Iran’s Crisis Is Trump’s Sweet Spot
For him, the worst thing about the standoff may be that it can’t last forever.
By Walter Russell Mead
President Donald Trump at Fort Bragg, N.C., Feb.13. Stan Gilliland/EPA/ShutterstockThe USS Gerald R. Ford carrier strike group cruised the Caribbean last month as American forces captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
This month, America’s largest aircraft carrier is heading toward the Middle East as the long-running standoff between Iran and the U.S. enters a new and dangerous phase.
The Trump administration can be clownish, depraved and dysfunctional.
It can also be stunningly effective.
Caracas had been a headache for American presidents ever since Hugo Chávez put Venezuela on the road to ruin back in 1999 (to great applause from American leftists who hailed Chávismo as, finally, the Socialism That Works).
Even as economic decline drove floods of refugees across its frontiers and the marriage of its government with drug cartels worsened the drug crisis, Venezuela subsidized late-socialist Cuba and became a haven for Russian and Iranian enemies of the U.S.
To these problems, Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Joe Biden had no effective response.
Under President Trump, Mr. Maduro is in jail, the oil taps have been turned off in Havana, and the Venezuelan government looks anxiously to Washington before every major policy decision.
With the chief instrument of Mr. Maduro’s downfall now headed toward Iran, the world’s attention increasingly turns to the question of Mr. Trump’s plans for America’s oldest and most uncompromising enemy in the Middle East.
Pundits and traders are frenetically speculating: Will it be TACO (Trump always chickens out) or TSAR (Trump sometimes absolutely rocks)?
The outcome of the crisis is impossible to predict.
Donald Trump himself likely doesn’t know what he ultimately will do.
One key to the president’s diplomatic method is that he seeks to create situations in which he alone has the power to make a decision that matters immensely to other countries, triggering a race to win his favor by whatever means.
Right now, he is in a sweet spot.
He has a free hand in Iran and can move in any direction.
He can push for regime change.
He can take a weak deal with Tehran and claim victory.
He can sit back while Israel does most of the hard work, as he did in June’s 12-day war, and swoop in at the end to take credit for victory.
He can give the mullahs a new lease on life.
Everyone who cares about Iran or its oil knows that Mr. Trump has the power to rock their world.
The dealmaker is open for business.
Iran doves, Iran hawks, Israelis, Qataris, Russians, Chinese, Europeans, Turks—operators are standing by to take your call.
It isn’t only the leverage, it’s the status.
As the sole arbiter of the fate of a nation that is crucial to its region and to world oil markets, Mr. Trump is the world’s most visible and powerful leader.
Others talk, he decides.
It’s also the ratings.
The more the talking heads speculate about his intentions, the more intently financial market participants and global policymakers struggle to discern his intentions from his (often deliberately misleading) utterances, the more Mr. Trump dominates the news.
That, in his reckoning, adds to his power and, after he’s dominated world politics for almost a decade, one must concede that he has a point.
As the president weighs competing offers and basks in the prestige the crisis brings him, it’s hard to see why he would want to bring the drama to a quick close.
From Mr. Trump’s point of view, the main downside of the Iran crisis may be that it can’t last forever.
He can reap rewards by standing pat, but at some point he will have to make a choice.
And choices entail risks and costs.
The moment he chooses a course of action, his remaining choices become constrained.
Attacking Iran involves the risk of a long war.
Letting the mullahs use his fear of a long war to impose an agreement that makes him look weak undermines his political strength at home and his prestige overseas.
Mr. Trump is slowly ratcheting up the tension while a carrier strike group laboriously crosses two oceans.
That keeps his options open even as it increases his psychological and military edge over the rulers of the Gulf countries, the Israelis and anybody who cares about the price of oil or the security of the seas.
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