Trump’s two-week pause on Iran puts him at centre of world’s biggest drama

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And now, the Great Wait.

An American President known for being impulsive, an unconventional superpower leader who favours muscular talk, a political figure who ignores advisers’ counsel, is taking his time to make the most important foreign-policy decision of his two presidential terms.

In deciding if, how and when he’ll decide whether to provide Israel with the 30,000-pound bunker-buster bomb it wants to obliterate the most vital element of Iran’s nuclear program, Donald Trump has stepped out of character more than he has in 5½ years as President − or in his half-century of public prominence.

A man who usually shoots from the hip suddenly holds his fire. A President who says he acts on his instincts suddenly contemplates his options. A figure who prides himself on being decisive suddenly puts off the decision whether to be a warrior or a peacemaker in the most significant reality show of his life.

This isn’t the Donald Trump the world thought it knew.

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Unless it is − and all the bellicose talk and then the interregnum of up to a fortnight is part of the feint-and-strike tactics that he mastered in New York’s brutal real estate business.

But this isn’t the kind of situation that Mr. Trump is accustomed to confronting.

Unless it is − and he’s manipulating all the other players, perhaps so that in the end they all are diminished, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as the figure of strength who requires the assistance of a larger world power, Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as the dictatorial cleric forced to bow to the demand of the Great Satan, as two generations of his people have described the United States, or “a partner in this crime,” as Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi put it Friday.

Yet in one regard, this apparent strategy is classic Trump. It places him in the middle of the biggest drama on the globe, making him once again, the centre of attention.

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His combination of bombast and bankruptcies made him the central figure in Manhattan. His flamboyant style and marriages to three glamorous women made him the central figure in the city’s tabloid pages. His withering comments made him the central candidate among the 17 contenders, most of them established and accomplished officeholders, seeking the Republican presidential nomination in 2016.

In postponing the possible final act involving Iran’s nuclear facilities, and at the least delaying Israel’s achievement of its final wartime goal, he’s already blunted Mr. Netanyahu’s sense of urgency. In threatening massive damage to Iran and providing unspecified assistance to Israel, he’s possibly undermined the hold Ayatollah Khamenei has on a restive population.

Earlier this week, Mr. Netanyahu proclaimed, “We are changing the face of the Middle East.” Later in the week, Mr. Trump validated that notion − and then transformed that statement into first-person singular.

One way or another − bunker bomb to soften a hardened target or negotiation table to hammer out a deal − Mr. Netanyahu will have started this episode, but Mr. Trump will be the figure who ends it.

At least tentatively, and that in large measure accounts for the President’s atypical caution.

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Piercing the mountain holding the Fordow nuclear enrichment facility may be easy. What comes next is hard: whether that widens the war, what kind of Iran survives the attack, who leads the devastated country, and what role American forces play in future combat and in the future incarnation of a country the United States has tried to manipulate since it, along with Britain, overthrew then-prime minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953.

Context is critical. Mr. Trump criticized American involvement in Iraq, a nation-building exercise that went awry and that today shapes, or perhaps warps, American foreign-policy notions the way the Vietnam quagmire shaped, or warped, American foreign policy a generation ago.

Both ended in failure. Both provided “lessons” policy-makers have tried to apply to other situations − in this case, the futility of involvement in a Middle East conflict that could topple an existing government. The siren song of “regime change” can swiftly become a dirge. That’s the warning many of Mr. Trump’s advisers, and most of his MAGA followers, are issuing.

Since the initial Israeli attack on Iran, and Israel’s request for the 6.1-metre-long GBU 57/B Massive Ordnance Penetrator bomb, it’s become clear that the assistance Mr. Netanyahu yearns for isn’t the equivalent of a cortisone shot in an aching limb: one application that will address long-term pain and the inflammation of international tensions.

It didn’t work in Iraq, where − 4,000 American deaths in nine years − failure was apparent. There, the United States experienced, in a reversal of Samuel Johnson’s 18th-century definition of a second marriage, the triumph of experience over hope.

That’s why Mr. Trump either has a secret strategy or is vacillating among competing approaches.

In public, he’s made it clear that he’s determined to end Iran’s nuclear program; the White House this week released a statement (“President Trump Has Always Been Clear: Iran Cannot Have a Nuclear Weapon”) setting out the dozen times as President, and the 40 times as candidate, he’s expressed that view.

But he’s also made it clear that he wants to avoid involvement in a “forever war” and that he prefers a negotiated settlement.

“He’s trying to give diplomacy another shot,” Farah Jan, a University of Pennsylvania specialist in Middle East security politics, said in an interview. “Nobody wants a regional war in the Middle East. No one knows how this will work out. The American role is crucial.”

All week, the President has been determined not to be played by either side. But he’s clearly willing to play both sides. It actually could take two weeks for the President’s choices to clarify, and for his strategy to play out.