For a man who has engaged in furious conversations over the last week urging Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to stop military hostilities that could undo efforts to forge a peace deal with Iran, Donald Trump has failed utterly to heed his own advice.
Trump’s surprise decision on Tuesday night to launch military reprisals against the Iranian regime came after a US Apache attack helicopter was downed while on patrol near the Strait of Hormuz.
There is still confusion over whether the attack was caused by an Iranian missile, a drone, or some other incident. But when the US President claimed on his social media account that the Apache was “shot down” by Iranian forces, he said he deemed reprisals a “necessity”.
So American forces went back into action, engaging in what US Central Command (Centcom) described as a “proportional response to unjustified Iranian aggression”.
The US claims to have hit Iranian air defences, which raised fresh questions about Trump’s truth-telling, given he has maintained for weeks that Iran no longer boasts any kind of air defence operations. Centcom said other targets included ground control stations and surveillance sites near the strait.
In response, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) launched strikes on US targets across the region, after Iran called the US’s actions a “violation” of its sovereignty. The response was a clear sign of just how easily a full-scale conflict could reignite. The IRGC claimed to have launched 21 attacks against American bases. One video on social media appeared to show a missile hitting the headquarters of the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet in Bahrain.
For Trump, what a difference a day makes.
On Monday, he had shown no signs of willingness to take action that might upend ongoing negotiations, which he claimed could bear fruit within “two or three days”. He said a deal to extend a ceasefire with Iran that came into force on 7 April was almost at hand.
“We have a good chance of doing it. We should be able to do it in one hour, if you want to know the truth,” he told reporters.
Trump also suggested that any kind of substantive US military action would mean “you won’t have the strait open for months”. Hours later, he told The Wall Street Journal that the downing of the helicopter “wasn’t a big deal”.
A US Apache attack helicopter like the one that was downed over the Strait of Hormuz this week (Photo: Eric Lee/Bloomberg)But his mind seems to have been changed by Pete Hegseth, his Secretary of War, and Dan Caine, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. They reportedly recommended military action during a classified White House briefing, possibly because the rescue operation to secure the safe return of the two airmen aboard the Apache far more complex and dangerous than the President had publicly claimed.
CBS News described the rescue mission as “historic”, reporting that it had involved the first-time use of an unmanned military drone boat to locate the crew and bring them to safety.
In response, the Pentagon may have wanted to send a message to Hegseth’s 50,000 “war-fighters” assembled in the region that the Commander in Chief understands the daily danger in which they find themselves.
The US is saying that the military action will have no bearing on peace negotiations, and Trump continues to claim he “calls all the shots”, not Netanyahu, and certainly not the Iranian regime.
But Tehran has demonstrated in the last 48 hours that it still has enough military capability to bring down what Trump described as a “highly sophisticated” US attack helicopter, and launch missiles targeting American bases.
It has also demonstrated that it continues to get under the US President’s skin, and that the peace process is far from over, despite what he tries to claim.
Trump has repeatedly shown his desire for an off-ramp in the conflict – and has pushed back on Netanyahu for launching attacks against Lebanon. But now the US leader himself is running the risk of reigniting a hot war.
Iran’s hand in the peace talks is arguably being strengthened, not weakened. And thanks to the latest attacks, it could be a lot longer than “two or three days” before any kind of ceasefire extension is sealed.
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