Trump alternates Iran strike threats with retreats, column says

Vance alleges Israeli campaign to prolong U.S.-Iran war

President Donald Trump told a reporter on July 23 that he was “considering a massive attack. Bigger than ever before” on Iran and was “close to making a decision,” then called the attack off on July 27, according to a Guardian US column by Moustafa Bayoumi published Aug. 5. Bayoumi wrote that Trump revived the warning on July 31 — “We’ll be hitting them very hard. At some point, they’re going to say: ‘We just can’t take it any more’” — and backed down within a day. The column said Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman telephoned Trump on Aug. 1 to argue for de-escalation, and the president retreated again.

The July cycle followed a pattern Bayoumi traced through the spring. On March 21, he wrote, Trump promised to hit Iranian power plants unless Iran opened the Strait of Hormuz, a plan he delayed for five days and then another 10 days before issuing his next threat. On April 7, Trump wrote that “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again,” a message he walked back 10 hours later. On May 17 he wrote: “For Iran, the Clock is Ticking, and they better get moving, FAST, or there won’t be anything left of them. TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE!” The next day, Bayoumi reported, Trump said Gulf leaders had asked him to “hold off on our planned Military attack of the Islamic Republic of Iran, which was scheduled for tomorrow.”

Bayoumi wrote that Trump’s most recent threats followed a July 21 Oval Office meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who presented three options for the war — “a (negotiated) deal, continuing the blockade and economic pressures, and a massive strike” — according to a senior Israeli official’s description to Reuters that the column cited. Bayoumi wrote that Netanyahu helped convince Trump to begin the war, which he said the United States and Israel launched against Iran on Feb. 28.

Within the administration, Vice President JD Vance has been the most skeptical voice on the war in the president’s inner circle, Bayoumi wrote. On The Joe Rogan Experience in mid-July, Vance alleged an Israeli government campaign to shape U.S. opinion about the conflict. “There are some people within their system, we know beyond a shadow of a doubt, who are manipulating and trying to change American public opinion to keep the war going on indefinitely,” Vance said. “Not toward any objective, but just indefinitely.” Bayoumi wrote that Vance is carefully watching rising rightwing criticism of Israel connected to the war.

Marco Rubio, by contrast, told Lara Trump on Fox News that the Iranian regime “has never faced a president like President Trump, which is someone that actually takes action.”

Bayoumi wrote that Trump’s son-in-law and U.S. negotiator Jared Kushner, along with Vance and fellow negotiator Steve Witkoff, favors reducing the conflict — lowering gas prices and limiting danger to U.S. forces — but only until after the midterm elections, when the war could be ramped up again, according to the Israeli newspaper Israel Hayom.

Gen. Dan Caine, chairperson of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who counseled Trump against the war at the outset, is now warning that stockpiles for air-defense interceptors are dangerously low because of the war in Iran, placing U.S. service members at greater risk, Bayoumi wrote.

The memorandum of understanding the U.S. signed with Iran in June has faced opposition from Republicans. Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana called it “the worst foreign policy blunder in decades,” and Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas said “the president is receiving some very poor advice on this deal.” A Politico poll cited by Bayoumi found that only about a third of voters in Trump’s base believe the war is worth its economic cost.

Bayoumi also cited a CNN report that U.S. military leadership is largely out of ideas about how to proceed with Iran and is soliciting, through a crowdsourcing-type email sent to a group of military analysts, “new creative and unconventional ways to pressure and punish Iran.” The report said Trump “has been considering strikes akin to a ‘fireworks’ display,” which would suggest “a symbolic victory that would allow him to exit the war without actually accomplishing one of his initial aims: ridding Iran of its nuclear program.”

Bayoumi, a professor of English at Brooklyn College, City University of New York, and a Guardian US columnist, characterized the approach as “kindergarten diplomacy.” He argued that a conflict “begun with a terrible decision and bringing much unnecessary harm to the people of the region, must eventually be followed by a brave one, however painful it is to this nation or its leadership.” He concluded: “We, unfortunately, do not have serious leaders. And so we are left with kindergarten diplomacy.”