PARIS–Could American policy toward Iran looking any more reckless, feckless, or just plain nuts? One is seduced to ask: What happens when your actions are based on a madman theory, but conducted by an actual madman?
Nothing good. And the last few hours are an illustration. On Thursday, the Iranians shot down a big, high-flying, very, extremely expensive unmanned American surveillance drone that they say was in their airspace near the strategic Strait of Hormuz. The Americans say the drone was over international waters, and administration hawks wanted to teach a lesson to whoever in Iran had the effrontery to do such a thing.
Then President Donald J. Trump went on a embarrassment offensive, starting with a tweet saying Iran had made a ” big mistake !” A few hours later during a photo op with Canada's prime minister, Trump compounded the befuddlement by saying he supposed the downing of the droning might have been a mistake like, you know, an accident, but hinted there would be a big bad response.
Overnight we read reportshe had indeed ordered attacks on Iranian installations, sending ships speeding across the seas and airliners soaring into the air, but then changed his mind and had everybody stand down.
Friday morning, after fulminating about other topics like” the Russia hoax ,” the president took to Twitter again to do a little Trumpsplaining, insisting that after the drone was shot down( on Monday, he said, contrary to all other info ),” We were cocked& loaded to retaliate last night on 3 different sights when I asked, how many will die. 150 people, sir, was the answer from a General. 10 minutes before the ten-strike I stopped it , not … … proportionate to shooting down an unmanned droning .”
So, back to our original question: Is there method to this madness? The increasingly obvious answer is no, in the sense of any long-term policy or strategy. But Trump's actions do have their own internal logic.
First of all, the president may be a warmonger, but his weapon of preference is the dollar, employing tariffs and sanctions to try to bringing other leaders to their knees. He dreads the idea of conventional wars in far away places
Trump is the man who once paid $94,801 in 1987 to place ads in The New York Times , Washington Post , and Boston Globe attacking President Ronald Reagan &# x27; s naval deployment in the Persian Gulf to defend oil tankers from Iranian attacks. Trump's full page advertisements said the world was laughing at American politicians for protecting “ships we don &# x27; t own, carrying petroleum we don &# x27; t need for allies who won &# x27; t help.” One might say the same thing today, and Trump knows it.
Trump listens, up to a phase, to U.S. generals itching to give Iran a “bloody nose, ” and to the Boltons and Pompeos who fantasize about regime alter. But” Art of the Deal” Trump &# x27; s objective always was and remains to get a better deal with Iran than Barack Obama did, which, as he made clear in his Friday tweetstorm, was why he elicited this crisis in the first place by pulling out of the nuclear accord last year.
It must gall Trump to realize, as some day he must, that that is not going to happen.
The best thing about Trump is his aversion to war. The worst is his addiction to tough-guy posturing. Where Iran is concerned, the combination is a series of bluffs that pray to be called. And the mullahs and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps will keep testing.
What they are learning is that there's not going to be any fire and ferocity. More likely there will be what Trump called ” proportionate” response by American forces-out, a tactic with which the Middle East is mightily familiar. It was the characteristic of the long-forgotten” Tanker War” that Reagan waged and Trump deplored back in 1987 and 1988.
Ambassador Barbara Bodine, who was central to the State Department end of that operation 32 years ago, and now heads the Institute for Study of Diplomacy at Georgetown University , notes that the Iranians, famous as chess players and poker players,” are not generally rash .”
” One of the things that struck me at the time of the tanker protection regime[ in' 87 -‘ 88] and even more so in retrospect its that they seemed to calculate very carefully how far they could push and not get a reaction from us, and we were very careful about how far we could push them ,” she says.” That gone on for two years .”
The critical moment will come when American personnel are killed, which would fit a classic pattern when an American administration wants to go to war. It starts with picking scoundrels, then picking a fight, and carrying out a series of provocative moves to push them into a corner, until someone at some level in the target regime kills an American. Then the U.S. responds with a major military action, very likely intending to knock off the top guy in the regime as well. The American bombing of Libya in 1986 after a disco bombing in Berlin and the invasion of Panama in 1989 after a violent traffic stop near the Canal Zone would be two examples.
Provoking Saddam Hussein to lash out violently was the clear goal of the Bush administration in 2002, but Saddam did not fall for it. So Bush opted instead for the WMD myth and assorted other fictions to force the issue.
If we continue on the present course desired by National Security Advisor John Bolton and the other hawks, when and how will the deadly moment come with Iran?
It could happen at the hands of Iranian-backed militias in Syria or in Iraq, which are full of hotheads not always totally under Iran &# x27; s control. In Iraq, confusingly, they are backed as well by the government the U.S. supports.
And there is also the great possibility that action by a third party will spark the conflagration. In June 1982 the attempted assassination of Israel &# x27; s ambassador to the UK was used as a pretext by Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin to invade Lebanon and try to crush Yasser Arafat &# x27; s PLO, which had frustrated Begin by find a ceasefire on the ground that deprived him of the excuse he needed. In fact, the attack on the diplomat was carried out by members of the Abu Nidal organization, fierce challengers of Arafat, who were backed by Saddam Hussein.
Such events have huge unintended repercussions: After the U.S. bombing raids on Tripoli and Benghazi in 1986, Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi hugely increased his terror operations against the U.S. and UK, including the downing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, and an enormous arsenal sent to the IRA. The Israeli invasion of Lebanon led to the creation of Hezbollah, the U.S. Marine Barracks bombing, and so on and so on. Panama turned out OK. But Iraq , not so good.
Thus do the shifting sand of the Middle East become quicksands, or, if you are able to, quagmires.
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