Trump’s Iran war is holding him hostage | Sidney Blumenthal
DDonald Trump lost his war in Iran. It’s the Iranian hostage. Unlike the US embassy staff held hostage for 444 days, Trump threw himself into the hands of the Iranians. Less than a month into his “short-term excursion,” his stated goals have been scattered to the far corners of the world. There is no regime change, no uprising and no access to oil wealth on the Venezuelan model. The decapitation strategy – the assassination of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and senior Iranian leaders – failed to destroy the regime. Despite the massacre, it is Trump who exposes himself to slings and arrows for the most reckless military adventure since Custer at Little Bighorn.
Iran maintains a grip on the Strait of Hormuz and, through its narrowest 21-mile passage, on the global economy. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development forecasts inflation to rise to 4.2% in the United States, an increase of 40% since Trump returned to power. The stock market has plunged into correction territory. Iran has also demonstrated its ability to wreak existential destruction in Gulf states whose leaders’ illusion of invulnerability and American protection has been shattered. “I’m the opposite of desperate,” Trump said on March 26. “I don’t care.”
Trump’s self-defense is feigned indifference to his fiasco. His denial is too vehement to be convincing. He calls on NATO countries to help him while calling them “cowards” and affirms that he “no longer needs” their help. In 1990, when Trump’s Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City plunged into one of its six bankruptcies, Donald’s father, Fred Trump, appeared as a stealthy white knight to purchase $3.35 million in chips, which the New Jersey Casino Control Commission a year later ruled illegal. Now there is no one there to enable a miraculous escape.
If there is any consistency in Trump’s policies, it is a series of frantic attempts to justify his first mistake and extricate himself from its disastrous consequences. His latest 15-point proposal to the Iranians forgoes regime change and instead focuses on resuming negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program that he unilaterally halted. He wants to trade this in exchange for opening the strait. “Mission accomplished” would apparently be back to square one, where things were before he went to war. The Iranians, however, deny any negotiations and rejected his latest offer “until complete victory”.
Iran has proven to be a winner in the art of negotiation. On March 6, already frustrated by the regime’s refusal to concede, Trump demanded an “unconditional surrender.” On March 20, Trump raised his white flag. Iran leveraged its control over the strait by launching a few drones to scare Trump into lifting oil sanctions, which were first imposed in 1995. That’s when Trump called his bluff and he folded. On March 26, Iran offered Trump safe passage to eight tankers.
Trump is bound, but he is not gagged. Its rotation cycle turns hour by hour, from vague threats to invisible olive branches. He has declared “victory” more than eight times, “won” more than 10 times, “won” more than five times, and Iranian forces have been “annihilated” or suffered “annihilation” more than six times. After declaring on March 16 that Iran’s military had been “literally wiped out” and its leaders “disappeared,” he issued an ultimatum on March 21 threatening to “wipe out” Iran’s power grid if the strait was not opened within 48 hours. “You’ll find out what’s going to happen,” he said. “You will find out soon. It will be very good. Total decimation of Iran.” Trump used the words “decimate” or “decimation” at least six times.
This threat was followed on March 23 by the sudden announcement of peace negotiations. But that wasn’t a surprise to some. Fifteen minutes before Trump released the news, traders bet more than half a billion dollars on oil futures. A week before this betting surge, the Securities and Exchange Commission’s enforcement director, Margaret Ryan, resigned. Then, on March 25, Trump threatened to “raise hell” if the Iranians didn’t do exactly what he said. He used the word “hell” at least four times. The next day, after the stock market plunged again, he extended his deadline to “clear” another week. It then emerged that the United States was considering sending an additional 10,000 troops to the region.
Trump is putting the “crazy theory” into practice, but without the theory. The “crazy man theory” was conceived by Richard Nixon a month after he became president, in February 1969. In a carefully premeditated ploy, Nixon suggested that the North Vietnamese be informed that he was dangerously out of control. “We can’t hold him back when he’s angry – and has his hand on the nuclear button,” Nixon said in giving his instructions, “and Ho Chi Minh himself will be in Paris in two days begging for peace.” But Nixon’s threats of “knockouts” did not deter, much less intimidate, the North Vietnamese leaders, and they launched a new offensive. Bombing campaign after campaign, Nixon never won the war. He left office in the Watergate disgrace about a year before the last helicopter took off from the roof of the American embassy in Saigon.
Unlike Nixon, who mulled over everything, Trump is openly ignorant, impulsive and indifferent to consequences. Its basic instinct is immediate self-gratification. He has no other horizon than short-term gain.
The Trump administration consists of tragicomic scenes and chaos. His White House is a madhouse. His secretary of state enters the situation room wearing black wing-toe Florsheim shoes several sizes too large that Trump bought him and that Marco Rubio and other cabinet officers and JD Vance must wear to prove their loyalty.
“We’re doing jujitsu against the Iranians,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said, adopting the absurdist philosophy of Humpty Dumpty, who explained in Alice in Wonderland: “When I use a word, it means exactly what I choose it to mean – no more, no less. When Bessent was asked on NBC’s Meet the Press on March 22 whether Trump was “ending this war or escalating the conflict,” he replied, remaining in character as Lewis Carroll: “Again, they’re not mutually exclusive.” Sometimes you have to step up to defuse. »
If there ever is a version of the Pentagon Papers on the Iran War, two episodes that clarify the origins of Trump’s decision-making process deserve special attention.
On April 2, 2025, Trump invited far-right influencer Laura Loomer to the Oval Office to unveil a dossier portraying National Security Council experts as traitors to Trump. Vice President Vance, Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and other officials were there. “You don’t want to be threatened,” Trump said. “If you’re Loomed, you’re in big trouble. This is, in a sense, the end of your career. Thanks, Laura.” She played the Queen of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland: “Cut off their heads!” »
Six experts were summarily fired, including Nate Swanson, the NSC’s senior adviser on Iran. On the eve of Trump’s war, Swanson wrote articles for Foreign Affairs and the Atlantic Council warning against closing the Strait of Hormuz and indicating that “Iran may seriously consider directly targeting the energy infrastructure of Arab Gulf states.”
After Gen. Dan Caine warned of the possibility of the strait being closed, Trump said he would likely win his war against Iran before it happened. “So they hit Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Kuwait. Nobody expected it. We were shocked,” Trump said on March 16. “No one, no one, no, no, no. No, the biggest experts, no one thought they were going to strike.”
Trump’s narcissism has made enlightened ideas and expert advice not only unacceptable, but also a sign of disloyalty. He sent his trusted agents Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner to negotiate with Iran. The recordings and transcripts of their meetings were obtained by the nonpartisan, professional Arms Control Association. “Witkoff’s failure to understand key technical realities suggests that he misunderstood the Iranian nuclear proposal and was ill-prepared to negotiate an effective nuclear deal,” the ACA reported.
Witkoff’s “confusing and factually disputed statements” were fundamental. Essentially lacking any expertise, he appeared to misunderstand every aspect of the status of Iran’s nuclear program and its proposal. Based on this, Witkoff informed Trump that there was an “imminent threat” when there was none. “Witkoff’s failure to learn the nuclear issue and surround himself with the technical expertise necessary to negotiate an effective agreement did a disservice to U.S. and international nonproliferation goals,” the ACA report concluded.
Witkoff, along with his son and the Trump family, is a partner in cryptocurrency firm World Liberty Financial in which the United Arab Emirates purchased a 49% stake for half a billion dollars days before the 2025 inauguration, gaining “access to closely guarded artificial intelligence chips,” according to the Wall Street Journal. Meanwhile, Kushner was seeking deals in the Middle East while serving as an envoy, part of talks “to raise $5 billion or more for Affinity Partners, his investment firm,” according to the New York Times.
Whether Witkoff and Kushner’s financial interests in the Middle East played a role in their advice remains a matter of speculation. But there is no doubt that their ignorance and incompetence were decisive. The negotiations were a sham. Trump happily went to war over the words of the clumsy.
In the history of war, there has been a blindly sleepwalking war, the subject of extensive literature on the First World War. There have been wars of the march of madness, chronicled by historian Barbara Tuchman, from the American Revolution to Vietnam. But this war stands in the annals of war among those deliberately started out of ignorance and sheer stupidity.
