Pro-government demonstrators chant slogans as they hold Iranian flags and a poster of the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei after the announcement of a two-week ceasefire in the war with the U.S. and Israel, at Tehran's Enqelab-e-Eslam Square on Wednesday.Vahid Salemi/The Associated Press
You did not need to be a scholar of Persian history to have flinched at Donald Trump’s Tuesday morning threat to destroy “a whole civilization” by nightfall unless Iran acceded to his demand to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
That the leader of a country still shy of its 250th birthday would make such a threat against one of humanity’s oldest civilizations – tracing its origins back thousands of years with a language and culture that have survived countless enemy attempts at erasure – only served to remind the world that there are no rhetorical lines the U.S. President is unwilling to cross.
The entire world spent all of Tuesday speculating about his intentions – and sanity. Some saw it as just more bluster from a blusterous U.S. President, albeit one who had appeared to grow more erratic as the war dragged on. Some with larger imaginations saw his post as a not-so-thinly veiled threat to launch a nuclear attack on Iran.
In the end, Mr. Trump was true to pattern, backing away from his apocalyptic menace and seizing the opportunity presented by a Pakistani-led proposal for a two-week ceasefire in the conflict the U.S. and Israel launched on Feb. 28. But having achieved few, if any, of his stated goals, Mr. Trump has left the world in a more precarious state than before the conflict.
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“As of right now, the political order is Iran controlling the Strait of Hormuz, [a] more brutal, entrenched Iranian regime, [with] unaccounted nuclear material,” Karim Sadjadpour, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told CNN on Tuesday night. “This could be different a year or two from now. But as of right now, history is not going to judge this war well.”
Two police officers walk in front of an anti-U.S. billboard depicting American aircraft being caught by Iranian armed forces in a fishing net beneath the words in Farsi, 'The Strait of Hormuz will remain closed, The entire Persian Gulf is our hunting ground,' in Tehran on Sunday.Vahid Salemi/The Associated Press
Much remains unknown about the extent to which Iran’s military capabilities have been degraded by five weeks of relentless bombing. The war has done untold damage to the Iranian economy, which was already reeling before the conflict began, fuelling the popular uprising that the regime brutally suppressed in January. No one knows whether Iran’s new leaders will be able to hold on now, much less govern.
Yet, the U.S. President, who vowed to liberate Iranians from their theocratic dictatorship, has lost too much credibility to emerge from this conflict politically unscathed. The rest of his presidency is now handicapped by the military intervention his political base was never sold on and from which U.S. allies sought to distance themselves from the start.
“When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take,” Mr. Trump promised after joining Israel in the initial attacks that killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other top regime leaders.
Mr. Trump flipflopped repeatedly about whether regime change was a U.S. objective, or whether the aim of the war was limited to destroying Iran’s ability to acquire nuclear weapons and develop long-range ballistic missiles. He sometimes suggested he could work with Iran’s replacement leaders as he had been doing in Venezuela since the U.S. ouster of Nicolàs Maduro in January. That was always wishful thinking.
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But Mr. Trump appears to have had a shaky grip on reality from the outset of this war.
In an article published on Tuesday, The New York Times reported that CIA director John Ratcliffe had described the regime change scenario as “farcical” after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited the White House on Feb. 11 to make the case for striking Iran. Vice-President JD Vance pushed back on Mr. Netanyahu’s request, The Times reported, insisting a conflict in Iran would betray Mr. Trump’s election promise to avoid starting new wars and threaten the Strait of Hormuz, sending oil prices soaring.
As a lone voice within Mr. Trump’s inner political circle urging restraint, Mr. Vance emerges as a stronger contender to succeed him as the Republican nominee in 2028. That might not matter if Mr. Trump’s presidency unravels in the interim, as the consequences of his unfinished war on Iran become clearer; no GOP candidate might stand a chance.
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The 10-point Iranian peace plan that Mr. Trump described as “a workable basis on which to negotiate” is one that no U.S. President could accept. It calls for a continuation of Iran’s control of the Strait of Hormuz, no restrictions on Iran’s ability to enrich uranium, the removal of all sanctions and the withdrawal of all U.S. troops from the Persian Gulf region.
Mr. Trump had become too desperate for an off-ramp from a military conflict he and Defense Secretary Pete “Holy War” Hegseth launched to turn down this chance at a ceasefire – no matter how fragile it might prove or even if it risked giving the Iranian regime a new lease on life.
Mr. Trump has not only let down the Iranian people he vowed to liberate. We will all pay the price for his folly.