Mr. Trump’s management style, as epitomized in “The Art of the Deal,” (with it’s deliberate concealment of true goals to aid in negotiation) is perhaps a great business negotiating style. Yet it is a terrible way to lead a country through a war. We hear daily, “it’s almost over,” and then “we’re getting ready to bomb them to the stone age.” Mr. Trump’s governing style in his second administration of deliberately trying to avoid Congress does not aid him either. He has not sold either the Congress or the American public on the benefits of the war (which obviously has its costs), and his other, shall we say less savory* actions are now restricting his ability to get Congress to do anything.

I have been pleasantly (for the most part**) surprised with Mr. Trump’s foreign policy; his actions in Venezuela, Iran and Cuba have the potential to radically transform the world into a better place. Yet the benefits really only ultimately accrue with that feared term “regime change.” Yet that is exactly what is needed in each one of these countries for the potential transformational change in the world order to emerge. Not that the actions heretofore are not valuable. I disagree with the doomsayers regarding Iran, but given the opacity of Mr. Trump’s methods and what truly constitutes success, I can understand the point of those criticizing; it could yet go very bad. There are a lot of people in the U.S. that are not too happy about being told they have to trust Mr. Trump, who often makes decisions more on his own intuition rather than cold analysis. Here is just one analysis from the NY Times:

 “Nearly three months into the conflict, the Iranian regime has succeeded in confounding U.S. and Israeli expectations for a speedy victory. The regime survived a wave of targeted killings early in the war. It then managed to turn the tables on its more powerful adversaries, introducing something of a stalemate. Since mid-March, Iran has maintained control over the Strait of Hormuz, an international waterway crucial to the world’s oil and gas trade. It has been able to limit U.S. and Israeli attacks on its energy industry. It even got President Trump to rein in Israel’s war in Lebanon against Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed militia. ‘Iran definitely has the advantage here,’ said Nicole Grajewski, who teaches at the Center for International Studies… ‘The U.S. is just kind of flailing at the moment’… To gain an edge over its much more powerful adversary, Iran used a method that game-theory scholars call ‘triangular coercion,’ said Daniel Sobelman, a professor at Hebrew University… who studies Iranian deterrence strategies. The strategy works by attacking a more vulnerable third party that has some leverage over an adversary to gain advantage over an opponent that cannot be outmatched directly.”

Is it a stalemate? Not at all, but it’s not victory (yet) either. The Iranians are being crippled economically to go along with the punishment they’ve already received militarily. Mr. Trump’s “we have all the cards” line is mostly true, but the question is do we have the sustained will to play those cards? We don’t know precisly how long the blockade will take to cause damage to Iran’s oil infrastructure. It may be weeks to low months. But it’s not likely 6 months. Further, without trade, Iran’s ability to pay its troops is rapidly waning away, and the Iranian currency is plunging. There isn’t a single country that can look at what has happened in Iran and think it’s a good idea to be shouting “Death to America” and to start a program of funding terrorists to attack us or our interests. But it is also true that if the U.S. end game allows Iran to have de facto ownership of the whole Strait of Hormuz, we have suffered a large credibility blow. But back to the sustainment issue. Even if we believe that Mr. Trump has nerves of steel, his congressional supporters don’t. And his enemies seemingly*** would be ok with a U.S. loss rather than support anything Mr. Trump might do. It is also clear that this Iranian regime is not going to ever submit to our will; they must be defeated unconditionally. Yes, that means regime change. So I don’t know what Mr. Trump is waiting for. Is there a covert operation ongoing now to arm a force within Iran? What are we doing to open the strait? Do we have the military capability to do so? I understand waiting to allow certain things to make the eventual next military phase be more successful, and yes we don’t need to know those details. But it also gives rise to fears that Mr. Trump won’t finish the job. We have some evidence of this in Venezuela. Was the end game really only about getting rid of Maduro and taking over the production of the oil industry? And leave the rest of the brutal regime in place? When are we going to have elections there? If the current state is the end game in Venezuela (and the current situation is much better than the prior status quo), then is Mr. Trump willing to leave the regime in place in Iran? Cut a deal that instead of no nuclear material for 20 years that we take one for seven and then they cheat and have the problem for the next president? All of these questions are not simply meant to be critical of Mr. Trump, since as I’ve said, I think what we’ve already done has made the world a much safer place…for a while. But they are the natural outcome of his opaque leadership style. With Mr. Trump, we simply do not know. And that is not a good thing.

Finish the job Mr. President. The longer you take to do it, the more political pain you will cause at home, and the more likely Iran ends up in a better place than it otherwise would.

* The $1776M slush fund means that ordinary taxpayers have to pay even more for Jan 6 rioters. I am broadly sympathetic to the reality that the Biden administration targeted conservatives (the punishment was the process, e.g., going after pro-life activists), nevertheless I’ve long struggled with why the hapless taxpayer is exploited once again by government malfeasance. This has the sad appearance of Mr. Trump just turning the public till to the benefit of a subset of his constituents at the expense of the broad majority.

** Top of mind critiques include his abominable approach on Greenland. Followed by his hostility to Canada resulting in Carney’s election when he would have gone down to almost certain defeat absent Mr. Trump’s antics. And of course, his horrible treatment of Mr. Zelensky and effectively equating Russia and Ukraine, and even suggesting the real problem was Ukraine’s unwillingness to cede not only the territory that Russia illegally held, but even more territory. There is only one bad guy there and it’s Russia. Shame on Mr. Trump (and Mr. Vance!). Fortunately Ukraine has persevered without additional help from us.

*** I know it seems harsh, but outside of Mr. Fetterman, every Democrat’s public statement I’ve seen has been to attack Mr. Trump, to insist we just needed to go back to the prior Obama agreement, and have ignored the nuclear threat. The standard response to Democrats should be if not now, when? If not us, who? They see this issue as one to tie to higher prices and their surest pathway back to power.