Trump’s Credibility at Stake Over Mixed Messages on Iran War

President Trump has paid a heavy price in his credibility and popularity for his public fishtailing over the Iran War: he has many times declared victory, including “unconditional surrender’ and has frequently said that the Iranian war making potential has been destroyed even as it has, admittedly on a reduced scale, proved indestructible. On June 17 he said that Iran’s new leaders were “very smart and much less radical” than their predecessors who were disposed of by American and Israeli airstrikes as the war began. On July 8, Mr. Trump declared of the same leaders: ”I don’t want to deal with them anymore, they’re scum.”On March 21 he gave Iran 48 hours to abandon any threat to the traffic in the Hormuz Strait, failing which he would start destroying Iranian power plants. On March 23 he extended this deadline five days and then a further 10 days to April 6 and on April 5 in a coarsely profane Easter Sunday tweet he threatened them with “hell,” and on April 7 announced that ”a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again,” but seven hours later announced that he had agreed to suspend the bombing for two weeks. On June 11 he said that the United States would be hitting Iran “very hard tonight.” Five hours later, he said he canceled the promised strikes. The infamous memorandum of understanding was signed but broke down after less than 48 hours and on July 31 Mr. Trump was back to promising to hit Iran “very hard.” Yet on August 1 he announced that Iran and other Middle Eastern countries had asked for a deferral of the planned attacks because “the perimeters of a deal have been agreed to.” Iran immediately announced that it had made no such request.President Trump with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, General Dan Caine, at the White House, April 6, 2026. AP/Mark SchiefelbeinIt is impossible for a member of the public to know to what extent Mr. Trump’s oscillations have been tactical and to what extent they have confused or significantly inconvenienced the enemy. Yet they have confused the American public and made the president vulnerable to having plunged into a war with no serious exit strategy and to have seriously miscalculated and misrepresented the staying power of the Iranian regime. He entered upon this war alongside Israel, with the stated determination to destroy permanently the Iranian program to develop the nuclear weapons and to end Iranian support of terrorist regimes, Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis in particular, and there was at that point no question hanging over freedom of navigation through the Strait of Hormuz. Despite the undoubtedly severe damage Iran has sustained, it has so far not conceded any of these points, and the cease-fire was inadequate on its face and like all agreements with Iran was of no value or enforceability whatever. The disasters in Vietnam, the second Iraqi invasion, and Afghanistan, naturally left the American public with grave misgivings about the advisability of foreign land wars that have not been clearly provoked and justified and are not obviously in the national interest. Mr. Trump twice ran successfully for election promising to avoid the ground invasion of foreign countries and has proved astoundingly successful with precision attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities and in the extraction of the president of Venezuela. A container ship sits at anchor in the Strait of Hormuz off Bandar Abbas, Iran, May 2, 2026. Amirhosein Khorgooi/ISNA via APHe is right to maintain his commitment to avoid American boots on the ground again in the Middle East. And Americans would do well to remember the scale of the errors of previous presidents in that area. Feature Eisenhower’s cancellation of financial aid for the Aswan Dam, his overreaction to the insane Anglo-French and Israeli Suez activity, Carter’s role in the overthrow of the Shah of Iran, George W. Bush’s role in the electoral victories of Hamas and Hezbollah, and the disasters he perpetrated in Iraq and Afghanistan, Obama’s role in the overthrow of President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and the election victory of the Muslim brotherhood, the entire fiasco with the Arab spring, and the insane nuclear arrangement with Iran. President Biden’s catastrophic pullout from Afghanistan was another episode in this dismal history. It is little wonder that the American public is wary about Middle Eastern adventures. President Nixon had great success there and Carter must not be denied his credit for the Camp David agreement. President George H.W. Bush did very well in the expulsion of Saddam Hussein from Kuwait and was unjustly criticized for ending the war prematurely, given the unspeakable debacle of the subsequent Iraqi war conducted by his son, which has effectively delivered control of the majority of Iraq to Iran.With all that said, Mr. Trump, if there really is little prospect of raising an insurrection in Iran, would be better to stop seeking an agreement with a regime incapable of honoring one. It would be a more promising course to imposing an airtight land sea and air blockade of Iran until it accepted all the original demands made of it, while unambiguously opening the Strait of Hormuz, which Mr. Trump has many times declared within his ability to accomplish.Such a blockade would bring the Iranian regime to its knees eventually and as long as the Straits were open there would be no economic pressure nor significant military casualties to generate war weariness against American administration. Whatever course the president chooses he should announce it, explain it properly, and stick to it.

Trump’s Credibility at Stake Over Mixed Messages on Iran War

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