The Iran War: What are Trump’s Options ?

 

Donald Trump has a problem on his hands…the USA as a nation has an even bigger one.

Having been persuaded by his advisors and Netanyahu that an all-out attack on the Iranian regime and its military wing, the IRGC, was the best solution to the ‘Iranian problem’, Trump was expecting the war to be over in a matter of days. This was despite the lesson already provided by the Ukraine war and the continued attacks by the 3 Iranian proxies in the face of massive bombing campaigns.

However, despite the intense battering he and the Israelis have administered over a wide area of their country in the last fortnight, and the decapitation of the old leadership, the IRGC are still managing to bombard their arab neighbours with missiles and drones. More importantly for the West generally, they have effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz, and with it blocked supplies of oil and gas from the middle east oilfields to the rest of the world.This in turn has threatened worldwide economic disruption if the situation persists.

It’s obvious from their strategy that the IRGC have been preparing for this eventuality for some time, and had planned to hold the world to ransom in this way from the start. They knew that their policy of ‘disruption by proxy ‘ would eventually backfire in the face of Israel’s growing strength and continued US support, and bring military retribution from the skies.

Their ability to spirit away their stocks of enriched uranium  before the US had a chance to bomb it out of existence during  last year’s 12 day war should perhaps have given us a clue to their ability to outfox a superior enemy (superior in terms of firepower at least). 

In common with past terrorist organisations, they have adopted a cleverly thought out strategy of regional disruption, and hidden away much of their armament underground and away from the US bombers and missiles.  They have also spread their command structure downwards to allow fast replacement of assassination victims within the leadership, thus today's announcement by the Israelis of the demise of top security official Ali Larijani and Basij commander Gholamreza Soleimani in the latest bombing raid may have little impression on IRGC policy. Being fearful of reprisals, the Basij force have also adopted a ruthless ‘shoot on sight’ approach to any civilian opposition that might emerge, as they demonstrated  earlier this year, killing 60,000+. This has effectively enabled them and their regime to survive the initial allied onslaught and retain enough military capacity to continue their guerrilla campaign. We can liken the remedy to removing an embedded malignant tumour from a healthy organ - the process causes a lot of damage, and you can never be sure it's all gone, and won't re-establish itself. In this case the process is likely to be miltarily difficult, and probably won't be achievable without 'boots on the ground' in some form, and substantial casualties on both sides.

The regime's hope now will be that the growing opposition to Trump in Europe and the rest of the world, and particularly in the arab world, will force him to bring the campaign to an end and allow them to stay in power. They continue to refuse any further diplomatic efforts towards a solution unless and until the bombing stops, and will be determined to retain a stranglehold on oil and gas shipments ‘as long as it takes’.

Is there an easy solution to Trump’s latest folly ? In a word, no…

Let’s consider a few possible scenarios as to how things might resolve.

1)      The bombing campaign continues unabated, but with the present restrictions on civilian targets in line with international law. Attempts are also made to provide naval ‘cover’ for shipping to pass the Strait of Hormuz safely.

The problem with this is the long drawn out nature of the result. A lot more Iranian civilians would die needlessly as ‘collateral damage’, however carefully targets are selected. This is because the Iranians have carefully embedded their military and police within civilian areas to achieve maximum media coverage when mass-civilian casualties inevitably occur. This would in turn rally support for the regime internally. 

The damage to arab neighbours would also continue, stoking resentment against the regime, and the US/Israel for stirring up a hornets’ nest in the first place. We know that IRGC still have sufficient stocks of cheap drones to continue causing local damage for many weeks. As a result, the blockade of the Strait would probably continue, with significant damage to naval escorts and vulnerable shipping from mines and fast torpedo boats, which the IRGC have squirreled away underground over the years ready for this eventuality. This would in turn encourage the allies to take things even further militarily. We’ll discuss possible consequences of this shortly…

2)      In the face of growing opposition from his allies, Trump reconsiders his policy and ‘declares victory’, on the grounds that he has done enough to remove any immediate danger to US interests.

Although this is the preferred scenario, the problem with this is that ‘it takes two to tango’….The Iranian regime has already said that the war will end ‘when they choose’ even if Trumps stops the US campaign. One hopes that they would see sense if given the opportunity to start ‘picking up the pieces’ without regime change, but there is no guarantee of this. The IRGC in particular might well see this as capitulation, and even fear for their own survival once hostilities ceased and reconstruction began. They would also be expected to seek revenge for all the damage done to their hardware and leadership by the hated Israelis. Trump himself would lose face in that he could be accused by his 'hawks' of 'not finsishing the job when he had the chance'.

3)      The ‘Doomsday’ Scenario: Trump, seeing his failure to make much impression on the current impasse, gets impatient and decides to ‘go nuclear’. Tactical nuclear weapons are used,  initially on selected military targets, in an attempt to force the regime and its military into submission. This results in many more civilian casualties, and substantial local releases of radioactivity. The IRGC remain determined to fight on ‘to the last’ and things then escalate with higher-yield nuclear devices targeted on Iranian cities. If this happened things could quickly escalate to a much wider nuclear conflict, with the inevitable outcome we’ve all feared for the last 60 years…

Although you might think there are sufficient built-in fail-safes within the US command structure to prevent this happening, this is not guaranteed. It would after all be the logical ‘next step’ to defeat a rogue regime with a population incapable of removing it.  It is also not without precedent - the first and only use so far of nuclear weapons on Japan at the end of WW2 was justfied in terms of saving US lives by forcing a surrender in the face of overwhelming odds.

The US system does allow its president sweeping powers as the commander in chief, especially in wartime scenarios. This would include overriding any attempt at impeachment by congress (now still Republican-controlled, but likely to go Democrat after this year’s mid-terms) and could also be used to secure Trump a 3^rd term, or even postpone the 2028 election indefinitely. Trump’s leadership team are effectively toothless when it comes to dealing with his whims, and appear to be still in ‘emperor’s new clothes’ mode when it comes to any form of criticism. Thus we shouldn't necessarily expect the system to prevent it happening.

The other factor to consider is that ‘The Donald’ himself , now fast approaching his eighties, has been showing signs of mental instability since the start of his 2^nd term, and certainly cannot any longer be relied upon to offer consistently sound judgement. He is frequently lampooned in the press as ‘having the mentality of a particularly tantrum-prone 3-year old’ – while this is probably a little harsh, his behaviour certainly does make one wonder at times.  His 1^st term strategy of ‘keep ‘em all guessing’ has worn decidedly thin now, and most pundits accept that his behaviour is just too erratic for it all to be pre-planned so as to confuse the opposition.

Thus we would be unwise to discount the possibility of scenario 3, although we should all pray to whatever deity we subscribe to that we can survive until January 2029 without this, or any other Trump-induced calamity, arising….

One potential ‘silver lining’ from the chaotic nature of the last 14 months, perhaps,  is that it has provided the US electorate with a valuable prescription for their future leadership candidates: ”..to ensure reliability of key national decision-making, and preserve your democracy, place an upper age limit on all presidential candidates…and ensure they submit to an independent psych evaluation before standing. Then repeat as necessary during their terms if elected”

First Published 17.3.26