Donald Trump
The five-week war, which led to a two-week truce, does not look like a US triumph: Iran retained its enriched uranium and its theocratic regime, and in addition gained control of the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most important oil and gas trade routes, meduza.io writes.
Against this background, as The New York Times noted, Trump is beginning to criticize even the most loyal part of his electorate – users of the social network Truth Social. The newspaper also found out that Trump’s close advisers were skeptical about the war with Iran from the very beginning; however, they did not dissuade the US president, relying on his intuition.
The US declared itself the winner in the war with Iran. But so far it looks the other way around
The US and Israel launched air strikes on Iran on February 28. They assassinated the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and attacked the Iranian army and navy. Iran retaliated by pounding U.S. allies in the Middle East and blocking the Strait of Hormuz, causing a global energy crisis. Trump demanded that the strait be opened, promising to hit Iranian power plants, bridges and other critical infrastructure if it did not. He threatened the Iranians with “hell” and “the death of civilization.” He then concluded a two-week truce with them.
The objectives of the operation against Iran were vaguely stated. Explaining why they started this war, Trump and his team talked about destroying Iran’s nuclear and missile programs, overthrowing the power of the ayatollahs and “freedom for the Iranian people.” They were going to accomplish this in a month and a half at most and without a ground operation. But at the end of five weeks of war, Iran retained its stockpiles of enriched uranium and its theocratic regime, showed its ability to damage U.S. allies in the Middle East, and, most importantly, began to control the Strait of Hormuz, something it did not have before the war.
“In an attempt to prevent the development of weapons of mass destruction, the U.S. handed Iran weapons of mass destruction,” Ali Vaez, director of the Iran Project at the International Crisis Group, told Reuters. He said the ability to control the global energy market through blocking the Strait of Hormuz gives Iranian authorities more leverage than even nuclear weapons could provide.
The truce has somewhat calmed the panic in the global oil market because it envisioned the opening of the Strait of Hormuz. However, it is still blocked. Iranian authorities, who have already declared victory in the war, have shown no willingness to make concessions to the US in negotiations. The American authorities, who also talk about themselves as winners, could resume hostilities, but this carries serious political risks for Trump.
The MAGA camp has backed Trump on war with Iran. But by no means unanimously
Since the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran began, many prominent MAGA spokespeople have spoken out against the conflict. Podcast hosts Megyn Kelly and Tucker Carlson said the American people had been duped by Israel. Other right-wing commentators like podcasters Alex Jones and Joe Rogan, former Trump advisor Steve Bannon, and former Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Green have expressed similar sentiments.
Polls have shown that ordinary U.S. residents are mostly against war with Iran. However, the non-media part of the MAGA camp supported it – which is curious, given Trump’s campaign promises to stop fighting wars abroad. According to a mid-March poll, 8% of Democrats, 84% of Republicans overall, and 92% of those Republicans who support Trump approved of the conflict with Iran.
However, even among his most loyal voters, there is a split over the war, a survey by The New York Times published April 8 showed. The newspaper analyzed more than 40,000 comments under Trump’s posts about the conflict with Iran on his Truth Social network – and found that Trump’s commenters reacted even more negatively to the topic than they did to the Jeffrey Epstein scandal.
This was especially evident under a post that Trump published on April 5, the day Western Christian churches celebrated Easter. “Open the damn strait, you crazy bastards, or you will live in hell. You’ll see!” – Trump wrote, ending the post with “Praise Allah.” Hundreds of critical comments appeared below it, with the authors expressing disappointment with Trump’s profanity-laced swearing on Easter, among other things.
Another post that drew a sharply negative reaction was published on April 7. He promised that Iranian civilization would “die tonight.” More than half of the commenters criticized Trump for those words. They were supported both from the left (“This is an extremely sick man,” said Senate Democratic Minority Leader Chuck Schumer) and the right (“No bomb has fallen on America. We can’t destroy an entire civilization. This is evil and insane,” wrote prominent MAGA supporter Marjorie Taylor Green).
Meanwhile, the truce with Iran, which Trump announced shortly after his bellicose post, did not please commenters on Truth Social either. Many of them accused the US president of backing down without getting anything substantial in return.
Many in Trump’s inner circle were also against attacking Iran. But did not argue with the president
The New York Times’ sources say that the White House, too, was initially skeptical of the idea of a conflict with Iran. According to the publication, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited Trump on February 11 and tried to convince him that now was the best time to attack Iran. The U.S. and Israel could destroy Iran’s missile program and achieve regime change by provoking a popular uprising, Netanyahu persuaded.
“Sounds good,” responded Trump, who, according to the NYT, has always seen Iran as a particularly dangerous threat to the US. “This was not usually said explicitly, but it always remained in the background: an additional motive was that Iran was plotting to kill Trump as revenge for the assassination of Gen. Qassem Suleimani, whom the U.S. considered one of the key figures behind Iran’s campaign of international terrorism,” the newspaper adds.
However, US intelligence, after evaluating Netanyahu’s arguments, concluded that the goals he described were only partially achievable. The US and Israel are indeed capable of killing the Iranian ayatollah and weakening the country’s military capabilities. But causing an uprising and achieving the restoration of a secular regime in Iran is not. CIA Director John Ratcliffe described the regime change scenarios proposed by the Israeli prime minister in one word: “farce.
Among other members of the Trump administration, only Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth supported the war. Secretary of State Marco Rubio believed that military action should be avoided, but did not seriously try to dissuade Trump from it. Dan Kaine, the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, took a similar cautious stance. He did not express his opinion directly, but pointed out that a conflict with Iran would deplete U.S. weapons stockpiles and lead to a blockage of the Strait of Hormuz. Trump dismissed the second argument as unlikely: he believed the Iranian regime would quickly capitulate.
The main skeptic of an attack on Iran was Vice President J.D. Vance. He stated that this war would be very costly, would split Trump’s camp, would result in many casualties, and would cause chaos throughout the Middle East. Vance also believed that the U.S. had no chance to change the power in Iran: the country’s top brass would be ready to do anything, because its existence would be at stake, the U.S. vice president said. But at the last meeting on the subject on February 26, he told Trump: “You know I think it’s a bad idea, but if you want to do it, I will support you.
Others in the meeting shied away from open objections. “Everyone relied on the president’s intuition. They had seen him make bold decisions, take unthinkable risks and somehow come out a winner,” the NYT wrote. The next day, February 27, Trump ordered the start of the operation against Iran.
