It’s been 12 days since Donald Trump used his social media platform to make a vague announcement about a possible end to the war with Iran. A “peace” agreement, the president wrote, “has been largely negotiated.” He added that the details of the breakthrough deal would be “announced shortly,” raising hopes around the world that the end of the deadly and destabilizing war was imminent.
Roughly 48 hours later, U.S. military leaders announced a series of “self-defense” strikes in southern Iran. Despite an ostensible ceasefire that’s been in place for weeks, the violence is ongoing. The Associated Press reported:
The United States said Monday that it bombed radar and drone sites in Iran after Tehran shot down an American drone over the weekend. Iran then said it launched a strike of its own, and Kuwait reported incoming fire. […]
The U.S. military’s Central Command said it carried out the strikes in Iran on Saturday and Sunday around the city of Geruk and on Qeshm Island.
Around this time a week ago, Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters that a breakthrough might take “a few more days.” Evidently, the meaning of “few” remains flexible.
Indeed, the broader dynamic is a familiar one: We’re left with a ceasefire in which the fire hasn’t ceased, and a burgeoning peace deal that lacks both peace and a deal.
Complicating matters is the degree to which the American president’s public statements about the war offer little in the way of clarity or consistency. As The New York Times reported, “Three months after President Trump launched war on Iran, his seemingly haphazard approach to the conflict is bewildering allies at home and abroad as he veers between diplomatic dealing, military strikes and increasingly far-fetched ideas.”
The Times added that Trump’s “pendulum swings on Iran have often seemed driven by mood and moment rather than any discernible strategy.”
There’s ample evidence that bolsters the point. In recent days, for example, the Republican has insisted that any agreement include Iran turning over its highly enriched uranium. He’s also recently said the opposite, arguing that Iran’s uranium stockpiles are really just a “public relations” issue and the goal isn’t altogether “necessary.”
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Similarly, in an interview with Fox News’ Lara Trump that aired over the weekend, the president raised a few eyebrows when he told his daughter-in-law, “We’ve actually left their military alone. People would be surprised to hear that. Because mistakes have been made in wars where you wipe out everybody and then you have a country that for 40 years can never rebuild.”
The comments were completely at odds with weeks’ worth of rhetoric in which the president claimed that U.S. forces have destroyed Iran’s military.
As this week got underway, Trump also used his platform to publish another item, at 1:02 a.m. ET, complaining that “Dumocrats and various seemingly unpatriotic Republicans” have made it “MUCH tougher for me to properly do my job and negotiate” with Iran by saying things about the conflict that the White House doesn’t like.
In other words, as the president sees it, his failures are everyone’s fault but his own. If only everyone would say what he wants them to say, all would be well.
As for the road ahead, Trump met with his team for hours on Friday and told the public that the discussion would dictate the administration’s “final determination.” Three days later, as the AP reported, he “has yet to decide on whether to move ahead with a deal to extend the ceasefire and reopen” the Strait of Hormuz. Watch this space.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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