U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House on April 12.Jose Luis Magana/The Associated Press
He has alienated allies that American presidents have cultivated for eight decades. Ended the last remnants of a bipartisan U.S. consensus in foreign policy. Lashed out at the Supreme Court, which in nine sets of hands holds the fate of his most cherished priorities. Attacked a pope who is a fellow American. And arguably has broken a ceasefire with Iran by imposing a blockade on the very waterway that he believes should be open to international passage.
And he has done what was once inconceivable: He has, by vowing to eradicate its centuries-long civilization in a remorseless onslaught of destruction, given at least a molecule of respect to a regime that is a serial violator of international law and human rights, that has continually threatened its neighbours and earned George W. Bush’s label as a member of an “axis of evil” for its pursuit of a nuclear weapon, which it wants for a specific, menacing purpose.
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Donald Trump − running out of options, running out of friends, maybe running out of time − is in a tight spot now.
The President’s opponents have customarily said that Mr. Trump is most dangerous when he is backed into a corner.
He is now in one − though this one, to extend the metaphor, is not so much a corner of a room but of a maze of his own making. No matter which way he turns, there are obstacles.
“He’s put himself in a position where there is no easy way out, and Americans and others will pay for the conundrum he has created,” said Jeffrey Taliaferro, a foreign-policy specialist at Tufts University. “He’s exacerbated things by making demands on the Iranians, who were reliably going to reject them. He’s probably not going to get the removal of the uranium that he wants. The best he can hope for is something like the Iranian agreement he walked away from.”
Though the President has had a panoply of priorities for his war − critics of the War of 1812, waged by President James Madison, referred to the conflict as “Mr. Madison’s War” − but the principal one is ending Iran’s drive for a nuclear weapon.
That, with a focus on removing 970 pounds of near-bomb-grade uranium from the country, is the fulcrum of talks this week. The two sides are in the familiar state of an impasse, though it might be broken with an agreement on a suspension of Iran’s nuclear efforts. The U.S. wants a 20-year hiatus, a notion rejected by the Iranians, who have offered five.
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Even if an agreement can be reached on that element − it would be enough for Mr. Trump to make yet another declaration of victory − the wreckage from the war will very likely continue to affirm the lame-duck status of the President, who under the Constitution must leave office in early 2029. It may grow if Republican losses in November’s midterm congressional elections throw control of the House of Representatives, and perhaps even the Senate, to the Democrats.
One figure that should make Republican politicians shudder: Eighty-four per cent of Republican voters have a positive view of Pope Leo XIV, according to a Pew Research Center poll taken last summer. The three arguably most vulnerable Senate Republicans are in states (Ohio, Maine and Texas) where Catholics comprise more than 15 per cent of registered voters. Mr. Trump’s war of words with the Pope, who has repeatedly denounced the war with Iran, has done the GOP absolutely zero good.
And the damage from this conflict will continue to spill across the borders of both the U.S. and Iran. For the U.S. it means further depletion of the goodwill it earned after the Second World War and, with some Cold War disruptions, maintained and built for more than three-quarters of a century. Attacking the Pope was “unacceptable,” according to Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.
“Even countries where governments like Italy are sympathetic to him, he has lost clout with this war,” said Roberto D’Alimonte, a political scientist at the University of Florence. “His comments, especially about the Pope, have shocked people around the world. He has helped China seem more reliable and more stable than the U.S. The damage to America’s reputation is substantial.”
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Mr. Trump retains the power, as he put it, to “finish up the little that is left of Iran.” He also has the naval power to enforce the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, but that will come at a cost − further alienation of U.S. allies thirsty for Middle East oil, as well as higher gasoline prices that, according to an X post attributed to Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of Iran’s parliament, will make Americans “nostalgic for $4–$5 gas.” (The average cost of a gallon of gasoline is US$4.12, according to the Tuesday report of the American Automobile Association.)
“International law stipulates that countries must have free maritime passage,” said Donald McNemar, a senior lecturer in global studies at Bentley University in Waltham, Mass. “Trump has been dismissive of international law in the past, and also in this war. But until his blockade he had international law on his side. To his great surprise, he could have found that the rules for once would have helped him.”
Mr. Trump, moreover, is pursuing a policy that once led one of his presidential predecessors to go to war.
The right of free passage in the world’s seas − compromised by German submarine warfare that resulted in the deaths of 1,197 people, including 128 Americans, on the RMS Lusitania − is in part what prompted President Woodrow Wilson to lead the U.S. into the First World War in 1917, more than two years after Canada joined the conflict. “The right,” he said in his war message to Congress, “is more precious than peace.”