How Will the Iran War End? Even Trump May Not Really Know |
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How Will the Iran War End? Even Trump May Not Really Know
As the conflict drags on, it looks increasingly like the president is making it up as he goes
From the beginning of the Iran conflict, United States president Donald Trump has presented an array of reasons and objectives for attacking Iran. Many of them are contradictory:
It’s about nuclear weapons (the same ones that were “obliterated” last year).
It’s about fundamental regime change (and yet the “Venezuela solution” would also be just fine).
There was an imminent threat of attack against the US (which no intelligence agency was able to pick up, and which a recent high-level resignation from the administration has publicly claimed never existed)—or Trump just had a “gut feeling” that it was time to do this, as it has to be done sooner or later anyway.
An impending Israeli attack pushed him into it (or he pushed the Israelis).
It’s about the Iranian people choosing their next leader (but Trump must have final say in who that is).
This could go on for a month or more (or it is “very complete, pretty much,” and could be over “very soon”).
America doesn’t need any allies in this fight and has already won the war without them (but they need to send ships right away).
Trump supporters regard all of this as a sophisticated strategy designed to keep opponents off-guard. Sometimes called “the weave,” it is held to be a process of veering between different courses to keep opponents guessing and maintain maximum options until the last minute.
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A large part of this strategy is reducing the number of people and power centres involved in the ultimate decision down to a few trusted individuals who report directly to Trump, thus keeping everyone else in the dark. There is a reason why the entire diplomatic apparatus of the US has been sidelined in the search for peace in the major conflicts of the day (Ukraine, Gaza, and now Iran) by the president’s son-in-law and a real estate developer friend.
Perhaps this approach works well in the world of real estate, though Trump has........