Americans don’t like war in general. But if it has to be done, it had better be quick. The joint U.S.-Israeli effort against Iran may only be two months old, but that is already too long for many people, most of whom never wanted armed conflict with Tehran in the first place. And that is proving to be politically problematic for President Donald Trump and the Republicans.
The Iran war is just one reason for the polls predicting defeat for the GOP in the midterm elections in a year when the incumbent party typically loses. There’s no question that the rise in gas prices, combined with the general unpopularity of foreign entanglements, is a drag on the chances of Trump’s party avoiding an electoral disaster this fall.
While his opponents have accused the president of having no strategy for victory and the president has been characteristically inconsistent, as well as vague when discussing his intentions, the path to success against Iran appears to require the sort of patience that the electorate may not possess.
Iran isn’t winning
And that’s the conundrum at the heart of the current impasse between Washington and Tehran, and Trump and the voters.
Contrary to his critics, Iran isn’t winning. The combined efforts of the United States and Israel have done enormous damage to the Islamist terror regime’s military assets, ballistic-missile program and what’s left of its nuclear program. Even if the conflict were to end today, Iran’s capability of inflicting harm on the West and American allies in the region has been greatly diminished. But that isn’t enough—and Trump knows it.
As he has repeatedly said, Iran must surrender its enriched uranium that has been buried in the rubble of the nuclear facilities that were bombed last June. It also needs to end its missile program and stop spreading terror around the region via its proxies—namely, Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis. Yet given the fanatical nature of the regime, and its theocratic and terrorist leaders from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), there’s little reason to believe they will do any of that. What’s more, by obstructing the passage of shipping through the Straits of Hormuz, Iran has been able to exert some leverage due to the impact on the supply of oil to Europe and the price of gas in America.
Considering that Trump’s critics in Europe and his Democratic political opponents at home are effectively cheering for the Iranians to hold fast and prevent Trump from being able to credibly claim victory in the conflict, Tehran has seemingly every reason to persevere until the United States gives up. Its leaders have played the waiting game before with Western leaders and always got the better of them.
That seems like a formula for a defeat for the joint U.S.-Israel effort and, more importantly, as far as Trump’s political foes are concerned, also one for the president. That’s why so many in the American press and elsewhere have interpreted Trump’s acceptance of a ceasefire, albeit while still enforcing a blockade of Iranian ports, as a sign that the administration is weakening and will eventually concede failure at some point before rising gas prices turn a midterm setback into a rout.
Yet that assumption doesn’t take into account what Trump is obviously attempting to do.
The pain goes both ways
Those who think that the standoff in the Persian Gulf is working solely in favor of the Islamic regime are mistaken. They don’t understand that pain goes both ways. Trump’s decision to let the Iranians continue to obstruct shipping in the Strait while simultaneously closing off Tehran’s ability to get its own oil to market has created a dilemma that is not a path to their winning this conflict.
It’s important to remember that Trump’s original strategy on Iran involved a campaign of “maximum pressure” via sanctions during his first term. In 2018, he had pulled the United States out of former President Barack Obama’s disastrous 2015 nuclear deal for the very good reason that far from thwarting the regime’s nuclear ambitions, it guaranteed that they would eventually get a bomb. The sanctions that Trump imposed on the Islamists—and enforced against the inclinations of their European trading partners—inflicted grave harm on the Iranian economy. As even The New York Times reported in 2019, it materially impacted their ability to fund terrorism.
Had Trump won re-election in 2020, the sanctions would have continued. In one scenario, they would have, as he hoped, brought Iran’s economy to its knees and forced its rulers to negotiate. It’s also possible that nothing short of the use of force would have made concessions from Tehran possible. We’ll never know how that would have played out since Trump was defeated by Joe Biden, who reinstated Obama’s appeasement efforts and dropped the sanctions. That was good news for both theocrats in Tehran and their terrorist friends. They used the billions that Washington had freed up to set in motion the events that led to the Hamas-led invasion of southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and the war that followed.
Trump’s re-election brought the possibility of consequences for Tehran’s reckless behavior back into play. But his preference has always been for a negotiated end to the dispute with Iran, albeit on America’s terms, rather than a deal that, like Obama’s, was crafted on terms dictated by the Islamists.
Trump gave Israel a “green light” to launch the 12-day war last summer and then joined it on its last day, dealing heavy blows to three of the main Iranian nuclear plants. But again, he gave Iran a chance to back away from the brink by ending the conflict right after that. Rather than taking the hint and accepting a deal that would avoid a conflagration, the regime stayed true to its radical character and doubled down on its goals by stepping up missile production and seeking to rebuild what it had lost.
The president could have sat back and let the Iranians get away with that. Instead, he agreed to launch the devastating campaign, alongside Israel, that began on Feb. 28. That effort accomplished a great deal in terms of reducing the threat. But it didn’t topple the regime, which, in the aftermath of the killing of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and many of his henchmen, is now primarily run by the corrupt thugs of the IRGC.
Short of a ground campaign that would be costly and of doubtful utility, merely bombing military and industrial targets isn’t going to end the conflict since the regime’s leaders are too committed to their generational war on the West to give up their nuclear ambitions, missiles or terrorism.
But the belief among the Europeans and Democrats that their obdurate devotion to jihad ensures their victory over Trump is, at best, over-optimistic. And that’s where the other aspect of America’s ability to inflict pain on Iran comes in.
Can the IRGC survive without money?
The standoff in the Persian Gulf is not producing as one-sided a result as the Trump-hating prophets of American doom believe. It’s true that the Iranian tactics of attacking shipping have raised gas prices and increased the volume of criticism of administration policy. Still, the people really suffering from the shutdown of maritime traffic are not Americans, but the Europeans, and more to the point, Iran. By sealing off Iranian ports, the United States is interdicting the Islamist regime’s last source of cash.
The administration is clearly betting that the harm this is doing to Iran’s finances and ability to fund its regime apparatus is far greater than the impact the situation is having on American consumers. Given enough time, it’s hard to see how the IRGC operatives running things can go on with their pockets empty. The possibility of more costly poundings directed by Washington and Jerusalem is there to remind them of the price of the religious war they are waging.
Trump is currently besieged by critics who want him to wave the white flag and end the war, as well as by supporters who want him to end the ceasefire and get on with the military campaign to finish off the regime.
Having invested so much political capital and military resources into this effort, I find it hard to believe that the president will let Iranian drone fire in the Straits of Hormuz or the carping of detractors dictate his defeat. But neither is he interested in a land campaign that would not only contradict his past promises of avoiding such debacles but also would be far too costly, with no guarantee of success.
He needs not time, but not ‘forever’
What Trump is clearly aiming toward is not purely a military campaign, but one that combines his original sanctions strategy with the use of force. Despite what some on the far right and hypocritical liberals say, that isn’t a formula for a “forever” war, such as the ultimately disastrous American efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan. But it is also unclear whether Trump has the time to see this through to a successful conclusion.
Tehran and the Democrats are hoping that the constraints of the midterm calendar and the need to move on from this conflict before the narrative about the elections is set by the end of the summer will force Trump to give up.
Israelis, for whom this conflict is existential in nature and who have paid a far higher price in the form of the ordeal of Iranian and Hezbollah missile fire than have American gas-buyers, have their own perspective on this. They remain understandably leery about an American strategy that requires them to have the patience to let Trump go back and forth between military and economic pressure in this manner. And they are also right not to like the president’s willingness to put their campaign against Hezbollah on hold so it doesn’t interfere with his desire to force Iran to do his bidding.
Patience is what the current situation requires. Trump has earned the trust of Israelis and their friends with both his policies and his willingness to use force against a regime that has been at war with the West and the Jewish state for 47 years. Despite those who keep proclaiming that in the end, he will back down and/or betray Israel, he clearly has the will to ignore the naysayers at home and abroad, and stick to his preferred strategy until it yields the result he seeks. It remains to be seen whether Americans will give him the time he needs to do just that.
Jonathan S. Tobin is editor-in-chief of JNS (Jewish News Syndicate). Follow him: @jonathans_tobin.
