EDITOR’S ANALYSIS
Trump faces challenges as Iran resists negotiations after military escalation and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s killing.
United States President Donald Trump enjoys being seen as unpredictable. But when it comes to the military campaign against Iran, his shifting messaging on the length and aims of the conflict obscures the failure to achieve his apparent goal: a quick conclusion that he can declare a victory.
Despite the killing of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Saturday – the kind of brazen act that has become a Trump trademark – and the heavy bombing of Iran, the Islamic Republic’s leaders have publicly rejected the prospect of any immediate return to the negotiating table.
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Instead, Iran is testing the will of its Gulf Arab neighbours with repeated attacks not just on US assets, but on civilian areas, and a threat to strike any ship passing through the Strait of Hormuz.
The Iranians’ message is clear: that they have the ability to fight back, and believe that they must impose some kind of deterrence before any talks to stop the fighting, whenever that may be.
And so, with an Iranian state prepared for a protracted fight, Trump is in the kind of scenario he has typically avoided in his two terms as president. That perhaps explains why he has been so inconsistent in his messaging.
Trump has said that the war could end in a few days, but has also given a timeline of up to five weeks, or even longer. He has framed the fight as one for the freedom of the Iranian people and in support of the country’s opposition, but also made clear that he is happy to make a deal with elements of the current state if they are willing to abide by his conditions.
The contradictions shroud the reality that Trump does not have the stomach for a lengthy fight. In his periods in power, Trump has been happy to use the US’s military strength to attack opponents, and even threaten allies. But he has largely done so when he has been able to secure a quick and easy win, or backed down if it became clear that was not possible.
A military campaign against Yemen’s Houthis last year was evidence of that. When it became clear that fully degrading the Houthis’ offensive capabilities would take months, Trump agreed to a deal in which the Houthis agreed to stop attacks on US ships, even as the Yemeni group continued to attack Israeli interests.
An elongated conflict with Iran promises the opposite of a quick win – more US casualties, global economic damage, and a failure to protect regional allies. All for a fight that Trump has spent little time attempting to convince the US people to back, and which is already unpopular.
Iran down, but not out
The Iranian government is weak after years of economic troubles partly brought on by Western sanctions, and protests in January, when thousands were killed. But air power alone was always unlikely to topple a system that has embedded itself throughout Iran for decades.
Instead, Trump says he prefers a Venezuela scenario, with the killing of Khamenei equating to the US’s January abduction of Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro, and other establishment figures stepping in more to the liking of the US.
For now, the Iranian government is not interested. It believes that if it starts negotiating now and makes a deal without establishing deterrence, Israel and the US will find a new reason to attack in the foreseeable future, effectively taking the “mowing the lawn” strategy used against the Palestinians to Iran, in which threats are intermittently attacked to prevent them from getting stronger.
There is a good reason for that Iranian fear – Trump himself has spoken about it. “I can go long and take over the whole thing, or end it in two or three days and tell the Iranians: ‘See you again in a few years if you start rebuilding [your nuclear and missile programmes]’,” he told the news website Axios on Saturday.
All of this ambiguity gives Trump the freedom to pivot and make an about-turn on the war if he wants. The US president will be more than willing to sell the killing of Khamenei and the images of devastation in Tehran and elsewhere as a victory if he decides the costs are too high.
The consequences, of course, will have been disastrous for so many others: more chaos in the region, damage to the assets and image of allies at the centre of the world economy, and an Iranian opposition promised much, which may yet receive very little.
