There’s always a tweet – and, in Donald Trump’s case, usually more than one. Unfortunately for him, the internet never forgets.
In January 2012, Trump poured scorn on his predecessor at the time, Barack Obama, for apparently considering attacking Iran “in order to get re-elected”. Trump later repeated this claim about a military adventure that he did not endorse at the time, saying: “Now that Obama’s poll numbers are in [sic] tailspin, watch for him to launch a strike in Libya or Iran. He is desperate.”
His last tweet on the subject was to warn his party about falling for such a cynical move: “Don’t let Obama play the Iran card in order to start a war in order to get elected – be careful Republicans!”
Over the past decade, Trump has repeatedly rejected waging pointless foreign wars, pursuing “regime change”, and generally wasting money interfering in other countries’ business. It remains a foundational belief of the “America First” platform. For Maga voters, Trump represented a sharp break from previous presidents who had been dragged into foreign entanglements.
Well, now what? It turns out that it is Trump’s poll numbers that are now in tailspin. Faced with difficult mid-term elections in November, he is looking for another successful foreign military action to look strong and make America feel strong. Drunk on the success of last summer’s surgical bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities, as well as the audacious raid on Caracas and capture of president Nicolas Maduro in January, Trump senses an even more spectacular, epoch-making victory in Iran.
Regime change in Tehran would avenge decades of American humiliation at the hands of the ayatollahs, a reassertion of US might. What better way to get the fake news media off the Epstein files, the collapse of Trump’s tariffs policy and the continuing cost of living crisis?
Except that his war in Iran isn’t popular – not even in his own circle. Vice-president JD Vance, a more authentic Maga voice than the billionaire-from-birth Trump could ever be, has been curiously quiet about this war. He was also absent from the control room in Mar-a-Lago, where Trump was ensconced with Marco Rubio and Susie Wiles – the “A Team”.
But conservative influencers are unimpressed. Comments by Curt Mills, the executive director of The American Conservative magazine, are a typical response, contrasting Trump’s 2024 “anti-globalist, anti-imperial” messaging with his present actions: “Now it just seems overt. The administration serves rich people and does wars for foreign countries. It plays so ruthlessly into the Democrats’ oligarchy messaging. It’s kind of astonishing that they’re not more anti this. It seems served up on a f****** platter. It’s a two-to-one unpopular war, and it’s weirdly associated with the administration’s potential corruption.”
So far from rescuing Trump’s presidency, this conflict could break it.
If it all goes south for him, he risks certain impeachment, because “his” Iran war is indeed unpopular, and according to the pollsters, particularly with the independent voters he’ll need to retain control of the Senate and the House. Without Congress, he is defenceless against multiple charges being laid against him for breaking the law, and covering up the Epstein scandal.
Even worse, though, are the needless American casualties in a war Trump need not have started. After all, he previously insisted that Iran’s nuclear weapons programme has already been “obliterated”. In terms of defending the United States, his latest actions make no sense.
Most of all, I’d have thought most Americans would be appalled by Trump’s casual remarks about the three US service personnel who, on Sunday, became the first to be killed in the conflict – “likely more to follow… that’s the way it is”, callous asides delivered with the ironic smirk of the barroom bore Trump is. It is not the first time he’s demeaned American servicemen and women, and he deserves to pay a heavy political price for his disdain.
The best that Trump can hope for is that he gets the hell out of Iran before the war spreads across the region, spirals the oil price and shunts the world into chaos and recession. The Iranian people and American pilots, sailors and troops will likely pay the highest price for this reckless unforced error of judgement.
Trump will have to carry the can. It may soon dawn on the Maga faithful that this unwise excursion is of vastly more benefit to Israel than America, which faces no direct imminent threat from Iran at all, and that their president has been persuaded – duped, even – into this unwise excursion by his old friend Benjamin Netanyahu.
In fact, the Omani foreign minister, who had been brokering the US-Iran talks, let slip that the Iranians had caved in on the nuclear demands just before Trump launched Operation Epic Fury. So the ayatollah that Trump just assassinated had, in fact, given him what he demanded – and Trump went ahead anyway.
Not so very long ago, towards the end of his first term of office, Trump took to Twitter to declare: “The United States has spent EIGHT TRILLION DOLLARS fighting and policing in the Middle East. Thousands of our Great Soldiers have died or been badly wounded. Millions of people have died on the other side. GOING INTO THE MIDDLE EAST IS THE WORST DECISION EVER MADE…..”
The US president was right then, and he is wrong now. When the midterm elections come around in November, nothing will save his presidency from the worst decision he has ever made.
