David E. Sanger
Washington: Ever since US President Donald Trump began what he now delicately calls his “excursion” into Iran, Washington has been consumed by the question of when he would call it a day – even if many of his war goals remain unaccomplished.
On Friday evening (US time), as he headed to Florida, Trump seemed to be designing that much-discussed exit. But he clearly has not yet decided whether to take it.
And there is mounting evidence – the average petrol price approaching $US4 a gallon ($1.50 a litre), infrastructure in ruins across the Persian Gulf, a decimated Iranian theocracy digging in, and American allies at first rebuffing and now struggling with demands to patrol hostile waters – that the repercussions of Trump’s excursion may outlast his interest in it.
As always, Trump’s messaging is inconsistent, which his critics cite as evidence that he entered this conflict with no strategy, and his followers cheer as strategic ambiguity. With thousands of additional marines headed to the region and the pace of American and Israeli attacks quickening, Trump told reporters on Friday that he had no interest in a ceasefire because the US was “obliterating” Iran’s missile stocks, navy, air force and defence industrial base.
Hours later, perhaps sensitive to a Republican base understandably nervous about the political effects, he posted on his social media site that “we are getting very close to meeting our objectives as we consider winding down our great Military efforts in the Middle East”.
But his latest list of those objectives left out a few of his previous goals and watered down others. He made no mention of defeating the Revolutionary Guard, which appears to remain in power, along with Mojtaba Khamenei, who has succeeded his father as supreme leader, though he has yet to be seen or heard in public. Trump also omitted any message to the Iranian people, whom he told only three weeks ago: “When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take.”
And after insisting in the failed negotiations that led up to the war that Iran had to ship all of its nuclear material out of the country – starting with the 440 kilograms of enriched uranium that are closest to bomb-grade – he suggested a new goal. “Never allowing Iran to get even close to Nuclear Capability,” he wrote, “and always being in a position where the USA can quickly and powerfully react to such a situation.”
That is, essentially, where the United States was after it buried Iran’s nuclear program in rubble in June. The sites have remained under the watchful eye of US spy satellites.
Trump ended the posting with a new demand for American allies, whom he had frozen out of his deliberations before starting the war, and gave no warning to prepare for its consequences. “The Hormuz Strait will have to be guarded and policed, as necessary, by other Nations who use it – the United States does not!” US forces would help, he said.
“Think of it as the new Trump Doctrine for the Middle East,” Richard Haass, the former president of the Council on Foreign Relations, who served on the US National Security Council and at the State Department during the Persian Gulf War and the Iraq War, wrote on social media.
“We broke it, but you own it.”
Trump’s shifting goals continued into Saturday evening. Just a few days ago, he was calling on Israel to avoid targeting Iranian energy sites, for fear it would lead to an escalating round of retaliatory counterstrikes across the Gulf. But on Saturday, he threatened to hit Iran’s power plants if it did not “FULLY OPEN, WITHOUT THREAT, the Strait of Hormuz” within 48 hours.
He said that US strikes on Iranian plants would start “WITH THE BIGGEST ONE FIRST”. Iran’s biggest plant appears to be its only operating nuclear power plant, at Bushehr. For decades, nuclear power plants have been considered completely off limits for strikes because of the obvious risk of environmental calamity.
This is not where Trump expected to be after three weeks of war.
Foreign leaders, diplomats and US officials who have spoken with the president said that in the first week, he voiced expectations that Iran would capitulate. That was clear in Trump’s demand on March 6 for Iran’s “unconditional surrender”.
The demand was mystifying, said one European diplomat with long experience dealing with Iran, given the country’s competing power centres, its national pride and a Persian state that has existed within the rough boundaries of modern-day Iran, enduring many rises and falls, since the days of Cyrus the Great around 550 BC.
(That demand was also missing from his latest set of objectives. The White House has since said that the president does not expect a surrender announcement from Iran, but that Trump will determine when Iran has “effectively surrendered”.)
Iran’s refusal to “cry uncle”, as Trump termed it to reporters on Air Force One, has been only one of the surprises to the president in recent weeks.
The first was the crisis in the energy markets, which the International Energy Agency has called “the largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market”. It has sent Trump and his aides scrambling. They have promised releases from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which was only 60 per cent full, reflecting a lack of planning. Over the past week, the US Treasury Department has issued licences for the delivery of Russian and Iranian oil already at sea. In other words, to calm the markets, the president has approved enriching an adversary that is at war with Ukraine, an American ally, and another that is at war with the United States.
So far, the effects are minimal. Brent crude closed at about $US112 a barrel on Friday after the Treasury announcements, and Goldman Sachs warned on Thursday that if ships were reluctant to make their way through the Strait of Hormuz, prices could remain high into 2027.
The Iranians clearly understand that market chaos is their one remaining super-weapon. On Saturday, Tehran warned it could set fire to other facilities in the Middle East. The US believes the country entered the war with 3000 or so sea mines – some of which are believed to have been destroyed – and America has focused on destroying small boats in the Iranian fleet that are targeting tankers associated with American allies.
“All it takes is for one of those things to get through to shut down traffic,” said John Kirby, who served as both Pentagon and US State Department spokesperson after retiring as a naval officer. “The fear alone can be paralysing to the shipping industry, as we have already seen.”
Trump’s second surprise was his sudden need for allies. He didn’t imagine it at the beginning of the conflict, the defence minister of one Gulf nation said recently, because he thought the war would be short. But patrolling the strait, and other checkpoints, appears to be a task that could last months or years.
His third surprise was the absence of any uprising among either the Revolutionary Guard or ordinary Iranians. US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in the Oval Office last week, “We are seeing defections at all levels as they’re starting to sense what’s going on with the regime”. But US and European intelligence officials say they have no evidence of such defections – even after Israel targeted, and eliminated, Iran’s supreme leader, its top security and intelligence chiefs and many top military officials.
All that could yet come. Wars are not won or lost in three weeks. But Trump entered the Iran war after enjoying the fruits of quick victories. A bombing run over Iran’s three major nuclear sites in June was a one-evening expedition, essentially burying the country’s nuclear stockpiles and wiping out thousands of its centrifuges, which are used to enrich uranium.
The commando raid to seize Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela from his bed in Caracas was similarly swift. And so far, the government Trump left in place – essentially Maduro’s government – has been compliant. That operation has helped Trump destabilise Cuba, which has lost the Venezuelan fuel supplies that it has long depended on. The other day, the electric grid in Cuba collapsed, and administration officials have been openly suggesting that the government will, too.
Perhaps those quick results encouraged Trump to believe the US military was all-powerful, and that the mullahs and generals and militias that run Iran, a country of 92 million people, would crumble. Perhaps he rushed.
Military historians will be dissecting this conflict for a long time. But for now, it is clear that Iran is a different kind of challenge. Trump started using the word “excursion” to suggest this is just a short trip, a brief diversion. But there is no real end in sight.
