Let’s call Trump’s approach to Iran what it is: kindergarten diplomacy

As I write in The Guardian, amid stop-and-start threats and with a divided staff, it’s clear Trump has no idea how to end a war that shouldn’t have begun.

On Thursday, 23 July, after weeks of escalating attacks between the US and Iran, Donald Trump told a reporter that Iran hadn’t received “enough pain yet”, and he leveled a threat. “I am considering a massive attack. Bigger than ever before,” he warned. “I am close to making a decision.” Then, on Monday 27 July, he called it off.

A few days later, on Friday 31 July, Trump said: “We’ll be hitting them very hard. At some point, they’re going to say: ‘We just can’t take it any more.’” This time, it took him just one day to back down.

Here we go again. Ever since the US and Israel launched their latest war on Iran on 28 February, the people of the planet have been subjected to Donald Trump’s on-again off-again relationship with raining down catastrophic destruction on the nation. It started on 21 March, when Trump promised to hit Iranian power plants (a war crime, incidentally) unless Iran opened the strait of Hormuz. He delayed that plan for five days, and then another 10 days, before issuing his next threat.

That was on 7 April, when he wrote: “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.” A mere 10 hours later, he walked back that (genocidal) threat. On 17 May, he wrote: “For Iran, the Clock is Ticking, and they better get moving, FAST, or there won’t be anything left of them. TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE!” On 18 May, he wrote that he had been asked by Gulf leaders to “hold off on our planned Military attack of the Islamic Republic of Iran, which was scheduled for tomorrow”.

The approach seems as tedious as it does childish, constantly threatening one thing only to back down in a cringey, face-saving effort shortly thereafter. Let’s call it what it is: kindergarten diplomacy. From appearances, it would seem that Trump considers this a strategy. One can only assume he holds out hope that it will achieve an end to this catastrophic conflagration he and Benjamin Netanyahu began. The war is a massive failure, plunging his popularity along with American regional dominance in the Middle East. What’s clear is that Trump hasn’t a clue about how to exit a war he never should have started in the first place.

Leadership is needed when difficult decisions must be made, but Trump is not capable of such resolve. Instead, he seems primarily driven to make pronouncements based on the last person he talked to. When Netanyahu visited him in the Oval Office on 21 July, the Israeli prime minister discussed three options for the war with Trump, according to reports: “a (negotiated) deal, continuing the blockade and economic pressures, and a massive strike”, is how a senior Israeli official described the meeting to Reuters. (Let’s not forget that Netanyahu helped convince Trump to start this war back in February.) Two days later, Trump threatened a massive strike (then called it off, then threatened it again). When the president’s threat reappeared, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman called Trump on 1 August to argue for de-escalation. Guess what? To no one’s surprise, Trump backed down again.

Nixon had his madman theory, in which he sought to project an image of himself as unhinged and irrational to frighten the Soviet Union into concessions. Trump, whether he knows it or not, is turning indecision into his own presidential doctrine.

Such indecision is probably in part a reflection of Trump’s unflagging desire to please influential people around him. Trump’s deep-seated need to be liked by those he perceives to be powerful or popular (see: Trump’s meeting with Zohran Mamdani) is, I think, often underappreciated. But there is more behind Trump’s indecision as well…

Read the rest here.