What did Donald Trump do today?
He played the most powerful card remaining to him on Iran: whining about it on the internet.
Trump posted two complaints to his boutique social media website this evening:
There are reports that Iran is charging fees to tankers going through the Hormuz Strait — They better not be and, if they are, they better stop now! President DONALD J. TRUMP
Iran is doing a very poor job, dishonorable some would say, of allowing Oil to go through the Strait of Hormuz. That is not the agreement we have! President DONALD J. TRUMP
Trump is correct on two points: Iran is letting very few ships through the strait, and they are targeting some of the ships they do allow through with millions of dollars in fees. That's not just a "report," it's established fact, and has been for weeks.
At least according to Trump's fiery rhetoric on Tuesday, that means the ceasefire should never have started in the first place, since he'd made it the only explicit condition that Iran had to meet. Given how little Iran has been restrained in the two days since Trump backed down from his promise to commit war crimes if Iran didn't come to the bargaining table, it's genuinely unclear what "agreement" Trump thinks is in place.
The problem, which Iran clearly understands, is that Trump is now negotiating from a position of almost unbelievable weakness. Simply by continuing to exert control over the Strait in defiance of Trump's demands, Iran strengthens its hand and funds its own war effort in the process.
Trump could resume hostilities, but short of a full-scale invasion of an extremely large and populous country, more bombing of already destroyed airfields won't do much. It's also unlikely Trump make good on his previous threat to bomb Iran "back to the stone age" by destroying civilian infrastructure. Not only would be the kind of premeditated atrocity that would risk having the United States military push back against its civilian commander, it wouldn't accomplish anything for Trump politically: the war is already deeply unpopular in the United States, and bombing cities wouldn't fix the economic damage.
Nor can he force the issue in the Strait of Hormuz itself. Iran doesn't need to be able to destroy every vessel that goes through in order to completely shut down traffic. It only needs to be plausibly able to destroy a ship once in a while, and cheap drones or shoulder-mounted missiles launched from well inland are more than capable of doing that. Against the slow, literally explosive target presented by an oil tanker, even speedboats or divers carrying explosive satchels can do the job. On this point, at least, Trump seems to have finally grasped the reality of the situation, which may explain why he's also tried to get the United States' allies to do the "easy" task of solving the problem for him.
Trump doesn't even have a good option as to whether to hold the negotiations that are supposed to begin tomorrow in Pakistan. Walking away would simply leave a determinedly anti-American regime more entrenched in its control over Iran, more regionally powerful, and wealthier than at the start of a war in which the United States military succeeded in killing much of its senior leadership.
But holding the negotiations will only call attention to the comical discrepancy between the US and Iranian proposals. Both sides are essentially calling for the other to surrender, which is absurd on its face. But it's also deeply embarrassing for Trump, as the commander of the most powerful military in the world, to have backed himself into this corner barely six weeks into the conflict.
Why does this matter?
- At this point, it's obvious and a little repetitive, but it shouldn't even be possible to fuck up a war this badly, and nobody who managed to do it is remotely fit for office.