Trump’s candour exposes his foolery – and Netanyahu, like Putin, plays him for a sucker

Among the many things that make Donald Trump such an unusual politician, one of the most striking is the way he communicates. A Trump speech or press conference is typically a weird steam-of-consciousness rant; an unpleasant melange of sarcasm, abuse, exaggeration, and falsehood. But once in a while, there comes an unguarded moment of shocking candour which, in its very spontaneity, is more authentic than the disciplined lapidary eloquence of a president like Barack Obama.

There was such a revealing moment on March 16 when Trump held a press conference at the Kennedy Centre – the Washington performing arts hall erected as a memorial to the slain president and now, grotesquely, re-named the “Trump Kennedy Centre”. The war against Iran had entered its third week and the Iranians had broadened the conflict by attacking America’s allies among the Gulf States. “They weren’t supposed to go after all these other countries in the Middle East. Nobody expected that. We were shocked.”

If, among the flurry of inconsistent explanations of American policy, there is a single statement that reveals the administration’s strategic incoherence, surely it is that. America (and Israel) attack Iran with relentless fury. Iran counterattacks against nearby American allies, many of which host US military bases. Who would have thought?

Trump’s remarks were swiftly followed by anonymous briefings – most likely from sources within the State Department and the CIA – that American intelligence assessments had indeed warned the president of that risk. The since-assassinated Iranian leadership had, in January, publicly threatened that would be the consequence of an American attack. The likelihood – or, at least, significant possibility – of such an Iranian response was the consensus of the national security community.

Only four days before Operation Epic Fury was launched, Nate Swanson, the senior professional diplomat who had been the National Security Council’s director for Iran during the Biden administration, and until last year a member of the Trump’s Iran negotiating team, published an article in Foreign Affairs – the house journal of America’s foreign policy community – in which he predicted that very thing. “If conflict with the United States deepens, Iran may seriously consider targeting the Gulf Arab states’ energy infrastructure directly,” wrote Swanson.

Reflecting on Trump’s motives, he said: “The US president is not threatening to attack Iran because of any imminent threat or in response to any act of Iranian aggression. His motives are various and unclear: he is disappointed by the negotiations’ progress, he feels compelled to defend the redline he established … he is desperate to avoid unflattering comparisons to Obama, and he believes he can undertake major operations with minimal consequences [emphasis added].”

Trump’s remarks at the Kennedy Centre may simply have been an attempt to conceal the fact that he had been warned of the risks of a horizontal war spreading throughout the Gulf. But, whether forewarned or not, his words can only be regarded as a frank admission that he massively underestimated the Iranian response.

Trump was certainly aware of the possibility of Iran closing the Strait of Hormuz. His hand-picked chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Dan Caine, expressly warned him of it, but Trump remained steadfast in his belief that the decapitation of the regime – an objective achieved in the first few hours of the conflict – would cause it to crumble or surrender.

That belief was no doubt shaped, at least in part, by Benjamin Netanyahu. But Jerusalem’s objectives, ever since the war began, have been different in important respects from Washington’s. For Israel, to which the Iranian regime is an existential threat, there is almost no cost too great to see it destroyed. For America, that too is a desirable outcome, but not a necessary one. It seems that Netanyahu has joined the growing list of world leaders, led by Vladimir Putin, who has played Trump for a sucker.

As the war enters its fifth week, virtually all of Trump’s initial expectations have been falsified. The regime has neither capitulated nor collapsed. The joke in Washington today is that Trump has indeed achieved regime change: by taking out the older generation of seasoned, more pragmatic rulers, he has replaced them with a younger generation of more belligerent officers of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps whose determination has only been fortified by the attacks. As American and Israeli bombs and missiles rain down with lethal force, defence of the regime has, predictably, morphed into defence of the nation.

Meanwhile, the regime’s internal critics – whom it was Trump’s original intention to empower – have been, unfairly but ruthlessly, stigmatised as apologists for Iran’s enemies.

I never cease to be amazed at the failure of America to learn the lessons of its own previous bitter experience. Vietnam proved the power of asymmetric warfare: the most powerful bombing campaign (more American bombs were dropped over Vietnam than over the whole of occupied Europe in World War II) could not defeat guerrilla forces on the ground. Afghanistan showed the quicksand nature of Middle Eastern conflicts (the very kind of entanglements that Trump campaigned to stop). And Iraq reminds us that, if you remove a strongman – however odious his regime – be careful what you wish for: you might end up with something even worse.

We cannot know what will happen in the coming weeks – or months. But a few things are already pretty clear. Russia has been strengthened. China will be emboldened. America – having failed to dislodge the regime it went to war to destroy – will be weakened. But, whatever the outcome, Trump will declare it a victory.

George Brandis is a former high commissioner to the UK, and a former Liberal senator and federal attorney-general. He is now a professor at the ANU’s National Security College.

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