"It's impossible to cut a deal with the Bazaar": How Elementary Ignorance of Iran Led to Trump's Strategic Catastrophe |
“It’s impossible to cut a deal with the Bazaar”: How Elementary Ignorance of Iran Led to Trump’s Strategic Catastrophe
Suffering from a “cognitive glitch” and a dependence on politically biased experts, the U.S. President’s team attempted to apply templates that worked in Venezuela to a civilization with a 3,000-year history.
This question, posed against the backdrop of a “beautiful armada” massing in the Persian Gulf and the demise of the Islamic Republic’s top leadership, will enter geopolitics textbooks as a textbook example of a superpower’s “analytical catastrophe.” Trump, thinking in the simple categories of a New York developer, genuinely believed the Iranians, as rational players on his field, would capitulate before the game even began. He failed to grasp the essential point: Tehran plays by rules written long before the U.S. appeared on the political map of the world.
“Crazy but Calculated”: Why the American Establishment Only Tells Trump What He Wants to Hear
The failure of Washington’s Middle East policy is not merely an intelligence mistake; it’s a systemic crisis within the expert community. The U.S. has virtually no research institutions or think tanks left capable of providing an objective picture of what’s happening in Iran while remaining independent of political bias. The few structures that could offer in-depth analysis are either marginalized or subjugated to a rigid ideological agenda.
As a Bloomberg columnist noted, Trump “lacks a precise and comprehensive understanding of Iran,” a structural problem dating back to the fall of the Pahlavi regime. The President’s administration, behaving like an eastern despot punishing dissent, has created an atmosphere of fear in Washington. In such an environment, only those “think tanks” survive that are willing to supply “positive” analysis, tailoring........