Is Anyone Surprised There’s No Plan for Iran?

 

   It’s a given that Trump has no idea what he’s doing. But that hasn’t stopped him from launching a devastating attack on Iran which, looking back, was always going to happen.

Not that there’s a rational reason for war with Iran, or for burning through a billion dollars a day, or for tanking the global economy, or for putting literally billions of lives at risk. He’s Trump, he doesn’t need a reason.

But as much as Trump lies, when it comes to the big things — mass deportation, Venezuela, election denial — he generally means what he says, insane as that might be. Are you listening Cuba? Do you think he’s forgotten you Greenland?

So when he started signalling that Iran was next on his bucket list, I suppose this day was always going to come. We knew there would be no real plan or objective, just the sick whims of a senile sociopath, drunk on power.

Of course, Republicans have fallen all over themselves trying to stay ahead of the narrative du jour, which always contradicts the one before, and never makes any sense at any time.

And of course, reporters keep asking about goals and timeframes, as if they’re referring to a serious endeavor. And it is serious, to the extent that it’s being executed by the largest, most expensive, and most lethal military in the history of the world.

But there’s nothing even slightly serious about the people directing that military. The tactics might be brilliant, but the strategy is non-existent. Trump and his toadies don’t do strategy. Or consequences.

It’s not clear, for example, that they fully grasp the consequences of Iran closing of the Strait of Hormuz, the undisputed chokepoint of the global economy. One-third of the world’s “seaborne crude” oil and one-fifth of the world’s natural gas have to pass through that narrow passage to get out of the Persian Gulf.

But it’s not just about oil. A full third of the world’s fertilizers travel through there as well, along with huge quantities of aluminum, drugs, medical supplies, car components, sugar, vegetable oils, and a ton of other pieces of global commerce. Iran has shut it all down and threatened to destroy any ships that try to get through.

Strangely, the threat is enough. Insurance companies refuse to underwrite any tanker that goes through the strait under the current circumstances. Iran doesn’t actually have to sink one to make the point.

Trump has said he’ll indemnify shippers against Iranian interference, but why would anyone with a hundred-million-dollar oil shipment at stake take him at his word? The uncertainty has thrown the shipping industry into turmoil, and tankers are backed up in the Gulf, loaded with oil, with their markets anxiously waiting.

This is the tenth day. Economists and energy experts have long regarded closing the Strait of Hormuz as the worst-case scenario for the world economy. If it goes on beyond another week or two, the unintended consequences will ripple to every corner of the globe. And the crazy part is that we have no idea what that even means. All we know it’s coming at us fast. All because of one senile sociopath.

The ironies abound. By attacking Iran, Trump has traumatized the “America First” wing of his base, led by the apostate, Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has dropped a number of f-bombs on him in public. He just lost Nazi Nick Fuentes as well, and one can only wonder what Charlie Kirk, bless his soul, would have thought of all this.

But at the same time, Trump is echoing the old neocons of the Bush administration, the same guys he shoved aside in his first campaign ten years ago. Blowing up the ayatollahs has been John Bolton’s wet dream for almost 50 years, and it surely pisses him off that the guy who finally gets to do it is a moron he’s been feuding with for most of the last decade.

Remember when John McCain, that old Beach Boy, sang “Bomb-bomb-bomb-Iran?” If only he could see us now. A lot of those neocon warmongers are still around, their sordid pasts long since thoroughly sanitized. A lot of them became Never Trumpers, and a slew of those are now regulars on CNN and MSNOW: Bill Kristol, David Frum, Michael Steele, Tim Miller, and, yes, even Nicole Wallace, to name a few. Safe to say all these guys are just a touch conflicted this week.

To the neocons, Iran was the holy grail, ever since the hostage crisis of 1977. They never could get at Iran, for a gazillion reasons, most of which are playing out as we speak. So they had to settle for Iraq and Afghanistan. They blundered us into two wars, both under false pretenses, with no purpose or endgame. They thought they could make a bunch of things go boom, then take the oil and run. Sound familiar?

Now, as then, the simpletons running the show have little sense of the complexities of Middle East politics, or of the toxic stew of ethnic and religious tensions that are no longer simmering, but are now boiling over.

And still the mainstream media — which clearly knows better — is doing its best to credit Trump with some sort of grand design based on his sophisticated worldview, even though few people are buying it, even among lifelong Republicans. The only conceivable explanation for Trump attacking Iran is exactly the one we thought when we first heard the news: Epstein.

He’s running out of levers to pull on that front, so he pulled the war lever again. The media calls it a gamble, but he doesn’t think that way. There’s no risk-reward component to his thinking. It’s all impulsive, all infantile gratification. And it only goes in one direction: down.

But there’s now an element of desperation in it. With much of the judicial system blocking most of his executive orders, with big chunks of his base now in open revolt, with his polls tanking, with his own self-made economic disasters popping up every day, all he can think about is winning the midterms so he can keep control of Congress, and thus keep himself out of jail. He is, therefore, exercising the most powerful tool he can use without asking permission: the power to make war.

Yes, his war powers are legally dubious, but in matters of the law, he’s always been one to shoot first and not bother asking questions later.

So he shot first. From the hip, as usual. In the foot, as usual. I would say it’s the worst mistake of his career, but we know that with Trump there is no bottom. He just keeps sinking, and dragging us down with him.

A cynic would say — scratch that, a realist would say — he’s using this war to gin up a pretext for declaring a national emergency later this year, giving him an excuse to cancel the midterms. So don’t believe him when he says this war will be quick.

On the other hand, a short, in-and-out bombfest would be more in keeping with his attention span, and I’m not sure he can afford to keep ignoring the grumbling on his right flank. So don’t believe him when he says this war could get drawn-out. Don’t believe him, period.

Nobody seems to know where this is going, least of all Trump. But he has unleashed the furies and there’s no telling what he’ll do next. Or to whom.

But we know this guy well enough to know that any wreckage he leaves behind won’t be his problem. He won’t even remember it next week. He’ll be on to the next atrocity.

So it’s some comfort — not much, but some — to know that, next week, the Epstein files will still be there.