Trump Has No Idea How to Clean Up His Own Mess

In a functioning American democracy, the president would deliver an Oval Office address at the start of a new military conflict. Donald Trump, however, decided to wait until a month into his war with Iran to give a speech about it to a skeptical public.

In the run-up to his address, experts speculated about what he was going to announce. A ground invasion? De-escalation? A petulant withdrawal from NATO because no one wants to help him open the Strait of Hormuz? It was none of these. Instead, a slurring Trump rehashed a bunch of his Truth Social posts, alternately boasting about America’s military progress while threatening war crimes. His speech told us very little, at least explicitly, but revealed quite a lot.

First, he showed us that he has no plan to get out of the mess he created. One way to judge how the war is going is to look at which side is trying to wrap it up. On Wednesday, Axios reported that JD Vance has made overtures to Iran, via mediators, about a possible cease-fire. Iran, however, may not be willing to negotiate. American intelligence agencies, according to The New York Times, have assessed that “the Iranian government believes it is in a strong position in the war and does not have to accede to America’s diplomatic demands.”

Perhaps hoping to get Iran to the table, Trump on Wednesday repeated ultimatums he’s already made. “Over the next two to three weeks, we’re going to bring them back to the Stone Ages, where they belong,” he said. Absent a deal, he threatened to destroy Iran’s electric plants and, perhaps, its oil, which would be illegal under international law, not that the president cares.

By Thursday, American and Israeli strikes had already severely damaged the Pasteur Institute in Tehran, a major medical research center. Vali Nasr, an Iranian American political scientist and a former State Department adviser, saw the attack as part of Trump’s promised campaign to destroy Iran as a modern society. As a child, Nasr recalled, he got his vaccinations at the Pasteur Institute. His grandfather, a doctor, worked there. It is, he told me, “the gold standard of international-level health care in Iran.”

The bombing of the institute, he pointed out, comes just days after airstrikes on two pharmaceutical production facilities, which are particularly important to Iran given how expensive foreign medicines have become, thanks to international sanctions. The United States and Israel may claim that these were dual-use facilities, but Iranians, said Nasr, sense that “this is no longer a war on the Islamic Republic or its missiles or its nuclear facility. This is a war on the country. This is about turning Iran into a failed state.”

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Michelle Goldberg has been an Opinion columnist since 2017. She is the author of several books about politics, religion and women’s rights and was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize for public service in 2018 for reporting on workplace sexual harassment.

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