On Iran, Trump Is All Talk, and Thank God
By Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone
22 September 19
For whatever reason, Donald Trump seems reluctant to go to war and in
moments like the Iran crisis, we should be glad
Open newspapers this week, and youll see hand-wringing galore. Supposedly
were about to go to war with Iran, suspected in last weekends unmanned
bombing of the worlds largest oil processing facility in Saudi Arabia.
The Middle East is on the brink, warns The Guardian.
Were a lot closer to war than youve been told, says The Daily Beast.
We are at the predictable brink of an even wider war, says Ben Rhodes,
former national security aide to Barack Obama.
Maybe war will happen. The capital is loaded with people who want one, and
regime change in Iran has for ages been an adolescent fixation of hawks on
the Hill. Those armchair conquerors are well represented in the Trump
administration, even after the recent ouster of warmonger extraordinaire
John Bolton.
But is Donald Trump himself beating the drum for war? Please. In remarks to
reporters about Iran Monday in the Oval Office, Trump looked like a child
preparing to confess to parents that hed just burned the backyard shed down
by mistake. He knows he wants out, but he just doesnt know how.
One of the major worries before Trump entered the White House was what the
man would do with the most awesome army in human history at his disposal. In
all other areas, Trump is a man who flexes whatever he has, as often as he
can. Would he wake up some morning and raze Reunion Island or Belgium on a
whim, the same way he took shots at Serge Kovaleski or Carly Fiorinas face?
Wars have been the go-to indulgence for most of historys narcissistic
autocrats, and although our undeclared bombing campaigns have increased
since his election, he has tiptoed away from full-scale invasion scenarios
in Syria, Venezuela and other arenas that might have tempted other
presidents.
Nobody really knows why. Its one of the mysteries of Trumps presidency. He
may be secretly afraid of making a mess of military command. He may also
have a (correct) instinct that war in the current political climate would
hurt him electorally. He might even, who knows, genuinely believe wars are a
bad deal.
Theres also this: Trump is a man with few guiding principles, but call it
an organizing dynamic of the mans personality that he rarely fights anyone
who can fight back. Put another way: He doesnt like to commit financial or
political capital to real confrontation when he can just take credit for
things by talking instead.
Like every bully ever, he tends to be all bluster in the cafeteria but
absent for the scheduled after-school rumble. Anyone who followed him on the
campaign trail knows Trump, in word, can be limitlessly abusive, but if he
has to face verbal targets, he often starts backpedaling before hes through
the door.
Trump opened his 2015 campaign barking about rapists over the border and
thundering that hed build a southern wall and make Mexico pay for it. A
year later he was enjoying the great, great honor of a visit with the
Mexican president.
President Enrique Pena Nieto welcomed Trump by announcing he was not paying
for any damned wall. He tweeted it, too, so the world would know. Trump
reportedly avoided direct confrontation in response, blew town without
saying a peep and then resumed the tough talk once he was roughly a thousand
miles away.
Hes engaged in similar contortions multiple times, the most famous probably
being a promise as a candidate to feed Chinese Xi Jinping a double-size Big
Mac if they ever met. He ended up serving Xi Dover sole, haricots verts,
and New York strip steak at Mar-a-Lago.
None of this proves that Trump has an aversion to military conflict, but
signs do point in that direction. Just as Trump in his business prefers
selling his name and letting others do the work of developing and managing
properties, he seems reluctant to take on the massive logistical and
political challenges of a full-blown war.
Which brings us to Iran. Trump In 2016 Trump said he would demand up-front
concessions in any negotiations with Iran. By this year, he was offering to
meet with no pre-conditions, abasing himself in pursuit of nervous détente
even more than Obama supposedly had. The Iranians, mimicking Pena Nietos
middle-finger approach, refused even this offer, amusingly leaving Trump to
twist in the wind.
Suddenly Trumps ambivalence to conflict is being commented upon, not always
positively. Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post said on MSNBC that Trump
has a very strong instinct against taking military action. On that same
broadcast, former CIA director John Brennan, in his new role as media
mouthpiece for the intelligence community, noted with what seemed like
sincere disdain that Trump is very reluctant to engage in a new conflict on
the Middle East.
Gerald Feierstein, the former U.S. Ambassador to Yemen, suggested the
assault on the Abqaiq oil processing facility a devastating attack by
drone or cruise missile that disrupted 5% of the worlds oil supply shows
Iran didnt believe Trump would strike back with real force.
Clearly, the Iranians look inclined to test the Trump administration, to
call Donald Trumps bluff, if you will, to see if he really has the will to
really go all the way, Feierstein said.
Trump in June said America was cocked and loaded to attack Iran after a
drone was downed. Then he supposedly called off an attack because casualty
estimates made him sad (maybe he was up late watching the analog scene in
The American President?). Then he fired Bolton.
Iran was naturally emboldened by all of this, and unlikely to be impressed
by Trumps Sunday tweet that America is locked and loaded. Every time he
makes one of these empty boasts, he makes actual bloodless solutions more
elusive. Trumps mouth keeps forcing Trumps presidency into dilemmas
Trumps brain cant untangle. The Iran mess is one of the worst.
As candidate for president, Trump went so far as to suggest Obamas
willingness to negotiate with Iran without certain conditions meant he was
compromised in his dealings with a foreign autocrat (hows that for irony!).
In Biloxi, Mississippi in early 2016, Trump said, Its almost like there
has to be something else going on.
If elected, he promised hed walk away from the Obama deal, which offered
Iran sanctions relief in exchange for temporary abandonment of nuclear
enrichment capacity.
This turned out to be a rare campaign promise Trump decided to fulfill. He
bailed on the nuke deal last May, reinstating all the sanctions the Obama
deal had lifted and imposing a range of new ones as part of a maximum
pressure strategy.
But now that were staring real war in the face, Trump seems desperate for
an Iran solution that wont have generals living in the Oval Office for the
next two years, souring his MAGA re-election campaign events with daily
leaks of how his crap strategic decisions are getting soldiers killed.
He likely wants to strike a deal functionally identical to the Obama deal,
so he can re-christen it the Maximum Pressure Trump Victory Treaty or
whatever and steam into 2020 patting himself on the back. For sanitys sake,
everyone should probably just let him do this.
Unfortunately, it may not pan out that way. Washington is filled with people
quietly pushing for the lake-of-blood endgame, and why not? Regime-changers
would get all the benefits of an insane, expensive, protracted military
adventure, while Trump would assume the political risks of war. Win-win!
Superficially, most media voices are still kinda-sorta urging restraint in
this mess. But the subtext of a lot of the editorializing about Iran all
year has been a need to restore credibility in our dealings with the
malign actor and rogue state.
After last weekends bombing, this will translate into demands that Trump do
something to make sure this aggression will not stand, man. As Brennan put
it, we cannot let this devastating attack
go unanswered.
But answering would probably turn the region into a hellscape and put
another generation of foreign and American lives into a thresher, adding to
the ongoing catastrophes in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, etc. Better to
just quickly and quietly find a way to let the whole thing blow over,
perhaps by letting France go forward with its plan to give Iran a sequel to
the Obama deal. Let them offer $15 billion in credit in exchange for
whatever list of nuclear concessions from Iran we could all call a victory,
and lets quietly walk away and start getting ready for Halloween.
Responsible people in Washington should find a way to let Trump be the
pusillanimous double-talker he desperately wants to be. The alternative
would set an awful precedent for full-blown war as a means of Trumpian
expression. Weve seen already on multiple occasions in two bombing
episodes involving Bashar al-Assad, and in reversals on stated plans to
withdraw from Afghanistan and Syria that Trump hates being called weak and
will cave to experts on military matters if pressured.
This would be a huge mistake. The idea that America needs to retain
credibility in the Middle East or anywhere else is absurd. Its a little
late for credibility Donald Trump is our president! Trumps own reluctance
to launch wars shows that on some level even he understands this. If hes
not up for starting another bloody boondoggle, who are we to tell him
otherwise?
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