The professional, anti-Trump prognosticators and doomsdayers are out in full force, warning that the U.S. president is going to pull an Obama and run for the hills prematurely. They warn that he is going to cut a soft deal with Iran this weekend, long before the declared goals of the current war have been fully achieved.
They assert that for the third time in a year, U.S. President Donald Trump is about to end the military effort too soon; that he will seize on small moves by Iran, such as a pay-for-passage offer for Japanese and European ships through the Strait of Hormuz, as a sign of Iranian surrender.
He will assert that “regime change” in Iran is a fact, bombastically declare “total victory” and go home, leaving Israel and Gulf Arab states to deal with Tehran’s resilient Islamist regime, remaining ballistic-missile threat and residual nuclear program.
This is a wrong-headed and defeatist reading of Trump, driven by political bias, and it ignores his substantial achievements in the effort to defang Iran. Indeed, it is meant to belittle the staunch stance of the United States under Trump against Iran and to deny the president his place in history as a leader with strategic bravery.
At the moment, we don’t know what exactly Trump has in mind by declaring a five-day moratorium on his threat to destroy Iran’s major power plans and energy infrastructure unless Iran opens the Strait of Hormuz.
We don’t know what “very good and productive conversations regarding a complete and total resolution of hostilities in the Middle East” have taken place, with whom, and what validity or authority (never mind believability) such Iranians might have. Nor do we know whether actual negotiations really took place.
We don’t know whether this amounts only to a tactical pause or whether it truly signals the beginning of the end of the war. We don’t know whether this is a strategic reconciliation with a subdued Iran or a strategic misdirection—ruse in advance of further U.S. military action.
Trump could be employing subterfuge to lull Iran into a false sense of security ahead of a potential move against Kharg Island, an American assault to assume control of Hormuz, or a raid to seize Iran’s highly enriched uranium for nuclear bomb-making.
After all, at least twice, Trump has used negotiations under the shadow of an ultimatum as a diversionary maneuver before launching an attack. He did it once when Israel attacked Iran at the start of the 12-day war last June and again before the current war was launched on Feb. 28.
His accomplishments in the effort to defang Iran already are gargantuan—far greater than any analyst or policymaker believed likely.
Who could have imagined that the president of the United States would embark on a one-month-long military campaign involving 9,000 U.S. Air Force sorties with more than 10,000 bombs to degrade Iran’s military capabilities and decapitate its radical Islamic leaders?
Who believed that Trump would have the guts to apply the massive military weight of the United States of America for such a lengthy and sustained period at a cost of well over $30 billion to a full-blown military campaign to eviscerate Iranian threats and undermine the radical Islamic regime?
Who would have dared predict that Trump would be courageous enough to blow off his political detractors from left and right to pursue this campaign with such certainty, and to risk his political fortunes and historical legacy on overwhelming Iran?
Moreover, he has returned the language of moral clarity to U.S. foreign policy and politics by unequivocally categorizing Iran as an evil actor—an evil empire, an evil state, a gang of bloodthirsty thugs, a brutal regime—declaring that the primary objective of the current military campaign is to “wipe out evil.”
Therefore, even if Trump doesn’t this month finish the job of “wiping out evil” and scales back the U.S. military effort to open space for a deal with Iran—no matter how feeble, how tentative and even illusory, how partial and unsatisfactory such a deal may be—I will still salute his gutsy and intrepid war leadership.
I am also certain that Trump will not abscond from battling Iran altogether, even if he scales back the intensity of the current military campaign. He will not abandon the effort to deny Iran a nuclear bomb. And I think that the United States and Israel now will finally get serious about supporting the emergence of a muscular Iranian opposition movement.
Can you imagine what might have been if Trump had not been elected president in 2024? Iran would be laughing its way toward declared nuclear-bomb capability and the stockpiling of 10,000 ICBMs with which to flatten Israel and impose Shi’ite hegemony across the Mideast.
For all his peccadilloes and unpredictability, thank heavens for this presidency.
