A Man Without a Plan

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Donald Trump’s 19-minute address to the nation on Wednesday night made it clear, in case there was any doubt, that the president is out of his depth when it comes to developing an exit plan for the war he has unleashed in the Middle East. 

In lieu of a real plan, Trump says he wants to continue bombing Iran’s infrastructure until Iran is finally bludgeoned into surrendering. Trump’s problem is that after assassinating the top ranks of Iran’s government, it is less than certain who has the authority to deliver on his demands. 

Trump may have succeeded in creating de facto regime change in Iran, but now even he has to admit he doesn’t know who is calling the shots, if, in fact, anyone is. He claims the Iranians are pleading with him for a ceasefire, but who is doing the pleading? 

According to every pronouncement coming out of Iran: Whatever Trump says is simply not true.

The president, in short, is in a quandary about how to proceed. The situation is made more difficult by the fact that Trump has no credible advisers to help him climb out of the mess.

There is growing reason to believe that real estate promoter Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, who were spearheading Trump’s efforts at Middle East diplomacy, misread critical signals at crucial junctures. Trump, who distrusts US intelligence agencies, prefers to act according to his own gut instincts. 

Until now, Trump has been able to calm the stock market and the oil market by periodically hinting on social media that he is ready to pull out of the quagmire he created, but investors can only be tricked so many times. Fool me once, and I can understand; fool me three times, and I am the fool. Wall Street is not populated by fools. Without a credible exit plan, oil prices are climbing once more, and the stock market is about to go into a dive. Trump is rapidly transforming the image of the US from “Leader of the Free World” to the global economy’s greatest threat.  

In all of this, it’s increasingly obvious Trump has no clear idea of what he is doing or where he is headed. He has called for Europeans to open the Strait of Hormuz, as though he had no role in closing it. 

What he doesn’t understand is that Asia, whose economy is the engine that keeps the global economy running, is even more dependent than Europe on the oil and natural gas that has been blocked by the war.

Trump may be planting the seeds for a future wave of international terrorism and global disruption that is likely to surpass anything we have experienced until now. 

Trump thinks he can force Iran’s surrender by intensifying the bombing of its infrastructure. The next few weeks will be worse than the past month. If Iran doesn’t surrender, he will effectively bomb it back to the Stone Age. 

That would mean forcing more than 90 million people — many of whom are highly educated — into a political vacuum in which survival would be doubtful. Trump thinks the US can simply walk away from that disaster and that Americans will not suffer any consequences. 

George W. Bush thought the same when he blundered into Iraq. The political chaos he created led to ISIS terrorists attempting to set up their own caliphate. In the same vein, Trump may be planting the seeds for a future wave of international terrorism and global disruption that is likely to surpass anything we have experienced until now. 

In principle, the US has always maintained a system of checks and balances intended to prevent any single individual from seriously derailing American society. It is the failure of these institutions — the faulty emergency-docket decisions by a conservative-packed US Supreme Court and a passive Republican majority in Congress — which has allowed Trump to plunge the country into this mess. 

It should be obvious bombing Iran “back to the Stone Age” is not a credible exit plan. Rather than simply walking away from Iran, Trump may be planning a ground invasion. That is apparently what the Iranians believe. While Trump has been talking about the war ending in a week or so, additional US troops continue to pour into the region. In analyzing the situation, The Economist recommended paying attention to what Trump does rather than listening to what he says.