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Donald Trump was elected President of the United States twice on a single positive promise: peace instead of eternal war. Before the 2016 election, he expressed what had become clear to many Americans: Washington’s politicians and generals would have done more good lying on the beach and sunning themselves than when they invaded Iraq in 2003 in response to al-Qaeda terrorism two years earlier.
This was a popular message at the time and it was true. The question today is how to reconcile this with a large-scale attack on the vast country of Iran, with no clear motive, target or outcome.
A psychological key can be found in the letter that Donald Trump wrote to Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre during the Greenland crisis in January:
“Dear Jonas, since your country has decided not to award me the Nobel Peace Prize for ending more than eight wars, I no longer feel obliged to think only about peace…”
The competition is fierce – especially when it comes to poorly planned wars – but this could be the world record for surrealism. Since no strategy for Iran’s future has been presented, all that remains is to take the US President at his word.
There is some truth to these points, but this is about a hydra that can become more dangerous the more heads are chopped off
When the Washington Supreme Court declared his tariffs illegal, he increased them. When he doesn’t receive the peace prize, he decides on war. Do what I want or I’ll hold my breath until I’m blue in the face.
You have to pinch yourself in your arms to consider what is at stake. Iran’s 92 million people were recently attacked by their own security forces, leaving many thousands dead. The morally bankrupt regime in Tehran has little to lose.
Iranian leaders already killed include Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and several senior Revolutionary Guardsmen. You’re right on these points, but this is about a hydra that can become more dangerous the more heads are chopped off.
Trump is risking not only his own soldiers in the Middle East, but also the kind of endless election campaign he has promised to avoid. Rising oil prices and disrupted trade have often brought the global economy to ruin: 1973, 1979, 1990, to name just three oil shocks. What happens in the Middle East rarely stays in the Middle East – especially when major wars are already raging in Europe and inflation is weighing on us.
The lack of logical reasoning inevitably points to the president’s unclear psychology and his desire to divert attention from weak poll numbers
Few would mourn one Regime change in Tehran after 46 years of religious dictatorship and Iranian proxy wars. Unfortunately, there is little evidence that the United States and Israel can achieve this with aerial bombs. A more likely outcome is chaos and waves of refugees.
The mullahs have their paranoid and apocalyptic worldview confirmed. They will do what they can to fight back where it hurts most: against oil facilities and desalination plants in the Gulf states, against Israel and perhaps even with terrorist attacks in the West.
Donald Trump says today that the war was started to “deter an urgent threat to the American people.” His assurance that Iran’s nuclear program was “wiped out” by last year’s bombings is remembered. The lack of reasoning inevitably points to the president’s unclear psychology and his desire to divert attention from weak poll numbers or from scandals like the Epstein documents, in which he features more often than anyone else.
The war, like so many wars in the past, risks conjuring up the very demons it was intended to combat
Similarly personal Motives can be felt in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He has built his long political career on the ability to communicate with Washington. Presidents Clinton, Obama and Biden were moderately amused by Bibi’s domineering style and his constant calls for a decisive death blow against Iran.
When Donald Trump finally becomes the one to carry out the order, the ironies are many and dark. One of the world’s most toxic conspiracy theories is that Israel secretly controls American foreign policy; the tail wags the dog.
The war, like so many wars in the past, risks conjuring up the very demons it was intended to combat.
Read more texts by Niklas Ekdal.
