Two weeks into this war and it is clearer than ever that Donald Trump miscalculated. It did not seem to occur to him that bombing Iran would raise gasoline prices in the United States, even though it is a net exporter of petroleum. If he was warned that Iran might close the Strait of Hormuz, he ignored it.
Nor does he seem to have considered the possibility that an oil supply crisis would strengthen Vladimir Putin – indeed, that it might throw him a lifeline just as Russia’s economic burden of sustaining the war in Ukraine was becoming intolerable.
After 14 days of strikes on Iran, accompanied by boasts and threats that the war is either over or going to go on for a long time, the US president’s reasons for launching military action are still no clearer. Mr Trump continues to blow hot and cold, now calling for other countries to send warships – an abrupt change in tone since he said he did not need help from the British, accusing us of seeking to “join wars after we’ve already won”.
If there had been evidence that the Iranian regime was about to acquire a nuclear weapon, the Israeli people would have been entitled to defend themselves against the threat to their existence, and their allies would have had a duty to assist them. No such evidence has been presented, either by the Israeli government or by the US administration, which used bunker buster bombs in June in what it declared at the time was a successful blow against the regime’s nuclear programme.
It seems more likely that President Trump’s main reason for joining the Israeli strikes was that he believed the Iranian regime was about to fall. If that had been true, it might have been worth considering whether airstrikes would have helped to liberate the Iranian people. They have suffered under the theocratic dictatorship and were looking to the international community for support in throwing off its yoke. But when Mr Trump said “help is on its way”, it seems that he was offering false hope, because he had no plan to protect Iranian protesters from the regime’s murderous suppression.
Even if the regime had been about to collapse, it is not obvious that military action from outside would bring it about sooner or ensure security and stability afterwards. Even Mr Trump, who presented himself as an anti-war president, should have known from the experience of Iraq that the removal of a tyrannical regime is no guarantee of an end to bloodshed – and there, the US has thousands of troops on the ground.
As it is, the Iranian regime has proved more resilient than Mr Trump seems to have expected. The decapitation tactic of assassinating the supreme leader seems to have turned out as we warned it would. It has succeeded only in replacing an ageing hardliner with a younger, more extreme hardliner.
As we report, Iran has told Abu Dhabi and Dubai to clear their ports, which suggests that the US attack on Kharg Island, far from persuading Tehran to pull back, is provoking further escalation.
With the two-week war already hitting Americans in their pockets, it is as well for Mr Trump that he does not have to face the voters again. The sudden silence and low visibility of vice president JD Vance, who hopes to succeed Mr Trump, speaks volumes of the popularity of this conflict.
We suspect that Mr Trump is driven by an ambition beyond vote-maximisation; that he believes his own propaganda about bringing peace to the world, and that he is looking for his place in history. That is the only explanation that makes sense of his choices, misguided as they may be. He wants to make peace in Ukraine, unaware that appeasing President Putin is prolonging the war. He wants to make peace in the Middle East, and was persuaded by Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, that the ayatollahs’ house of cards needed just a puff of high explosive to come tumbling down.
Instead, he has intensified the “forever war” in the region, and embroiled America more deeply in it. As Bel Trew reports from Lebanon and Donald Macintyre reports from the West Bank, Israel’s confrontation with Iran is part of a wider campaign of assertiveness.
Two weeks on, Sir Keir Starmer’s wisdom in staying out of the conflict, except for limited and lawful defensive action, has been vindicated. Mr Trump’s folly in mistaking war for peace has been exposed.
