump also insisted that “We’re now totally independent of the Middle East” and “America has plenty of gas. We have so much gas,” and therefore don’t have to worry about the restriction in oil moving through the Strait of Hormuz. This would be news to anyone who has filled up their gas tank in the past few weeks.
But a significant chunk of Trump’s speech was given over to a fact-challenged attack on the international nuclear agreement reached with Iran when Barack Obama was president. It’s worth reminding ourselves of that history, because it show a path we could have taken, had Trump not been so foolish and jealous of Obama.
On May 8, 2018, Trump pulled the United States out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the multinational deal to restrict and monitor Iran’s nuclear program that was painstakingly negotiated and finalized in mid-2015, with the help of China, Russia, France, Germany, Britain and the European Union. Trump’s own advisers then, including Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Defense Secretary James Mattis, had pleaded with him not to abandon the agreement, arguing that it was keeping Iran’s nuclear ambitions in check. But Trump killed it, claiming that the Iranian regime would quickly come crawling back and give in. “They are going to want to make a new and lasting deal,” he said. But no new agreement ever materialized.
To be fair, the 2015 nuclear deal did not address Iran’s missile stockpile or its support for proxy groups, including Hezbollah and the Houthis in Yemen. But the core terms of the agreement — allowing Iran some limited uranium enrichment for peaceful purposes and strictly monitoring its nuclear program, in exchange for relief from economic sanctions — are ones Trump would probably be happy to take today, if he were being honest. Instead, he said in his speech Wednesday that had the nuclear agreement remained in place, “There would have been no Middle East and no Israel right now,” because Iran would have built nuclear weapons, then launched them against every country in sight.
Only in Trump’s mind could an agreement that included close monitoring of Iran’s nuclear program have made it more likely Iran could build nuclear weapons than with no monitoring at all. But Trump began this war without thinking through the political effects — not just here at home but also in Iran and beyond. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz and his shifting statements on the topic show just how irrational his prosecution of the war has been.
Only in Trump’s mind could an agreement that included close monitoring of Iran’s nuclear program made it more likely Iran could build nuclear weapons than with no monitoring at all.
When Iran closed the strait by threatening and attacking some ships traveling through it, Trump first reacted with rage and threats. Then he demanded that American allies step up to help secure the strait. Then he said it wasn’t our responsibility at all: “The Hormuz Strait will have to be guarded and policed, as necessary, by other Nations that use it — the United States does not!” Then, this week, he said other nations that need oil from the strait should “build up some delayed courage, go to the Strait, and just TAKE IT,” a point he repeated Wednesday night.
Does that mean the fallout from the military campaign he began is not Trump’s problem to solve? It’s hard to know, though he did say in his speech that when he ends the war, the strait “will just open up naturally.” As contradictory as his statements may be, the Iranian government seems confident that all it has to do is hold on long enough for Trump to get fed up, declare victory and leave. When Trump says things like the war will be over “within maybe two weeks,” he certainly gives that impression. And nothing he said Wednesday night would have convinced Iran otherwise.
History is replete with disastrous wars, launched for terrible reasons and carried out with blundering incompetence. But in modern times we may never have seen a war go sideways as quickly as the one that Trump started in Iran, with an Iranian regime still holding on to power and the world plunged into an energy crisis. And though he tried to slap some gold paint on this catastrophe, Trump still hasn’t made a case for why his Iran war was anything but a terrible idea.
Paul Waldman is a journalist and author focused on politics and culture.