President Donald Trump is a victim of his own success. After a quick strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities last June and the capture of Venezuela’s president and First Lady in January, the US military, the illegality of those operations notwithstanding, made war look easy and Trump feel omnipotent.

Three weeks into a more daunting excursion into Iran, Trump is now a desperate leader.

Trump’s Latest Grudge Match

With Trump, everything is personal. A growing body of evidence suggests that a principal objective in attacking Iran was the assassination of the country’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. For example:

When the CIA learned that the Ayatollah and top Iranian officials would be meeting in a militarily accessible location, a previously planned nighttime strike was moved up to the middle of the day.

On Sunday night, March 1, shortly after reports that the US-Israeli attack had killed the Ayatollah, Trump said, “I got him before he got me.” He was referring to an alleged plot to kill Trump during the 2024 presidential campaign as retribution for the January 2020 US strike that killed Iran’s military leader Qasem Soleimani, the commander of the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps,

The desire to downplay Trump’s desire for vengeance explains why he and his minions have offered more noble—and contradictory—justifications for the war, including:

To help the Iranian people secure their freedom (Trump);

To attack Iran because Israel was going to do it and that would result in Iran’s attack on US assets in the Middle East (Secretary of State Marco Rubio);

To attack Iran first, not because Israel was going to do it anyway, but because Trump had a gut feeling that Iran was going to attack the US (Trump). But Pentagon officials informed Congress that no intelligence supported Trump’s opinion;

To eliminate Iran’s nuclear capability (although Trump claimed to have done that with the June attack).

Mission Accomplished?

Whatever his motivations, deploying the might of the military force was the beginning and the end of Trump’s thinking. He and his advisors are now flailing in the aftermath.

Iran has divided its global adversaries by holding the world’s economy hostage. Closing the Strait of Hormuz to the US and its allies sent world markets reeling as the price of oil increased by 40 percent and the price of gasoline in the US rose by almost $1.00 per gallon. Trump is trying to sell the line that such costs in the short run will pay off in the long run, but few are buying it.

Trump’s Desperate Ploys

The absence of any US strategy becomes clearer by the day. Trump has thrown everything at the wall in the hope that something will stick. So far, nothing has.

He floated a $200 million insurance guarantee for ships traveling through the Strait of Hormuz – but not everyone lives in Trump’s world in which everything has a price.

He suggested using US military escorts for the tankers but offered no timeline; the risks to US military........

© Common Dreams