There was something for everyone in US President Donald Trump’s appearances on Monday, at which he voiced so many inherent contradictions that it remains impossible to understand the trajectory he now intends to take towards Iran.
If his goal was to create the fog of war and confuse his enemy, he may have succeeded. But if his mixed messaging indicates that he has no idea how to extricate himself from a conflict that he chose to ignite on 28 February, without any apparent understanding of its potential complexities, then it would suggest he remains completely up the creek.
Anyone looking for certainty was disappointed, not only by the president’s lunchtime press conference but also by an earlier appearance alongside the Easter Bunny at an event for families on the White House lawn.
Trump professes to maintain a determination to force the Iranian government to bend to his will, if necessary by attacking the country’s civilian infrastructure over the next few hours in an assault that the world’s leading human rights organisations warn may trigger war crimes investigations against him.
“The entire country can be taken down in one night, and that night might be tomorrow night”, the president warned, darkly.
“They are at the weakest point they have ever been”, he claimed, just 96 hours after Iran managed to shoot down a US Air Force fighter jet that sparked the weekend’s daring and risky American extraction of two F-15’s crew members.
But Trump also expressed child-like disappointment with the Iranians’ failure to surrender. “We are the winner. We won!” he insisted, almost plaintively.
At times, he now speaks of the war in the past tense. Trump seems to be fighting a battle with himself over how to bring the conflict to a conclusion.
“They don’t want to cry uncle”, he said. “If they don’t, they’ll have no bridges, no power power plants”, he threatened.
But he then went on to indicate that he still prefers an offramp that would deliver what he projects as a simple solution, mutually beneficial to both governments.
“If I had my choice, what I would like to do is take the oil. It’s there for the taking and there’s nothing they can do about it”, he said during the Easter event.
“I’d take the oil, and I’d also take care of the people of Iran…if it was my choice I would keep the oil, but I also want to make the people of Iran happy”.
He indicated favouring a Venezuela-style arrangement that sees no regime change in Tehran, but instead a cosy agreement with Washington allowing the country’s fundamentalist rulers to remain in power provided they hand control of their oil industry over to US interests.
Yet later, during his press conference, Trump claimed the Iranian people are begging him to continue bombing their country. “Please keep bombing. Do it!”, he claimed Iranians were urging the United States, citing “numerous intercepts” of communications for which he provided no supporting evidence.
But Trump is willing, perhaps even desperate, to sell those same Iranians down the Strait of Hormuz. He indicated negotiations with the government were continuing as fast as events-on-the-ground permitted.
“The biggest problem we have in our negotiation is that they can’t communicate”, he said. “So we’re communicating like they used to communicate 2,000 years ago with children, bringing a note back and forth”.
He knows the clock is ticking, as polling shows Americans souring on the conflict by-the-hour.
“Unfortunately, the American people would like to see us come home”, he conceded during the Easter Monday event, grumbling that the growing number of voters opposing the war are “foolish”.
As the president spoke, the “America First” influencer and former Fox News host Tucker Carlson was preparing to use his electronic media pulpit to pile pressure on the president.
In the latest episode of his eponymous webcast, Carlson flays Trump for his expletive-laden Easter Sunday social media message in which he ordered the Iranians to “Open the F***in’ Strait”.
Carlson called the president’s warning to destroy civilian infrastructure “vile, on every level…it begins with a promise to use the US military, OUR military, to destroy civilian infrastructure in another country.
“Which is to say to commit a war crime, a moral crime against the people of the country, whose welfare…was one of the reasons we supposedly went into this war in the first place”.
Carlson even suggested Trump and his top officials are already at risk of war crimes investigations. “We have intentionally bombed civilian infrastructure in Iran. It’s totally unacceptable”, he fumed.
Trump remains between a rock and a hard place of his own creation in Iran. In the fraught hours to come, his decisions about whether to order strikes on civilian targets will play a major role in the fashioning of his legacy.
In the battle that Trump is now waging with himself, there is no predictable outcome.
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