Is Trump About to Nuke Iran?

The American President’s Iran gamble is poised on a knife edge. Right now, it’s currently getting harder to find commentators who are backing him to the hilt. Even some of his more usually supportive backers are getting cold feet. Andrew Day in American Conservative is worried that Trump might use nukes in Iran:

A new rhetorical theme emerged last week, when Trump threatened to bomb Iran “back to the Stone Ages”. The phrase is associated with Curtis LeMay, who served as Air Force chief of staff during the Vietnam war. LeMay is known for something else too: his promotion of nuclear weapons and complaint that Americans had a “phobia” of using them.

Trump doesn’t seem to share that deranged perspective, but nuclear anxieties are growing thanks to his belligerence. Two weeks ago, a United Nations representative resigned from his post and leaked the disturbing information that “the UN is preparing for possible nuclear weapon use in Iran”. Days earlier, officials from the World Health Organisation told Politico they were worried about a possible nuclear attack.

If Trump decides to go further and actually push the big red button, at least one of his main advisors likely wouldn’t object. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has echoed Trump’s threat to send Iran back to the Stone Age, and he says US armed forces should aim for “maximum lethality, not tepid legality”.

Other Trump insiders might even encourage Trump to go nuclear. The late Sheldon Adelson, who went on to become a Trump megadonor, said in 2013 that the US should detonate a nuclear weapon in an Iranian desert to demonstrate toughness. “And then you say, ‘See? The next one is in the middle of Tehran,’” he explained. Adelson’s widow, Miriam Adelson, remains a top Trump whisperer and Iran superhawk. Might she be giving similar advice today?

Trump’s luck has indeed run out in Iran, as I had predicted it would. He seems poised to escalate further, but conventional air power hasn’t managed to deliver a knockout blow, and ground force operations would bring significant risks with limited upside. Trump appears to be trapped, and I fear he thinks a mushroom cloud would offer him enough cover to get out.

The Washington Times reported criticism of Trump’s threat to annihilate Iran’s infrastructure and the President’s suggestion that the Iranian people would accept such destruction if it meant ending the regime:

Trump repeated his threat to wipe out Iranian bridges and power plants late Tuesday if the Iranians do not negotiate a suitable deal that includes freedom of navigation, including oil shipments, in the vital Strait of Hormuz.

Flanked by top defence officials, Trump said Iranian civilians would accept devastating attacks on their power plants and bridges if it meant being liberated from the Islamic republic’s brutal regime.

“They would be willing to suffer that in order to have freedom,” Trump said.

Nicholas Hopton in the Spectator says Iran has offered the US an olive branch that might save face on both sides:

Beneath the familiar slogans and entrenched positions, there remains in Tehran a current of thought that recognises the limits of confrontation and accepts the necessity of engagement. Unusually, given that the Islamic Republic of Iran is normally comfortable with lose-lose outcomes, what Zarif is putting on the table, no matter how hypothetically, might potentially lead to a win-win result.

Whether Washington is prepared to meet it halfway is another matter entirely.

Dominic Green in the Jewish Chronicle is worried that a conspiracy among America’s enemies are working to split the US-Israel alliance and that if the war goes badly it’ll be a gift to them on a plate:

Never before have we seen so concerted an effort to declare a war lost before it has started. A global influence campaign, emanating from America’s enemies and exploited for partisan motives, is being used to split the US-Israel alliance, and shove Trump aside.

It’s also preparing to scapegoat Israel and Jewish Americans if the war goes badly. This is an American ‘Dolchstosslegende‘, the myth that claimed Germany lost the First World War through a ‘stab in the back’.

The polls are all over the place. Is the MAGA base still all-in behind Trump, or has he lost the red caps to the racists and isolationists?

Everything depends on how the war goes. If Trump sideswipes China by flipping Iran back into the Western camp, the base will cheer. J.D. Vance, who’s kept a low profile, will look like a faintheart and Tucker Carlson will look like a foreign influence agent. Marco Rubio, who led the charge, comes out ahead.

Americans will judge the war on its results and vote accordingly. If the war goes badly – if Iran retains the terrorist’s veto over the Gulf and the global economy crashes – then Tucker Carlson wins and J.D. Vance will say he told us so.

Add a recession and a spike in the price at the pumps, and the Republicans’ small but digitally loud anti-Israel faction will have a crisis that might allow them to send the Republicans the way of the Democrats.

The consequences for the America-Israel alliance, and for an American Jewish community already beset by incitement and violence, would be disastrous.

In the Telegraph, Jake Wallis Simons was telling us just a few days ago that “bombs are the only form of diplomacy that Iran understands“:

Speak softly all you like, but diplomacy only works if you’re carrying a big stick. This is the Teddy Roosevelt insight that the West, particularly Britain, has singularly forgotten in the period of decadence that has followed the end of the Cold War. How ironic, then, that this has coincided with the rise of enemies so fanatical that even big sticks have proven ineffective.

If the decade since Barack Obama so gullibly signed his nuclear deal, which allowed billions of dollars to flow into the regime’s war chest and promised to lift all sanctions and restrictions after 15 years, has taught us anything, it is that Iran has no interest in peace. Indeed, the only ‘peace’ it pursues is the one that will supposedly descend after the apocalypse, when a mythical figure called the Mahdi will place the world under Sharia with the aid of his 313 lieutenants. Why else has it used every agreement, every round of talks as delaying tactics while it continues to advance its malevolent agenda?

Now Simons seems less sure. This morning, as Trump’s deadline approaches, he concludes that “Trump has left himself no room to chicken out“:

It is becoming increasingly difficult to see how the United States can secure a victory in Iran. If, as Henry Kissinger wrote of the Vietnam War, “the guerrilla wins if he does not lose. The conventional army loses if it does not win”, then America’s failure to plan for Hormuz before launching the campaign may prove to be an own goal from which it is impossible to recover.

Certainly, Trump’s escalating rhetoric will be perceived by America’s enemies as a sign of weakness. For one thing, while he packages Tuesday night as a deadline for the enemy, it is just as much a deadline for himself. If the karate master approaches a block of wood, he’d better break it, or he will never recover from the ridicule.

Samer Al-Atrush in the Times thinks the US and Israel may have miscalculated Iran’s ability to fight back for months in retaliation:

The question for the US and its allies in the region is whether they are winning a war of attrition. If Iran can continue its attacks, and even escalate them, for another month, the economic price might be too high for the US and its allies as surging oil prices drive up inflation and set back the Gulf economies.

In the Mail, Mark Almond wonders whether we are about to see regime change in America:

Senators on both the Republican and Democrat sides are appalled by [Trump’s] foul-mouthed belligerence and his insults to allies such as Britain.

His latest outburst ended with a jeering, “Praise be to Allah” – an apparent mockery of Islam that will enrage Middle Eastern allies such as Saudi Arabia.

Some senior US figures are saying, in all seriousness, that he appears to be unhinged.

Running a war is an immense strain on anyone. Some rise to the challenge by showing calm determination. Others lose their balance as their responsibilities become unbearably heavy. Trump and Hegseth have both lashed out at press questions recently suggesting that they were not on top of their tasks.

The US Constitution has provision, the 25th Amendment, for the Cabinet to vote the removal of a President too unwell to function properly.

If this were invoked, Donald Trump’s chaotic war to inflict “regime change” may well achieve its goal – not in Iran but in the United States. As its 250th birthday looms, will the US face a humiliating disaster?

Of course, the Iranian people do not have the luxuries of time or a democratic constitution. Meanwhile, the world watches and waits in a week with tension on a scale unknown since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.

If Trump pulls off the most extraordinary military gamble for generations, his detractors will have to eat their words and slink off to hide, though the President is unlikely to forgive or forget. The world will breathe a sigh of relief and be grateful that at least a couple of world leaders were prepared to take the risk to destroy a regime dedicated to cruelty, oppression and murderous evil.