Trump, long a critic of ‘forever wars,’ may be stumbling into one with Iran

BEIRUT — President Trump has long opposed endless wars.

Over the years, whether as president or candidate, he has harshly criticized his election rivals and previous presidents with his signature barbs in the skin, calling their meddling “a complete waste of time” (Afghanistan), “the single worst mistake ever made in the history of our country” (Iraq), and “stupid” (Ukraine).

But now it seems like he’s caught up in a war that lasts forever.

From the early days of the US-Israeli campaign against Iran, Trump and his officials insisted that their adventures abroad would be the exception and that the conflict would end within weeks.

Now, 4.5 months later, after the torturous, stop-start indecision between ceasefire and war, the United States continues a fight with no end in sight, not even a clear definition of what an acceptable end would be.

Last week, the ceasefire collapsed with daily waves of attacks from the US and Iran; This led to the deaths of two American soldiers on Friday when Iranian ballistic missiles struck Jordan’s Muwaffaq Salti Air Base, where US assets and personnel are based.

On Sunday, the United States and Iran launched more airstrikes, while the United States announced on Saturday that a soldier was killed in Iraq during a controlled detonation of unexploded ordnance shot down by a one-way Iranian attack drone.

The deaths in Jordan were the first clashes since the United States and Iran agreed on a ceasefire. According to a statement from the US Central Command, one soldier is still missing.

The Pentagon says 17 U.S. troops have been killed and more than 430 injured since the start of the war, including the latest casualties.

According to Iranian health officials, at least 57 people have died and more than 517 people have been injured in US attacks in Iran in the last three weeks. The death toll since the beginning of the war has exceeded 3,500, with more than 27,000 injured.

The U.S. and Israeli militaries have decimated Iran’s naval and air defenses, eviscerated many layers of its leadership and bombed tens of thousands of targets across the country, according to Trump and various officials.

Despite this military pressure and Trump’s insistence that Iran’s leaders “want to make a deal” (he has said a deal was ready at least 46 times since the start of the war), Tehran has refused to surrender its nuclear and missile arsenals and continues to support regional militia allies.

By blockading the Strait of Hormuz, the vital waterway through which one-fifth of the world’s oil and natural gas flows before the war, Iran has created a new pressure point it can use against enemies. And it has expanded the footprint of the war by targeting countries that host American military assets.

Trump has vowed to expand bombings to civilian infrastructure such as power plants and bridges in an attempt to force Iran into negotiations once again.

It also brought additional forces to the Middle East. According to Centcom, there are currently 50,000 troops in the region, as well as 20 naval warships and hundreds of warplanes.

US Central Command, which oversees operations in the region, declined to comment on the deployments, but the New York Times reported on Sunday that the US had sent F-16 fighter jets from Germany and stealth F-35 jets from Britain to the region.

According to observers, these moves signal that Trump has fallen into the trap of increasing tensions.

Middle East expert and professor in St. Petersburg, Switzerland. “From Trump’s point of view, the easiest way to show determination and strength is to bomb Iran and see what that will lead to,” said Andreas Boehm, a lecturer in international law at the University of St. Gallen. He said that although these attacks seemed tactically impressive, they did not help him strategically.

“In reality, it doesn’t change the situation because the Iranians will not back down. And if you confuse tactical success with strategic success, then you won’t get anywhere in any war,” Boehm said.

Vali Nasr, a professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, said Washington’s escalation of tensions is certain to lead to a similar reaction in Tehran.

“Iran has the right to vote here,” Nasr said, adding that Iran could increase competition by closing the Bab al Mandab, the vital strait connecting the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean. It could also expand attacks on infrastructure in Persian Gulf countries; These movements could trigger an even larger ripple effect in global markets.

“Trump thought the wars in the Middle East would be like Venezuela: a massive in-and-out without a protracted war,” Nasr said, referring to the Trump administration’s offensive in which US forces kidnapped Venezuelan leader Nicholás Maduro and forced the remaining members of his government to submit to US control.

“And the reality is that it backfired,” he said.

Trump is not the first American president to think that foreign relations will not last. Whether in Vietnam, Afghanistan or Iraq, U.S. leaders sent troops into operations they thought would last weeks or months and ignored warnings that they would be bogged down in years of occupation.

Iran would become a particularly difficult quagmire if Trump sends ground troops.

The country’s surface area – about 636,000 square miles – is more than twice the size of Afghanistan, almost four times the size of Iraq and five times the size of Vietnam; All countries in which the United States is struggling to prevail against enemies who are no better equipped and no less ideologically motivated than their rivals in Iran.

Meanwhile, for a president whose central foreign policy campaign promise is no longer war, Iran’s escalating damage to U.S. assets and allies, as well as the rising number of casualties, have exposed the Teflon-like cracks in Trump’s support from his defenders.

One-time MAGA acolytes, including prominent conservative figures like Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly and Alex Jones, had already been hostile to the president on war and other issues. And Republican figures who have pinned their stars on Trump fear midterm elections will suffer as long as the war continues.

If negotiations continue, it’s unclear whether Trump and his coterie of negotiators have the stamina or foreign service expertise to pull off a deal.

After all, the 2015 Obama-era deal aimed at reining in Tehran’s nuclear program took 600 days and hundreds of diplomats and technical experts to negotiate.

A deal on that scale seems unlikely given Trump’s reliance on unlikely fixers like son-in-law Jared Kushner and real estate investor Steve Witkoff and the gutting of the diplomatic corps.

“It all depends on a man’s mood,” Nasr said.

“It is not the system that decides; it is not the country that decides,” he said. “He’s one man, and it depends on how he’s feeling at a particular moment.”

Tehran may also be less amenable to negotiations with Trump, given its history: Trump withdrew from the nuclear deal in his first term and ordered the assassination of Qasem Soleimani, a leading Iranian general.

During his second term, he launched two bombing campaigns against Iran during negotiations. Iran has also accused the United States of repeatedly violating the ceasefire in April and the memorandum of understanding signed in June.

“I couldn’t care less,” Trump said Sunday on NewsNation, when asked about Iran’s announcement that it would no longer abide by the agreement.

Ali Vaez, the International Crisis Group’s Iran project director, said such factors lead to a formula of protracted conflict.

“This is a war that will last forever, and that’s because Trump has proven that he is impossible to negotiate with,” Vaez said.

If an agreement as superficial as a memorandum of understanding that defers tougher issues to later negotiations goes off the rails, then there is little choice but repeated cycles of violence.

“Once you prove that diplomacy doesn’t work,” he said, “then there is only war.”