Was Trump’s attack on Iran impulsive or genius?
Donald Trump’s attack on Iran disregards the National Security Strategy the administration released in December, which claimed that the “Trump Corollary” would focus on the Americas. For better or for worse, Trump will not be constrained by history, policy, or anything, really.
Trump’s impulsiveness is what some people admire about him; he’s willing to do things that people who are more thoughtful about their actions aren’t. Some consider this bold leadership, but bold leadership is when you know what the risks are, and you calculate that the risks are worth taking. Acting on impulse without either considering the risks or caring about them is simply reckless.
The successful capture of Nicholas Maduro in Venezuela in January emboldened Trump. The attack on Iran sought to follow the same playbook: decapitate the regime and make a deal with whomever comes to power.
The attack on Iran was more ambitious, because Trump seemed to think that it might allow the opponents of the regime, who rose up against it en masse starting in December (but were brutally put down, with the estimated death toll in the tens of thousands), to come to power. Unlike Venezuela, that would have been a true regime change. But that’s almost impossible to orchestrate by a bombing campaign, which is all Trump seems to be willing to risk.
In justifying the attack, Trump claims that he’s not starting the war, he’s simply finishing the war Iran started in 1979 when Iranians took over our embassy. He ignores (or doesn’t know) that the reason the students took over the embassy was because we were providing safe haven to the shah, who had brutally oppressed the Iranians since we helped him come to power (by overthrowing the democratically-elected Mohommad Mosaddegh in 1953). We also (covertly) supported Iraq in the Iran-Iraq War in which an estimated 500,000 Iranians died.
Trump has also claimed we had to invade now because Iran was close to getting nuclear weapons. An interesting argument for the administration to make, since Trump claimed that the bombing campaign in June “totally obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program. Trump also claimed (falsely) that Iran was developing a ballistic missile that could “soon” reach the U.S.
While Iran cannot threaten the U.S. militarily, it can (and do, mostly through proxies) threaten Israel. Benjamin Netanyahu has been trying to get U.S. presidents to go to war with Iran for decades, usually with the argument that Iran is close to getting a nuclear weapon. If Netanyahu had ever been right, Iran would already be a nuclear power.
In the early days of the war, Secretary of State Marco Rubio claimed that we had to attack Iran because Israel was going to attack Iran and if they did that, Iran would retaliate against our troops in the Middle East. Trump denies Netanyahu forced our hand, but this is clearly a war that Netanyahu wanted more than anybody, because it both helps him domestically (keeping him in power and out of jail) and it weakens Israel’s greatest enemy. It also helps Trump by displacing accusations against him revealed in the Epstein files.
Attacking Iran now does make sense if Iran is an existential threat and the U.S. disregards the international norms that sovereign nations are not supposed to initiate wars. Iran is militarily as weak as it’s been in a long time; the demonstrations point to domestic unrest, Israel has greatly weakened its “Axis of Resistance” (Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis), its allies (Syria and Russia) are not in position to provide much help, and the June attacks by the U.S. and Israel decimated its air defenses.
When asked what would be the worst-case scenario, Trump said he supposed it would be bad if the current regime was replaced by one just as bad. While that does seem to be the case, as Ayatollah Khamenei’s hardline son has replaced him (after we killed his father, wife, sister, brother-in-law and their child), there are many scenarios that are worse. The attack could start a region-wide war that destabilizes the Middle East, causing energy (and economic) crises and massive flows of refugees; it could create a civil war within Iran, which could lead to Iran becoming a failed state, which would allow space for terrorists to thrive. Iran could launch terrorist attacks in the U.S. China could use the opportunity of our distraction (and dwindling supplies of munitions) to recapture Taiwan. Trump seems to think he gets to decide when the war stops, but the enemy always gets a say.
Supporting the idea that the attack on Iran was impulsive rather than part of a grand strategy is that Trump said so. The White House press secretary said (in deflecting the idea that Netanyahu convinced him to attack Iran) that before Trump spoke to Netanyahu, Trump “had a good feeling that the Iranian regime was going to strike the United States’ assets and our personnel in the region.” Trump also seemed genuinely surprised that Iran did not capitulate when they saw our force buildup in the region.
While Trump was warned about the likelihood that Iran would close the Strait of Hormuz, throwing the world oil markets into chaos, he doesn’t seem to have a plan to deal with it. For example, the administration made no attempt to fill the strategic oil reserve before the attack.
One of the major flaws of the second Trump administration is that because it is filled with sycophants who are afraid to tell Trump he’s wrong, no one prevents him from following his worst impulses. Perhaps Trump is a genius, and has created a new foreign policy that decapitates bad regimes using the military that is so much better than its opponents that it suffers few (if any) casualties, and the deposed regimes are replaced by much better ones as organic opposition groups rise up and take over without any assistance, but I have my doubts.
Kent James, of East Washington, has a doctorate in history and policy from Carnegie Mellon University.