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At best, one could say Trump really did lament the horrific loss of life, and at the least, as a builder and deal-maker, wars for him rarely made any practical business sense, i.e., it seems wiser to build things and mutually profit than to blow them up and impoverish all involved.
Add it all up, and what Trump is doing vis-à-vis Iran seems in line with what he has said and done about “America First”.
He sees Israel’s interests in neutering the nuclear agendas of the thuggish and dangerous Iran as strategically similar to those of our own and our allies—but not necessarily tactically in every instance identically so.
Thus, Trump wants the Iranian nuclear threat taken out by Israel—if feasible. And he will help facilitate that aim logistically and diplomatically.
If it is not possible for Israel to finish the task, in a cost-to-benefit analysis he will take it out—but, again, only after he is convinced that the end of Iran’s nukes and our intervention far outweigh the dangers of a superpower intervention, attacks on U.S. installations in the region, a wider, ongoing American commitment, spiraling oil prices, or distractions or even injury to his ambitious domestic agenda.
Trump is willing to talk to the Iranians, rarely insults their thuggish leaders, and wants to show that he always preferred exhausting negotiations to preemptive war.
That patience allows him to say legitimately that force was his last choice—as he sees all the alternatives waning.
Thus, Iran’s fate was in its own hands, either to be a non-nuclear rich state analogous to the Gulf States but no longer a half-century rogue terrorist regime seeking to overturn and then appropriate the Middle East order and to threaten the West with nukes.
Tactically, Trump thinks out loud. He offers numerous possible solutions, issues threats, and deadlines (some rhetorical or negotiable, others literal and ironclad). He alternates between sounding like a UN diplomat and a Cold War hawk, and sometime pivots and reverses himself as situations change.
All this can confuse his allies, but perhaps confounds more his enemies.
In sum, he believes as far as enemies go, public predictability is dangerous—unpredictability even volatility being the safer course.
Add it all up, and there is a reason why Putin did not invade Ukraine during Trump’s first term; why for the first time in nearly 50 years the Middle East has some chance at normality with the demise of the Iran’s Shia crescent of terror; and why Europe and our Asian allies may be more irritated by Trump than by Obama and Biden, but also probably feel that he is more likely to defend their shared Western interests in extremis, and will lead a far stronger and more deterrent West than his predecessors, one that will prevent war by assuring others that it is suicidal to attack the U.S.
https://x.com/VDHanson/status/1935398589125247371
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