Time to pity Donald Trump
Looming over the verbal skirmishes concerning Iran’s recent attack on the Saudi oil facilities and Mike Pompeo’s calling the attack “an act of war” is the fundamental problem that Donald Trump has created: putting himself between a rock and a hard place. There’s no wriggling out of it without either losing face or getting into a hot war with Iran, which would incur the involvement of Russia and the Chinese—too hot for Donald Trump to handle.
At this point, the end result appears to have been a loss of face—not that Donald Trump would ever admit it. The Treasury Department is to clamp down further on Iran’s financial system—somewhat short of Trump’s bellicose rhetoric. This will wreak further havoc on Iran’s economy, but if the Iranian government asks its people to make big sacrifices to oppose the U.S., they will be ready to starve rather than knuckle under.
We saw a similar Trumpian backpedaling from explosive rhetoric back in July of 2018 as Trump, personally aggrieved by standard Iranian bluster, thundered back at Hassan Rouhani with threats of annihilation.
As Trump vacillates from tweet to tweet—one day declaring the U.S. is “locked and loaded” to deal with Iran, another day declaring he will meet Iranian leaders “without conditions”—the Iranian leadership has returned to uranium enrichment and an insistence that meetings with the U.S. hinge on the U.S. returning to the JCPOA (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, otherwise known as “the Iran nuclear deal,” in which Russia and China participate—an agreement which has left the U.S. isolated, with feeble diplomatic legs to stand on).
The Rock
The rock upon which Donald Trump’s Iran policy is foundering is the theocratic leadership of Iran. The Ayatollah and his henchmen have the advantage of actually believing in something greater than themselves—their version of Allah and their mission, in the service of Allah, to put the Great Satan of the United States to the sword. Whereas Donald Trump believes in—what? No one really knows, but if it extends beyond his own ego, it is certainly something shriveled and pathetic when squared off against Iranian religious conviction. Trump’s manifold insecurity stems in part from his lack of conviction in anything solid and lasting; the Ayatollah’s security is based upon longstanding religious and cultural traditions—rooted in a history much deeper than sallies into New York City real estate, grandiose casinos and meretricious resorts. (This is not a values assessment; the Ayatollah’s xenophobia, misogyny, and disgust with human rights are more than equal to Donald Trump’s, but at least they have a footing in tradition rather than impulse.)
Bolstering the Iranian theocratic rock are economic entanglements with Russia and China, both of whom loathe the prospect of war in the Middle East. The Iranians have enough support from those two international giants—one (Russia) a military giant, and the other (China) both a military and economic giant—to wait out the U.S. until the 2020 elections. It’s a good bet that nudges from the Russians and Chinese are in part responsible for Trump backing away from an attack on Iran. (When it comes to the use of nukes—well, I imagine Vladimir Putin, for whom Donald Trump holds an unhealthy respect, has reminded Trump that Russia, too, has nukes, in particular tactical nukes that would devastate U.S. forces in the Middle East. Putin would be unlikely to actually use them, but he could be pretty sure such a bluff would work to take Trump’s finger off the nuclear trigger.)
The Hard Place
The hard place is the refusal of our allies to join the U.S. in a confrontation to force Iran into an agreement that principally favors the U.S. Why should they join us, after being betrayed by Trump’s withdrawal from the JCPOA and subjected to repeated insults, belittlement, and disparagement by the U.S. President? Why should they join us, when Trump changes his policies from day to day? For the time being they have the excuse of Iranian official denial of involvement in the attack on the Saudi oil facilities—even though everyone with a working intelligence service knows Iran was behind it*—and once the recently-commenced U.N. investigation officially concludes that it was Iran, the whole tempest will have already blown over, with Trump having been left to retreat from his anti-Iranian bluster and to blow off steam by flaying the powerless such as homeless Hispanic asylum seekers.
Backpedaling is also inevitable because Saudi oil production is expected to recover in less than a month, and it makes little economic sense for them to risk armed hostilities with so little to gain. What’s more, given Donald Trump’s vacillations, the Saudis may doubt what support the U.S. might give them in case push seriously came to Iranian shove.
Mike Pompeo has not helped the cause of the United States by throwing his international weight around consonant with his pledge to “put the swagger back into the State Department.” Adding Mike Pompeo’s arrogance to Donald Trump’s mean-spiritedness further alienates a world resentful of U.S. bullying. Pompeo is far more crafty than Trump, but his allegiance to the would-be king has stripped him of moral authority, and left him, too, stuck between a rock and a hard place in the straits of Hormuz.
Addendum: In The Guardian, Simon Tisdall helps us with a more complex analysis in a vein similar to but more closely reasoned than mine above, noting that the Iranian attacks on the Saudis “bamboozled the Saudis’ expensive US-supplied Patriot missile defenses and early warning systems”—oopsy!
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* either Iran, or—conspiracy theory alert!—the U.S. in disguise in a ruse to justify U.S./Saudi aggression.