I’m Sick And Tired of All The Winning

Another few days, another raft of stories indicating that Gulf War Three is not going exactly as the Trump administration expected.

This New York Times account by Mark Mazzetti, Tyler Pager, and Edward Wong delineates all the ways in which Trump and his cabinet did zero advance planning and have subsequently been surprised by how this war has played out:

U.S. officials have had to adjust plans on the fly, from hastily ordering the evacuation of embassies to developing policy proposals to reduce gas prices.

After Trump administration officials gave a closed-door briefing to lawmakers on Tuesday, Senator Christopher S. Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, said on social media that the administration had no plan for the Strait of Hormuz and did “not know how to get it safely back open.”

Inside the administration, some officials are growing pessimistic about the lack of a clear strategy to finish the war. But they have been careful not to express that directly to the president, who has repeatedly declared that the military operation is a complete success.

Mr. Trump has laid out maximalist goals like insisting that Iran name a leader who will submit to him, while Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have described narrower and more tactical objectives that could provide an off-ramp in the near term….

Mr. Trump has displayed growing frustration over how the war is disrupting the oil supply, telling Fox News that oil tanker crews should “show some guts” and sail through the Strait of Hormuz.

Some military advisers did warn before the war that Iran could launch an aggressive campaign in response, and would view the U.S.-Israeli attack as a threat to its existence. But other advisers remained confident that killing Iran’s senior leadership would lead to more pragmatic leaders taking over who might bring an end to the war.

When Mr. Trump was briefed about risks that oil prices could rise in the event of war, he acknowledged the possibility but downplayed it as a short-term concern that should not overshadow the mission to decapitate the Iranian regime.

I strongly suspect we are going to see more stories that reveal anonymous internal dissents within the administration. As Marc Lynch explains, “When White House aides are leaking furiously to the media about how all this isn’t their fault if only someone had listened to them is that usually a sign that insiders are confident the policy is going well.”

Meanwhile, the Guardian’s Patrick Wintour reports that Iran has rebuffed the Trump administration’s entreaties this past week for a cease fire:

Iran has spurned two messages from Donald Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, seeking a ceasefire as its leaders sense it is not losing the war and the US president is at the minimum feeling the political pressure.

The foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, has further said a unilateral declaration from Trump that the US had won the war would not bring an end to the conflict. The implication is that even if the US announced a willingness to end its attacks, Iran might be willing to continue the conflict in some form, or keep its chokehold on shipping seeking to navigate the strait of Hormuz.

Iran believes there can be no end to the conflict until it believes Trump has been shown the economic, political and military cost is so high that it is not worth repeating. It is instead insisting on a permanent deal that includes a US commitment not to attack Iran again….

Iranian diplomats argue that after two previous rounds of diplomatic talks being cut short by US-Israeli airstrikes, there is simply no basis to reach an agreement.

The Iranian regime is comprised of murderous thugs who will kill their own citizens to stay in power — but it ain’t wrong about the lunacy of bargaining with the Trump administration. From Iran’s perspective, there is little incentive to strike a deal when the other side’s leader is bent on regime change and has a prior track record of not being serious about negotiations.

When they’re not self-conscious of how they look on camera, Trump officials are talking tough about the war. They say they can tolerate the costs of continued fighting, including higher energy prices, for a few weeks.

Their bravado masks some deeper truths, however. And these truth are worth stressing, because — to put this in terms Trump might understand — I don’t think the U.S. has the cards it thinks it has.

To be sure, Iran’s indiscriminate attacks across the region have discomfited the Gulf states and even triggered a 13-0 U.N. Security Council resolution condemning their actions. As the conflict drags on, however, it’s not obvious to me how Trump can unilaterally declare victory and then attempt to walk away.

Consider the following facts. First, the decapitation part of the attack has failed. Iran’s regime ain’t going anywhere. Don’t take my word for it, that’s what U.S. intelligence agencies are saying according to Reuters:

U.S. intelligence indicates that Iran’s leadership is still largely intact and is not at risk of collapse any time soon after nearly two weeks of relentless U.S. and Israeli bombardment, according to three sources familiar with the matter.

A “multitude” of intelligence reports provide “consistent ‌analysis that the regime is not in danger” of collapse and “retains control of the Iranian public,” said one of the sources, all of whom were granted anonymity ‌to discuss U.S. intelligence findings….

The intelligence reporting underscores the cohesion of Iran’s clerical leadership despite the killing of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on February 28, the first day of the U.S. and Israeli strikes.

Israeli officials in closed discussions also have acknowledged there is no certainty the war will lead to the clerical government’s collapse, a senior Israeli official told Reuters.

A decapitation strike that does not alter the regime is of little strategic value to the United States.

Meanwhile, it is becoming increasingly evident that Iran’s strategy is to simply survive the air attacks while inflicting economic pain on the rest of the world. Unfortunately, as the Wall Street Journal’s Jared Malsin, Summer Said, and Shelby Holliday explain, Iran appears to have escalation dominance in the Straits of Hormuz:

Escalating Iranian attacks and the U.S. government’s decision to hold off on military escorts for oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz are raising the prospect of a prolonged closure that would choke off exports through the world’s most important energy-transport route.

On Wednesday, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps struck three cargo ships attempting to transit the waterway, the only sea route out of the Persian Gulf. It warned that any other vessels trying to move through the strait also would be targeted.

The U.S. has turned down repeated requests for tanker escorts from oil companies, said officials from Gulf countries. Defense officials say it is too risky to send warships into the confined waters of the strait—which is about 21 miles wide at its narrowest point—until the risks of Iranian fire have receded.

American forces have hit Iran’s navy, and its drone and missile crews, in an effort to curb the threat. But Iran is still landing blows. Added to that are the risks of naval mines and Iranian submarines lurking below.

With traffic paralyzed as a result, the shutdown of the strait is fast causing a global economic disruption and a major military and political challenge for the Trump administration.

Furthermore, there are reasons to doubt the viability of U.S. offers to provide political risk insurance for shipping companies in the Gulf.

One could argue that closing the Straits of Hormuz hurts Iran’s economy as well — except that another WSJ story by Benoit Faucon and Costas Paris suggests otherwise:

Iran is exporting more oil through the Strait of Hormuz than before the war, showing it is in control of a strategic waterway that it has closed off to the rest of the region’s oil producers.

As Gulf Arab oil producers from Saudi Arabia to Iraq cut production and scramble for new routes that bypass the strait, Iran is conducting business as usual, according to data from tanker-tracking firm Kpler, throwing a financial lifeline to Tehran as it comes under blistering attack from the U.S. and Israel.

Since the war started on Feb. 28, seven tankers have loaded oil off the Iranian coast, according to Kpler. At least two of the most recent loadings are out of the Persian Gulf, Kpler said. Over the past six days, tankers have loaded a daily average of 2.1 million barrels of Iranian oil, higher than the 2 million barrels a day Iran exported in February, according to Kpler.

Iran’s export levels can vary week to week, but the recent increase shows that, unlike other producers, their shipments are unimpeded and that China hasn’t lost its appetite for Tehran’s crude.

The United States might be able to destroy Iran’s ability to mine the Persian Gulf and fire drones and missiles wherever it wants — but a Bloomberg Economics analysis suggests that it is easier and cheaper for Iran to build more drones than for the United States to build more interceptors that defend against such attacks.

The result, if Iran chooses to prolong the war, is a global economy at risk of surprising shortages and stagflation and a United States that will burn through more than $10 billion a week as long as the war stays at this tempo..

It should be stressed that almost all of this was eminently predictable from the outset. As the Atlantic’s Franklin Foer explains:

Almost no other foreign-policy question has been studied harder over the past 20 years or so than the likely effect of U.S. military strikes on Iran. The many years spent pondering and preparing for a potential attack on Iran are the reason that the first days of the war were, for the most part, a bravura display of American power. Yet all of that study also pointed out the risks: spiking oil prices, the spread of violence throughout the Middle East, civilian casualties of the sort now evidenced by an apparent U.S. missile strike near an Iranian elementary school. When past presidents balked at the possibility of war with Iran, they weren’t just dodging a hard choice; they were deterred by all of the obvious reasons a conflict could perilously spiral. Nobody should be shocked that the expected is now coming to pass.

At best, the United States now appears to be locked into a regional version of Benjamin Netanyahu’s “mowing the grass” strategy — periodically bombing Iran to destroy the capabilities it can rebuild after any cease-fire. The only other option would be to put boots on the ground to forcibly change the regime — a quagmire that would make Iraq or Afghanistan look like garden parties.

The hard-working staff here at Drezner’s World wishes to apologize for hammering home this point again and again and again and again, but it bears repeating: the Trump administration has no clear strategy in its fight with Iran. It’s increasingly clear that this will not end well for them. The only question remaining is how badly it will end for everyone else. Because it seems like it will be real bad.

All I know for sure is that Donald Trump was right about one big thing: I am sick and tired of all of this winning.