Is the Fog of War Between Trump’s Two Ears?

Once again, American hubris has triggered gung-ho global chaos that will last for decades, long after whatever extrication is possible from the Iran misadventure. Trump’s feckless bluster has trapped us in the “known unknown” outcome of Iran’s command of the Strait of Hormuz and the potential for a ground-force quagmire. Massive troop dispatches tend to acquire their own momentum. It’s the Chekhov gun theory. If there is a pistol on the mantelpiece when the curtain goes up, someone will fire it in the third act.

Sharpie Burble: Trump goes off-piste at Cabinet meeting (March 26)

At the on-camera Cabinet meeting on Thursday, Trump’s free-associative drivel, in the midst of a world crisis, ranged from the new White House ballroom: “The military wanted it more than anyone,” to the Kennedy Center: “It’s going to be beautiful when you add the name Trump,” to his favored Sharpie pens: “They do treat me well, Sharpie.” My historian friend Sir Simon Schama sent me a despairing text. “It was like a bit from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. What was the 25th Amendment for, if not for this? The stroke-struck Woodrow Wilson was a combo of Jefferson, Lincoln, and FDR, compared to this oozing hulk of cognitive rot. HELP US, Obi-Wan, HELP US.”

Master of Disaster

Propaganda War: Tehran tweaks Trump

The Iranian leaders may have a caricature understanding of America but it’s still better than the Trump administration’s understanding of them. “Thank you for your attention to this matter” is a recurring troll line from the mullah meme reel, accompanying AI spoofs of the Dept. of War’s Mortal Kombat-style manosphere videos. Others feature Trump as a Teletubby playing with toy war planes in the Oval Office or paired with Bibi as demonic warring Lego figures. Their Trump taunts even reference Jeffrey Epstein’s island. “A reminder to the corrupted Island Man: The ground and map of the world is in our hands.” Heh Heh Heh. For propaganda cred, they beat the battle prayers of Hegseth, who sounds like a medieval mullah himself when he vows to “break the teeth of the ungodly.” Hegseth’s tattooed one-man crusade is even freaking out the pope. His Holiness went on a Palm Sunday tear about how Jesus “does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war.”

Just as the posse of Saudi hijackers with simple box cutters terrorized the world on 9/11, the Iranian regime has seen that, in the Strait of Hormuz, small, nimble boats and cheap drones made from sanction-busting, off-the-shelf components can be as effective in panicking the West as the manufacture of a nuclear weapon. Nothing speeds up innovation more than an existential threat. After last June’s bombing of Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile facilities, Netanyahu declared that Israel had achieved a “historic victory, which will stand for generations.” But, in the nine months since, Iran, like an evil starfish, has reconstituted its missile capacity.

There’s an unsettling imbalance in expertise and experience between Iran and the Trump team, who are bored by the complexities of diplomacy. “The IRGC’s chief negotiator, foreign minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi, has been negotiating with the West for two decades. He knows his file intimately,” Iran policy analyst Karim Sadjadpour told me. Trump and his bellicose secretary of war imagine that “targets” can replace strategy. In a social media post on Monday, Trump warned that if a deal is not reached “shortly,” and if the Strait of Hormuz is not immediately reopened, the U.S. will “conclude our lovely stay” in Iran by pulverizing its electrical plants, its oil wells, and Kharg Island. Easy, right? Boom! But all the might of the military cannot make up for the U.S. administration’s deficit in human and cultural understanding. An infinite number of books have bloviated about American exceptionalism, but, as geopolitical analyst Bobby Ghosh, author of the excellent new Substack Ghoshworld, told me, “Iranians believe in Persian exceptionalism.” In the last years of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s life, he noted, the country had been transitioning from a theocracy to an authoritarian militarized state. That process has now been accelerated by the ascension of a third-tier cadre of ruthless hard-liners, who replaced the more worldly and pragmatic leaders we just whacked. Disrupting the flow of oil through the strait will hurt Iran too, but the usual pressure points don’t apply. “The IRGC is prepared to ruin the Iranian economy if they can humiliate Trump,” Kenneth Pollack, Vice President for Policy at the Middle East Institute, told me. “Plus, they’ve already proved they are willing to kill anyone who protests. And it worked.”

Deal Guys: Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff at U.S.-Iran negotiations in Geneva, two days before Operation Epic Fury. (Credit: Umman Foreign Ministry/Handout/Anadolu)

Alas, one of Trump’s closest advisors on Iran is not Ken Pollack, Bobby Ghosh, or Karim Sadjadpour, but real estate macher Steve Witkoff, who told Atlantic magazine that he watched Netflix documentaries to learn about geopolitics and diplomacy. Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, now roving envoy to anywhere that will fatten his private equity fund, told the NYT proudly, “It’s just different being deal guys—just a different sport.” Possibly the only member of the team who could conduct a sophisticated national security debate is Marco Rubio, but, at this point, it’s impossible to know what he really thinks. As secretary of state, national security adviser, and part-time viceroy of Venezuela, Rubio looks as dazed as the rest of us feel. I am told he is eyeing the exit after the midterms to make some real money before he runs for president.

Trump will never understand that the Iranian regime has zero affinity for “deal guys.” His bafflement was clear in a March 26th Truth Social post when he described Iranian negotiators as “very different and strange.” Before the bombing began, Witkoff said, “He’s curious as to why they haven’t . . . capitulated.” In the simplistic real estate world, leverage is the only commodity that matters. Trump’s expedient approach has allowed Iran to sell oil as a quick fix to lower gas prices, a political and market necessity, given that his approval rating has sunk to 33%. Iran reads it as their victory. In the blink of an eye, Trump had made a concession that Iran has wanted for eight years of sanctions. All thanks to their choking off the Strait of Hormuz.

It’s ironic that, thanks to Trump and Netanyahu, Iran does indeed have a different regime now. It’s worse, and even more steeped in a deep-rooted identity of resistance and thick layers of vengeful pride. I am told Fidel Castro once joked to his pal Sean Penn that if America were to lift the Cuba embargo, he would do something provocative the next day to get it reinstated. He knew his power could only be preserved in an isolated bubble. Iran is not a regime that can be disinfected with sunlight. Rather than crumble to the demands of the Great and Little Satan, it would rather die in the dark. And when the U.S. obliterati walk away, declaring victory, the real trouble for the region begins.