Trump's miscalculations in the Iran war

WashingtonIn wars, you know how you get in, but not how you get out. Donald Trump was looking for a quick and dramatic strike with the attack on Iran, but he ended up entangled in a war with no exit strategy. The passing days confirm the impression of the first hours after the joint US-Israeli attack: Washington hadn't foreseen the quagmire it had gotten itself into, despite warnings from its generals. The Trump administration upped the ante by killing Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei on the first day without having tied up a few loose ends: how to convince the American public; how to contain the economic impact if Tehran closed the Strait of Hormuz; or what would happen if the conflict dragged on for days and further depleted the Pentagon's already diminished arsenal, leaving its bases in the region unprotected.

In an interview with Bloomberg on February 18, Energy Secretary Chris Wright denied that a potential conflict with Iran could destabilize oil prices. Now, the price of crude oil has soared above $100 a barrel as Iran continues to block the Strait of Hormuz. Two weeks before Trump gave the order to attack, the Pentagon warned the president that the operation could further deplete already low ammunition stockpiles. This week, he has already had to relocate in the Middle East, the THAAD air defense system that had been permanently deployed in South Korea

Trump and his advisors were counting on the precedent of the Twelve-Day War last June, which ultimately concluded as a kind of controlled attack, giving way to a negotiation process that now appears to be a complete smokescreen. However, the problem is that the so-called Epic Fury focused on a much more sensitive and crucial target for the regime: the Supreme Leader, the highest political and spiritual authority in Iran. Killing Ali Khamenei was not the same as bombing the Fordow uranium enrichment facility.

"The fundamental mistake was believing that Iran's reaction would be like it was in June. But the United States and Israel, with their pronouncements of wanting to provoke regime change, and the assassination of Khamenei, turned the conflict into an existential struggle for the Iranian government," says a Syracuse University professor of international relations. The February 28 attack was the second act of aggression in less than a year and also the second time Iran had seen the other side blow up the negotiating table. Israel started the June war just as the first round of talks on the nuclear program was getting underway. The coincidence gives the ayatollahs little reason to believe that the US is truly a reliable partner with whom an agreement to stop the war can be reached.

Jason Campbell, a senior analyst at the Middle East Institute, agrees with this view. "The Americans thought that Iran's reaction would focus primarily on Israel and US military installations in the region, as we saw during the Twelve-Day War." What I think no one expected at the beginning was a "horizontal escalation" by Iran, where they have also been hitting civilian targets from the very beginning, NOW. Turkey has already intercepted at least two Iranian ballistic missiles.

Trust starting from Venezuela

Perhaps what distorted Trump's calculations was the operation to capture Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela. Washington decapitated the Chavista regime with a clean, decisive cut, and then turned it into a US protectorate. The precision of the maneuver emboldened the president regarding Iran. He himself acknowledged this on March 4, during the visit of German Chancellor Friedrich Merz. "In Venezuela, it was incredible because we attacked and were able to keep the government completely intact. We have the entire chain of command, and the relationship has been very good," Trump explained when asked about his intentions to intervene in the election of Ali Khamenei's successor.

The decision to kill Khamenei in the first blow of the attack, according to Campbell, stemmed from a genuine desire to decapitate the regime. "I think they were hoping to recreate a situation where all those public protests would erupt again and, hopefully, eventually bring down the regime. But we've learned very quickly that it's much easier to decapitate a regime than to topple it completely."

As has been seen since, there was no popular uprising, and the regime, under attack, has shown a capacity to resist. From that point on, the contradictory messages among the various administration officials began. Since then, the president has been improvising the justification for the conflict as he goes along and has slowly abandoned the idea of ​​regime change. In fact, Trump already sees how the war is damaging him domestically and is already preparing the ground for an eventual withdrawal. "We've already won, but we haven't won enough," the president said on Tuesday, adding that "the war is almost over," in an attempt, without much success, to calm the markets.

That the Trump administration has now asked help Ukraine defend itself against Iranian drones, This is yet another example of that miscalculation. "Frankly, I don't understand why this wasn't part of the planning from the beginning. As I said before, not only the United States, but also Israel and the Gulf states." They are firing $4 million missiles to shoot down $30,000 drones. "The munitions available to intercept these attacks are finite and dwindling," Campbell points out. Ukraine has been fighting against Iranian Shahed drones for four years and has developed interceptor drones. cheaper than US missiles.

No response to the Hormuz blockade

Another reflection of this lack of foresight was the silence maintained by Energy Secretary Chris Wright during the first days after the attack. The White House He did not react quickly Faced with the situation in the Strait of Hormuz, and until five days later, he did not present a series of proposals to try to contain the damage. All of them were more like drafts of intentions than concrete actions. Such as the possibility of the US Navy escorting oil tankers through a Strait of Hormuz that could be full of Iranian mines.

Until this Monday, when the price of a barrel of crude oil had already risen above $100, Trump did not come forward to offer solutions. Beyond the usual vague statements, Trump He hinted at the idea of ​​lifting sanctions applied to other countries' oil "to reduce prices"The idea came up right after he had spoken with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, and Putin... On Friday, Washington announced that it would buy Russian oil.

Polls from the early days of the war clearly showed widespread opposition. Only 27% of Americans supported it, according to the Reuters survey. Now, Trump, who faces the midterm elections in November, must convince them that the operation will have been worthwhile. Despite the general pessimism, a new Reuters poll also reflects that citizens are not following the conflict minute by minute: half of Americans said they had only heard about the attacks "a little" or not at all. In fact, a majority of respondents said that personally, the war mattered to them "a little" or "not at all." 28% said they mattered "quite a bit," and only 17% said they mattered "very much."

The latest figures show a favorable context for a potential shift, should Trump be able to regain control of the narrative. Ultimately, though, the polls that will decide the November legislative elections won't be those about approval of the war, but rather those about economic management. As long as oil prices continue to rise and threaten to make life more expensive for citizens, claiming foreign victories will be of little use if the cost of living keeps increasing.