Iran, Not Trump, Decides When This War Is Over |
Iran, Not Trump, Decides When This War Is Over
The U.S. and Israel started the war, but with the Strait of Hormuz closed and gas prices skyrocketing, Iran is in control now.
A week ago, President Trump effectively declared victory in the Iran war. “We’ve won. Let me tell you, we’ve won,” he said during a speech in Kentucky. “You know, you never like to say too early you won. We won. We won the, in the first hour, it was over. We won.” Of course, this being Trump, he also said that the United States and Israel had to “finish the job.” Days earlier, he had said the war was “very complete … sort of.” And on Friday, when asked by Fox News’s Brian Kilmeade when the war would end, Trump said, “When I feel it, OK? I feel it in my bones.” So the war has been won, but actually it’s not over. It will only be over when Trump decides it is. Got it?
As a general rule, if someone gives conflicting answers to the same question, you can assume that they don’t have an actual answer. And if they proclaim that they’re in full control of something, you can assume the opposite. That’s undoubtedly where Trump, in the third week of this war, now finds himself. Things have not gone according to plan—perhaps because his apparent plan was to bomb Iran into submission with days and assume not retaliation of any kind—and now the conflict is spiraling out of his control. Will Trump, to invoke one of liberals’ favored insults, “chicken out”? Or is he already beyond the point of no return?
When Trump made those statements above, the war was already shifting gears and beginning to evade his grasp. Within days of being attack on February 28, Iran announced that it would attack any ships trying to pass through the........