In mid-December, the White House chief of staff, Susie Wiles, caused an uproar by saying that Donald Trump has “the personality of an alcoholic”. Not in the sense that the president drinks – because Donald Trump does not drink, and is totally against alcohol – but in the sense that he has the impression nothing in the world is impossible for him.
Looking at just his first year and a bit of his second presidential term, it becomes clear that Donald Trump would have been more harmless to the whole world if he just got drunk and dozed off at his desk in the Oval Office, instead of always being awake and animated by the craziest ideas.
The feeling that he can do anything pushed Trump to undermine international trade (through tariffs), undermine Ukraine (through his close relationship with Putin), blow up NATO from within, and then even believe that he can do the same with Iran that he did with Venezuela.
The feeling that he can do anything, however, has become even more intoxicating in recent days, once the US forces managed to recover two American pilots from enemy territory shot down by Iran’s anti-aircraft (which in reality had not been annihilated, as the president of “Fake News”, and Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth had repeatedly announced).
And, being even more intoxicating, the feeling of omnipotence 2.0, which is now testing Trump, risks proving even more dangerous for everyone – from America to the farthest corners of the world.
Because, just as the US leader confused the difficulties and the stakes, when he decided to start the war in Iran, convinced that the road to Tehran would be a walk in the park like Caracas, he was then tempted to believe that, if he could save two pilots, he could win the whole war; which quickly became a regional one, but with a global impact. It is already a rather lost war.
In fact, the press conference that the American leader held on Monday, where he boasted of the spectacular success of the weekend, offered certainties in this regard.
From his statements it could be easily deduced that instead of understanding the fact that he had fallen off the saddle, he became convinced again that he was galloping. The consequences will not be long in coming.
For the US allies in the Gulf – the news is as bad as can be, as Trump’s flawed way of interpreting his situation can only mean escalation.
And the escalation will translate, at one end, into American-Israeli bombings of Iran (something announced by the head of the Pentagon, for the coming days), and at the other end, by Iranian bombings on the most sensitive objectives in the Gulf – energy infrastructure, civilian, including water supply.
Iran will make these possible targets likely targets. One because the logic of his response is fundamentally a profoundly asymmetrical one (given the difference in caliber, in terms of resources, between the US/Israel and Iran, respectively). And two because since Donald Trump himself announced that he would target Iran’s power plants which is a war crime.
The operation to rescue the American pilots was successful, but an isolated episode; but it has the consequence of continuing the war, which will become more unpopular even though it wasn’t popular from the start.
In this context, the Iranian population (already exhausted by the terror and poverty from its own regime), the populations of the Gulf, as well as the global economy, and the world in general, will suffer.
The Trump family, on the other hand, is likely to prosper financially, as the president’s sons have just started business with interceptor drones and are already making sales pitches to captive customers in the Gulf states.
The unpopularity of the war with Iran is beginning to have real chances of touching another delicate dimension: that of a holy war.
Even before his statements at Monday’s press conference, there were already some signs. They expanded rapidly during the press conference.
Because the American pilots were shot down and rescued around Easter, the American president did not miss the opportunity to express himself in parables and introduce the Christian God into the equation and, implicitly at least, to put him in an unwelcome opposition to the Muslims.
It’s likely that by doing this, he is setting the US and Israel on course for a war with a Muslim country, ruled by a theocratic dictatorship full of messianism and religious fanaticism. There is zero chance that this detail has gone unnoticed in the eyes of Iranian officials who carry out information warfare. It should be noted Tehran has decades of experience in exploiting the ‘faith’ angle, both at home and abroad.
In any case, it is already a historical fact that, even without Trump’s excesses, US wars in the Middle East have, for the last quarter of a century, had the gift of fueling long-term various forms of Islamist terrorism, with a hint of a holy war, far beyond the Middle East – from Europe to Africa.
President Donald Trump had a basic problem from the very beginning in understanding Iran and especially in understanding what an all-out war with this country can mean.
After the successful rescue operation of the two American pilots, Trump’s basic problem in understanding his own country, as well as its traditional allies, becomes even more serious.
- PS:A trivial observation of having American troops on the ground in Iran, may not come as a result of the success of the two pilots. On Monday, Donald Trump himself admitted that, beyond the phenomenal training of US troops and the resources they need to carry out such operations, a certain dose of luck is also needed.
