Escalation Would Make Trump’s Epic Iran Mistake Worse |
When a US president resorts to public expletives and the threat of war crimes to get his way in war, it takes a heroic effort to discern a strategy amid the disgrace. But to the extent Donald Trump is executing a plan, it is a version of the “escalate to de-escalate” doctrine attributed to Russian nuclear planners, in which they’d threaten the ultimate step to persuade an opponent to back down.
This tactic very rarely works, either in the real world or war-gaming exercises. According to a 2024 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists article, that’s because de-escalating under duress requires both trust, or at least a belief in the credibility of the threats being made, and a willingness to endure public capitulation. The risks involved in retaliation tend to seem preferable.
Nothing we know about the regime in charge of the Islamic Republic of Iran suggests it would prove an exception to this rule. On the contrary, Trump’s threats to bomb Iran back into the stone age by an ever-shifting deadline are merely confirming Tehran’s long-standing belief that US cannot be trusted in general, and that Trump in particular is too erratic to be taken at his word.
It is Trump who now needs to find a way out of what’s best renamed “Operation Epic Mistake,” because if there is one certainty in conflict it is that every new day brings the risk of new unwanted consequences. And in this case, the victims include not just the protagonists themselves but the entire world economy.
Without a clear and viable path to military success, it would be unforgivable to invite those risks by the scale of escalation Trump has proposed for Tuesday evening.
This dynamic is unfolding in real time. Iran’s decision to close the Strait of........