For Trump, war is a game of tug-of-war |
Many mistakenly believed — or preferred to believe — that President Donald Trump disliked war, or that he was practising some form of covert coercive diplomacy aimed at extracting limited concessions from Tehran. While Trump may care deeply about a few non-military issues, on most others he is shaped by those who promise him quick victories and glory. Iran is one of those issues. His hardline advisers, along with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, manoeuvred him into a position where war became inevitable with remarkable skill.
His statement to Axios was not a passing remark in a moment of tension; it was the declaration of a man who sees war as a tug-of-war rope that he can pull or release at will. When he says he has ‘multiple off-ramps’ from military action in Iran and can ‘control the whole thing’ or ‘end it all in two or three days’, he is staging political theatre as much as describing a military reality. He insists on being the sole protagonist.
This is the language of a president who seeks not to be understood, but to be feared. In this type of discourse, ambiguity becomes a weapon. Trump brandishes the prospect of a long war while simultaneously suggesting a quick strike, presenting his opponent with two doors, both of which lead into the unknown. He does not want Tehran to know whether Washington is heading towards a limited surgical operation or a prolonged conflict. He wants Tehran to be trapped in the grey zone that he has mastered and turned into a tool of pressure.
When he speaks of ‘controlling the whole thing’, especially in the aftermath of the killing of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, he resurrects the old image of America as a country capable of reshaping the Middle East with a single blow. However, history has repeatedly shown that the region does not bend so easily.
Yet behind this rhetoric, four possible scenarios emerge.
The first is a short operation involving concentrated strikes, after which Washington declares that it has achieved its objective — a scenario that fits the ‘two or three days’ rhythm that Trump keeps invoking.
Second, a prolonged escalation involving a rolling operation that opens multiple fronts, especially after the United States announced the start of ‘major combat operations’ in Iran alongside a wide-scale Israeli offensive. This would drag the region into a new test of its capacity to withstand fire.
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War as a negotiating tool: calibrated strikes not intended to topple the regime, but rather to force it to the negotiating table, where the ‘off-ramp’ becomes a bargaining chip rather than the end of the war.
Fourthly, a slide into proxy conflict, fuelled by Iran’s rapid missile retaliation against US bases in the region, as if Tehran were declaring that it would not allow Washington to script the scene alone.
Trump has ‘three rules’ regarding foreign intervention. First, overseas military operations must be ‘one-off actions — quick strikes that end as soon as they are announced’. Second, there must be ‘no American casualties’. He has already broken these rules, or at least admitted that he is likely to, saying that the United States will probably suffer losses as the attack on Iran continues. However, the third rule — no ground troops — is the one that most analysts believe he will not violate.
In his statement, Trump effectively told the Iranian people: ‘Now it’s your turn.’ He seemed to be saying: ‘I will inflict severe damage on the regime, but I will not send troops.’ When I’m done, the responsibility will be yours.’
Meanwhile, in his messaging on social media, Trump presents the operation as ‘defending the American people’ and a means to ‘eliminate Iranian threats’, and calls on Iranians to ‘take control of their government’. Another layer of language becomes clear here: war is not only a military act, but also a project of political re-engineering — or at least the threat of it. This is a return to the old American narrative that imagines military pressure can reorder the Middle East.
However, the region has learned how to absorb blows and rebuild itself from beneath the rubble.
Ultimately, Trump’s statements are not a war plan, but rather a psychological framework that enables him to act in any way he chooses. He places war in the realm of open possibilities and reserves the right to claim he chose the correct path, whatever it may be. It is the language of a president who wants to appear in control, even when the situation itself is changing by the hour. It is the language of a man who knows that power lies not in the strike itself, but in making others wait for it.
However, none of this fulfils the aspirations of the Iranian people, who are seeking to rid themselves of a theocratic system that suffocates the idea of freedom, nor those of the other peoples in the region who have suffered from Iran’s hegemonic policies through its network of militias. Everyone is watching for the fall of the Iranian regime and Iran’s return to being a normal state in the region.
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The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.