Trying to decipher what Donald Trump is really up to can be something of a mug’s game.
But, with all the usual caveats this uncertain exercise entails, it does seem as if the President is looking for an off ramp in his Iranian adventure – which, contrary to the propaganda emanating from the White House and the Pentagon, cannot be said to be going exactly to plan.
Last Saturday, Trump was still doing his Mr Bellicose act, threatening to ‘obliterate’ Iranian energy infrastructure if the regime didn’t reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
Tehran responded, predictably, by saying that if he did that, Iran would destroy the energy infrastructure of America’s Gulf allies. The global economy gulped.
The war on Iran has already deprived the world’s oil supply of 11 million barrels a day – as much as the two oil shocks of the 1970s combined.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 saw the loss of 75 billion cubic metres of natural gas to European gas markets. The current crisis has already lost 140 billion cubic metres – twice as much. So we are already experiencing the equivalent of two oil shocks and a gas crisis – simultaneously.
This has naturally kindled fears in major economies of rampant inflation followed by widespread recession. But the prospective destruction of much of the Gulf’s oil and gas facilities would be a harbinger of much worse – the prospect of prolonged global economic catastrophe.
No wonder the markets were widely expected to tank when they reopened.
In reality, the Iranians are trolling President Donald Trump, writes Andrew Neil
Smoke rises from Tehran after US and Israeli strikes on the Iranian capital in February
Then news reached the White House from Saudi Arabia, where the Saudis, Egypt, Turkey and Pakistan were trying to restart a US-Iranian dialogue.
So many Iranian leaders have been killed that it’s no longer obvious who to talk to in Tehran. But Egyptian intelligence managed to make contact with some of the top brass in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). A five-day breather on knocking out each other’s energy infrastructure was proposed.
The IRGC indicated that was acceptable. Trump grabbed this flimsy olive branch with both hands. He even started talking about ‘productive’ talks, though Iran’s foreign ministry insisted no talks had taken place and US officials conceded there had been no discussions of ‘substance’.
But that didn’t deter Trump’s enthusiasm. He suddenly claimed to be dealing with ‘very reasonable, very solid’ people in Tehran who wanted to ‘settle’ hostilities as much as he did.
He even implied some sort of regime change had taken place, citing what he claimed to have engineered in Venezuela: that, as in Caracas, there were now people in charge in Tehran with whom he could do business.
All this was somewhat suspiciously revealed just in time for the markets opening on Monday morning. Rather than tanking, they started to recoup some of their previous losses.
It is, of course, all stuff and nonsense, bordering on the fantastical. In reality, the Iranians are trolling Trump.
Leading regime figures crowed that Trump was looking for a way out. The Speaker of the Iranian parliament claimed America was now ‘trapped in a quagmire’. He even accused Trump of being more interested in ‘manipulating the financial markets’ than in starting a proper peace process (there might be some truth in that).
Iranian state TV gleefully reported that Trump had ‘backed down’ while quoting regime leaders demanding massive US compensation for war damages, the right of Iran to levy charges on all ships using the Strait of Hormuz and a US-Israeli pledge never to attack Iran again.
Trump, for his part, is still mooting a deal in which Iran gives up its nuclear ambitions, suspends its ballistic missile programme and desists from funding terrorist proxies across the region.
I think we can safely say the two sides are not exactly on the same page. Nor has peace broken out, even temporarily.
The five-day ‘breather’ is holding. But Israel and the US are still pummelling other Iranian targets, while Iran is still lobbing missiles at Israel and the Gulf States.
The Iranian regime is now cocky enough to depict Trump as a supplicant to be treated with contempt. Tehran has concluded its pain threshold is far higher than Trump’s. Yes, Iran is taking a terrible pounding. But the regime is still standing, its grip on power still solid.
President Trump and his ally against Iran, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu
In contrast, the Trump administration has started to panic because petrol prices are rising fast.
The regime is sufficiently savvy to detect the growing desire of Trump and many of those around him to bring the war to a close because of the mounting political and economic fallout if it continues.
In truth, Trump has no good options. He can, of course, declare victory and go home, claiming (with typical embellishment) that he’s seriously crippled the Iranian regime for years to come. Recent talk of the war being ‘nearly won’ and of ‘winding down’, plus his new enthusiasm for negotiations, suggest that’s the direction he’s going.
But a Tehran regime that survives will declare a victory of its own. While Trump will leave behind a litany of losers.
Ukraine for a start, which Trump is likely to dump entirely in Europe’s lap in revenge for the Nato allies not coming sufficiently to his aid when he asked.
The Atlantic Alliance, already fraying at the edges but now in danger of being given the last rites by the President for not being there when he demanded it.
Above all, the Gulf States, America’s allies in the region, left with a violent and vengeful big neighbour to the north which has demonstrated it is prepared to send missiles and drones their way – always their worst nightmare.
The efforts of the Gulf States to rebuild their ‘safe haven’ reputations would be seriously handicapped.
Which explains why Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi Crown Prince, has been privately urging Trump to continue the war until the regime is toppled. He argues that Iran poses a long-term threat to the Gulf that can only be eliminated by getting rid of the government.
There are those who think that’s still Trump’s intention – that the five-day ‘breather’ is all a ruse until enough US Marines are assembled (perhaps even joined by the formidable 82nd Airborne) in the region, the air war is joined by boots on the ground and the serious business of removing the regime begins.
But is that option any more palatable than cutting and running under cover of bluffing a victory? It’s certainly less realistic.
It would take months for America to assemble enough forces to subdue a country of 90 million, bigger than Britain, France, Germany and Spain combined. There is no guarantee of success, no stomach for such an open-ended intervention on any part of the US political spectrum.
So is it worth even contemplating? With all that prolonged conflict would mean for the global economy? In a year of crucial mid-term elections in which private Republican Party polling indicates both the House and the Senate are at risk for the President? Just to ask these questions is to answer them.
The five-day hiatus comes to an end on Friday night. What happens then is anybody’s guess. Trump is trapped in a conundrum of his own making. For the tyrants of Tehran, not losing is a victory that guarantees survival. For America, not losing is a defeat.
Ending up in this trap is the biggest mistake of Trump’s presidency. I have no idea how he can escape – and I’m starting to think he might never recover from it.
