Take an off-ramp! Find an off-ramp!
The notion that Donald Trump could depart from the highway to forever-war simply by spotting the next exit is misleading at best, dangerously naïve at worst. It is not as if Trump is speeding along the 405 freeway on the Westside of Los Angeles, deciding if he should take the Wilshire Blvd. off-ramp or wait for Santa Monica Blvd. The current situation is more akin to going over Niagara Falls in a barrel he chose to get into. The “exit” was there before Trump got in. Put differently, we need to stop using a metaphor that implies Trump is still in control of the war’s timeline. He’s not.
In the space of 24 hours, Trump went from threatening to knock out Iran’s power plants to insisting that the U.S. was engaged in “constructive” talks with Iran. He therefore put the “destroy the power plants” on hold for 5 days. While Trump may have simply lied (as is his way) about talks to excuse delaying an ill-conceived major escalation, his latest announcement underscores just how frantic he is to get out of this debacle.
However, Trump cannot simply “leave” now that he is sick of the collapsing polls, public ridicule, rotten press coverage, absurdly high oil prices, aggrieved allies, and whiny MAGA isolationists. Nate Swanson, a former career State Department official, writes for Public Affairs:
He cannot unilaterally stop Tehran from attacking U.S. assets or the Gulf states. Iran would rather fight a protracted war with the United States now than repeated wars with Israel in the coming years. Even if the United States unilaterally withdraws from the fight, if a future Iran-Israel conflict looks inevitable, Iran will likely continue targeting U.S. interests in the region as well as the Gulf states and energy infrastructure.
This is precisely why Trump now says he is negotiating an end to the war. Plainly, this is not an unconditional surrender but a negotiated end to a conflict Trump cannot win. The Iranian regime’s ability to survive has demonstrated the folly of assuming Iran would simply give up. As Swanson notes, “Despite catastrophic damage to the Iranian navy and other branches of the military, periodic drone attacks on tankers attempting to traverse the Strait of Hormuz are probably enough to keep traffic snarled in a shipping channel responsible for a fifth of global oil supply.”
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s idiotic boasts about what we have blown up smacks of Vietnam “body counts.” Sure, the numbers tally up, but it is ultimately an irrelevant metric. The numbers that depict the status of the war far more accurately are the price of a barrel of oil, the level of our munitions reserve and Israel’s interceptors, the daily price of engagement, and the cost and time it will take to repair the Gulf states’ oil capacity — not to mention Trump’s poll numbers.
Iran now is in a position, with a stranglehold on the Strait of Hormuz and lobbing drones at Gulf oil facilities, to actually impose demands. (In properly negotiated peace talks, each side gets something.) The more Trump wants out, the more elaborate Tehran’s “asks” may be.
As an initial matter, any agreement may be difficult because Trump is utterly untrustworthy. (He seems to have negotiated in bad faith while planning a military action to obliterate the Iranian regime.) Nevertheless, in any deal (presumably brokered by the Gulf states), Iran is likely to demand that the U.S., Israel, and Gulf states refrain from future attacks so long as it abides by certain conditions (e.g., cessation or limits on uranium enrichment) and lifting of sanctions. Trump already suspended certain sanctions (!), perhaps the most bizarre move in a war in which he has declared he wants the enemy obliterated. In any event, Iran will almost certainly want more sanctions relief.
The Wall Street Journal reported: “Demands voiced by Iranian leaders in recent days as conditions for ending the war include massive reparations from the U.S. and its allies and the expulsion of American military forces from the region.” But that is not all. Iran wants to turn the Strait of Hormuz “into an Iranian toll booth controlling one-third of the world’s shipborne crude oil.” Any capitulation of that magnitude would cast Trump as the vanquished, not the vanquisher. Nevertheless, it speaks volumes that Iran considers its position strong enough to advance such an outlandish demand.
However, even a return to the status quo without concessions to Iran (the fighting ends, Iran does not impede the Strait, the Iranian regime survives with the capacity to eventually rebuild its missile and nuclear programs) would fall far short of Trump’s elaborate goals. But how could this be!? We have destroyed their military, crippled their missile production, turned Tehran into rubble, and more. Well, it turns out that none of that “ends” the war or obtains what Trump and Israel want (either regime change or a regime never capable of rebuilding its nuclear and missile programs).
As Thomas Wright points out, “[G]iven that Tehran may feel better positioned for a protracted war, it would likely hold out for guarantees that America would not attack again and an easing of sanctions. In other words, Trump would likely get a worse deal than he could have gotten before the attack.”
Think about that: with at least 13 Americans dead, disruption of the global economy, and immense damage to our Gulf allies, we wind up in a worse place than we were before the war. (And since we are making comparisons, we would be infinitely worse off than we would be had we kept the JCPOA, complete with inspectors in place.) Iran will be temporarily hobbled, but it can rebuild, more determined than ever to get the bomb to deter future wars. This is why you do not start a war of choice with Iran, which is announced and perceived as an existential threat to the regime, especially without public and congressional support.
In short, Trump’s desperate advisers may be looking for a clean getaway, but Trump has sped past any smooth off-ramps. The end to this colossally stupid, unnecessary war will need to include expenditure of more blood and treasure or a pathetic negotiated peace (which Trump will lie about to make himself feel better) — most likely both. Trump can either get to a negotiated deal quickly to curtail further death and destruction, or drag out the war, brag about more explosions, and spend more money and lives, only to reach the same (or worse) negotiated deal later.
Donald Trump may be really incompetent at managing the operations of real things like the Presidency or foreign policy, but what he is clearly VERY competent at is corruptly making money through innuendo and propaganda. When insider trading investigations begin, let's start at the top.
"Think about that: with at least 13 Americans dead, disruption of the global economy, and immense damage to our Gulf allies, we wind up in a worse place than we were before the war."
All true, and all terrible.
You might also mention: at least 3000 men, women and children killed in Iran (according to human rights group estimates so far), at least 1000 more killed in Lebanon, tens of thousands of Iranian homes destroyed along with schools, hospitals, and civilian infrastructure, massive, barely comprehensible environmental damage....
This is more than an incredibly stupid strategic blunder, although it is certainly that...it is another series of war crimes by the US/Israel alliance.
No one can be surprised that, after the still ongoing genocide in Gaza resulted in absolutely no accountability for the alliance responsible, and the alliance has bombed countries in the region at will for years and assassinated leaders at its whims, that more war crimes would follow.