The Whims of War – Part 5
On the evening of April 1st, President Trump delivered a 19-minute televised address from the White House on the war in Iran. Although many commentators were quick to declare that there was nothing new contained in the President’s remarks, I respectfully disagree. Even in that unusually short (at least for Trump) address, he made a number of important revelations.
First, he confirmed what many had been speculating; namely, that he had reluctantly concluded that starting the war was a mistake and that he was now looking to end it as quickly as possible. Second, he left no doubt that the U.S. would NOT be seeking to take control of Iran’s enriched uranium. He did this by asserting that it was just “dusk” and had been buried under a mountain of debris. Accordingly, it would not be available to the Iranian regime even if it wanted to develop a nuclear arsenal. Third, he disclosed that the U.S. would not be attempting to compel the Iranians to allow the free-flow of shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. That task he would leave to other nations more dependent on oil produced by the Persian Gulf countries. These admissions also implied that he had no current intention of inserting ground forces into the conflict. This was a tacit admission that he had been simply repositioning those forces to apply greater pressure on the Iranian regime to make concessions which would give him a clear basis for claiming victory.
He even went on to deny that he had ever claimed to have begun the war to effect a “regime change” in Iran. This assertion is what litigation attorneys refer to as “a negative pregnant” or “a non-denial denial.” Those terms depict a denial which implies its affirmative opposite by seeming to deny only a qualification of the allegation and not the allegation itself. In more common parlance, “If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it must be a duck.” The simple facts are that the war was initiated with a bombing raid on a building in which Iran’s Supreme Leader was meeting with his senior aides. That was immediately followed by Israel’s targeting Iran’s top military and political leaders. For his part, President Trump posted on his website “The United States of America is in serious discussions with A NEW, AND MORE REASONABLE, REGIME to end our Military Operations in Iran.” While the negotiations referred to by Trump were a fiction which only existed in his mind, they were a clear indication of what he had set out to achieve when he started the war.
In his speech, President Trump went on to say that the U.S. and Israel would continue the war for “another two or three weeks”; and that if the Iranians did not agree to negotiate its conclusion, the U.S. would bomb Iran’s electrical and water systems, sending it back to the “stone age.” To be sure, threats are President Trump’s preferred mode of persuasion; however, the Iranians have demonstrated that they are largely immune to his threats.
This raises the question of just what particular military objectives President Trump is now considering achieving in the coming weeks. It should be appreciated that destroying a nation’s water and electrical systems are war crimes. Indeed, Vladimir Putin has already been condemned by the International Criminal Court for Russia’s similar conduct during its war in Ukraine. Accordingly, it seems questionable whether Trump actually intends to order the U.S forces to take these actions or whether his military commanders will implement such “illegal” orders.
Although Trump appears to want to bring a fast end the U.S.’s involvement in his ill-begotten “military action”, he is undoubtedly being pressured by Isreal to give it a little more time to cause further damage to Iran’s destructive capabilities while Iran’s defenses against air attacks remain significantly compromised. The problem is that President Trump will be facing pressure from most of the Gulf states to end hostilities sooner rather than later. That’s because as long as the war is on-going, they will continue to be attacked by Iran and the Strait of Hormuz will remain closed to their exports of crude oil and other items they produce.
Brett McGurk, a long-serving national security advisor, speaking with CNN’s Kaitlin Collins, predicted that there will be no immediate cessation of hostilities in and around Iran and that the war could drag on for many months. While this is certainly not what President Trump seems to have had in mind, there are good reasons to suspect this is what may lie ahead. First, it must be appreciated that animosity among the warring parties is extremely high and correspondingly trust between them is extremely low. These are clearly not promising conditions for quickly achieving an enduring peace, or even a lengthy cease-fire. President Trump seems unconcerned about the people who will be adversely affected by an extended war; and his concept of achieving peace appears to consist of threatening to bomb the Iranians into oblivion until they become willing to negotiate for peace.
Admittedly, deciphering our President’s thought processes is something of a puzzle. On March 21st he threatened that “If Tehran does not ‘fully open’ the Hormuz channel within 48 hours, the U.S. ‘will hit and obliterate’ Iranian power plants.” When the 48-hour deadline expired, he extended it by five days claiming that promising negotiations with the Iranians were being conducted. That was followed by another five-day extension citing the same promising discussions without identifying the time or place, or even the participants, in those discussions.
In his televised address he also backed away from this threat altogether, explaining first that he was leaving the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz to the European countries. He justified this change asserting that the Europeans have a greater interest than the U.S. in reopening the Strait because they, unlike Americans, heavily rely on the petroleum exported by the Persian Gulf counties. In that same presentation, however, he offered an alternative scenario; namely. that the Strait would (magically) reopen without further efforts by Iran or any other interested party. This latter suggestion (which was reminiscent of his prediction that the Covid-19 virus would quickly and mysteriously disappear) may have been prompted by his own doubts about the willingness of the European nations to clean up the mess he had created.
Two days ago he came full circle, renewing his original threat that the Iranians must reopen the Strait in 48 hours “before all Hell will reign (sic) down on them.” This was followed a day later by a post on his Truth Social account warning that “Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. . . Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell — JUST WATCH.” Trump apparently does not seem to appreciate that the more extreme his threats and the more crude the language he uses to convey them, the more they reveal his own level of desperation, something which Iranian leaders seem to fully understand.
This brief recital of President Trump’s changing positions regarding the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz is also revealing in many other respects. First, it represents a reluctant recognition by President Trump that the longer the flow of crude oil through the Strait is blocked, the world price of oil is going to continue to escalate. Indeed, since the war began on February 28th, the average price of crude oil has already increased from $60 per barrel to $108 per barrel; and the average price of regular gasoline in the U.S. has increased by 37% from $3.00 per gallon to $4.10 per gallon. Perhaps more importantly, the price of gasoline, along with the price of groceries, is how most Americans gauge the extent of fluctuations in their costs of living. Thus, it’s no mystery why President Trump is starting to panic over the status of the Strait of Hormuz which is a choke point blocking the availability of 20% of the crude oil produced each day.
This also explains why President Trump has been trying to convince Americans that the U.S. doesn’t need the oil being produced by the Persian Gulf nations. Specifically, he has said that the U.S. produces more crude oil than it consumes. While this is true, it’s the world price of crude oil what actually controls the price Americans pay for gasoline. This attempted diversion has also failed because American car owners fully understand that something is driving up the price they pay to fill their gas tanks; and the war in Iran is the only logical answer since the price increases coincide exactly with the duration of the war.
Trump’s assertion that our European allies (or should I say, “our former European allies”) will be taking up the job of compelling Iran to reopen the Strait has also failed to reassure American consumers. That’s because the European nations rejected that assignment when Trump first suggested it a week ago. Moreover, his recent reassertion that the European nations might now be willing to assume this task because the reopening the Strait has been made relatively easy as a result of the actions of the U.S. and Israeli air forces. That argument has also proven unpersuasive because if the job would now be so easy, why hasn’t the U.S. simply completed what it started.
This brings us to why the President has reverted back to his original threat that Iran has 48 hours in which to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, only this time he has warned of an even more tragic fate for the Iranians if they don’t comply. The short answer is that unless the Strait is reopened soon, the economies of most, if not all, nations may falter. This concern was further articulated by Bloomberg Economics which projected that “a three-month interruption of normal maritime commerce would drive oil prices to $170 per barrel” and by Oxford Economics that “ if the war lasts for six months, the global economy — starved of 13 million barrels of oil each day — would sink into a recession.” Undoubtedly of greater concern to Trump is that if there is a continuation of the war for more than a few more weeks the Republican party is likely to experience a complete disaster in the Fall elections. That, in turn, could lead to a third impeachment proceeding against him.
The problem is that even President Trump must realize that his augmented threats against Iran are likely to be ignored and that the war will continue on as Brett McGurk has warned. So why has President Trump called for the attacks on Iran to be continued for another two or three weeks -- attacks which will surely lead to further death and destruction? One apparent answer is that Israel would like to continue its efforts to further degrade Iran’s ability to upend peace throughout the Middle East; and since Israel is his partner in this war, Trump is inclined to give Israel a little more time to achieve its objective. Secondly, Trump started this war promising to end Iran’s threat to its Persian Gulf neighbors; and the idea of simply abandoning that quest is not likely to be appreciated by those countries, many of which have already incurred damage as a result of Iran’s retaliatory attacks.
The real answer, however, lies in how our President thinks. First, it must be appreciated that “two or three weeks” is Trump-speak for “sometime in the future.” He uses this expression when he wants to buy time to come up with a solution to a problem currently confronting him. The fact that death and destruction will occur from even a brief extension of the war is of little or no concern to him. In fact, he seems to derive pleasure in causing the suffering of others; it’s a biproduct of a narcissistic personality disorder.
He also seems to be “hoping against hope” that a continuation of the war might actually cause the Iranian leaders to reverse their refusal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Secondly, he may be hoping that the other nations of the world which might be adversely affected by a continuing conflict may relent and step in to cause Iran to reopen the Strait. He might even be hoping that extending the war might provide an excuse for him to cancel the fall elections. He has displayed this mode of thinking in his defense of a number of litigations brought against him, asserting a series of delaying motions and seeking one appeal after another, all in the hope that something will happen in the interim to prevent the tragedy that lies ahead of him from taking place. This is exactly what he did in the four cases brought against him after he surrendered the presidency in 2021.
How this conflict will actually be concluded is nevertheless becoming clearer. Iran will not comply with Trump’s latest threat. In addition, the U. S. and Israel will continue their aerial attacks on Iran, destroying as much of Iran’s military capabilities as possible. Trump, however, will not authorize attacks on Iran’s civilian infrastructure as that might cause the International Criminal Court to indict him; and he would not relish becoming the only American President to achieve that distinction.
The actual duration of the war will be limited by two factors, neither of which will be Iran’s surrender to the vast majority of Trump’s demands. The first is when the U.S. and/or Israel begins to run dangerously low on the munitions they are rapidly expending in the war. At that point, a further prosecution of the war could leave them vulnerable to hostile actions by other nations such as China’s seeking to take control of Taiwan or the Axis of Resistance mounting joint attacks on Israel. The second potential limiting factor is the mounting deterioration of the world’s economy being caused by Iran’s limiting oil, natural gas, fertilizer and helium from passing through the Strait of Hormuz. The problem is that it may not be possible to accurately assess when these limiting factors have reached a dangerous level because that may well depend on Iran’s future actions. For that reason, President Trump may be inclined to seek to terminate the war sooner rather than later.
President Trump also faces the problem of how he can put a positive spin on what many will perceive as a cowardly and hurried exit from a dangerous situation he instigated. His most likely explanation will be that the war has been successful in that it will have set back Iran’s mischief-making ability by several years. This will satisfy most Americans, even those who detest our nation’s involvement in foreign wars. Their sense of relief, however, may be short-lived if Trump is able to convince the Congress to enact the steep escalation in defense spending that he is now seeking.