The Trump administration cited the threat posed by Iran’s uranium enrichment program as the reason for U.S. air attacks that took place early on Sunday morning. Fears that Iran was moving closer to the ability to build a nuclear weapon were also the ostensible reason for Israeli assaults that began almost a week earlier.
But something far more dangerous and unstable than nukes was the actual trigger for the current war.
Once again, as happens so often in history, the real peril we face in this moment can be traced to the egos of old men. (And I’m not just saying that because the U.S. attacks were called “Operation Midnight Hammer.”)
No Intel, No Strategy, No Problem
It was the desire of a pathologically insecure president, Donald Trump, to appear strong and that of an Israeli Prime Minister desperate to cling to power that has brought the world to this potentially profoundly destabilizing moment.
We know it was not the prospect of Iranian nuclear weapons that got us here because, as recently as a week ago, it was the publicly stated collective judgment of the U.S. intelligence community—the largest and most resource-rich in the world—that Iran had not made any notable recent progress toward enriching uranium to the concentrations necessary to build a weapon, toward actually building a bomb, nor toward having the ability to accurately deliver such a weapon.
Further, we know that it is the assessment of experts that even destroying the facilities that have been targeted by the U.S. and Israel would likely only delay Iran from being able to build a weapon once they made the decision to do so—a decision there is every reason to believe they had not yet made. What is more, attacks such as those unleashed against Iran would actually create an incentive to accelerate the development of a nuclear deterrent rather than dissuade Iran from dismantling its program.
But Trump, as we know, does not listen to experts because he knows better. That is why at this precarious moment, we have a country led by the most dysfunctional national security process and the weakest group of senior-level advisors in our country’s history.
In fact, the president’s ego has done more damage to national security than the bunker buster bombs did to the Iranian nuclear facility at Fordow no matter what post-attack Pentagon assessments may assert.
If the goal of those attacks was really to reduce the risk of Iran developing nuclear weapons, then Netanyahu would not have urged Trump to abandon the effective agreement that was actually achieving precisely that goal that had been negotiated during the term of President Barack Obama. And Trump would not have followed through and pulled the U.S. out of the agreement in 2018. And if Trump did not recognize the value of such negotiated diplomatic agreements, he would not have spent the past several months working toward one to replace the one he blew up.
But Trump couldn’t stand that Obama had negotiated the breakthrough agreement with the Iranians. And that is where ego began to enter the equation for him. He wanted to undo the deal so he could renegotiate it and claim credit for doing a better version under the Trump brand name. Trump’s manhood was at stake, and millions will pay the price for it.
The Risk to Bibi Wasn’t Nukes; It Was the Possibility of a Deal
Meanwhile, the Netanyahu brand throughout his career was based on playing up the Iranian threat. But matters became more complicated when Netanyahu faced both political peril and the prospect of going to jail for his corruption. When he discovered that the best way to hold on to his high office was to go beyond just targeted revenge for the heinous Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023 and to engage Israel in a new wave of intensive conflicts, he did not hesitate to do so regardless of the cost of those wars, the lies he would have to tell to justify them, or the damage he might do to Israel.
Admittedly, Israel has scored important victories against Iranian proxies across the Middle East. But, rather than seeing the consequence of those victories as creating a moment of weakness for Iran that might make effective renegotiation of a deal more possible, Netanyahu feared such a deal. Because, with the threat of Iran contained, he would likely begin to lose the shield against prosecution and political defeat that being a wartime prime minister has given him.
As a result, he began to pursue a policy that was contrary to Trump’s highly publicized second-term goal of achieving a deal with Iran. When the deal grew closer, Netanyahu decided to act against Iran. He did so not because he feared a greater risk of Iranian nukes—because, as we’ve established, there was no such greater risk—but because he feared a deal.
In so doing, he calculated—correctly—that Trump would not want to lose face by appearing out of control of his Israeli “ally” once they had attacked. And Trump did not. So after seeking to distance himself from the attacks, the American president decided to buy into and own them.
The intelligence was ignored. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth made that clear again in a post-attack press briefing on Sunday morning. He said that Trump had “looked at the intelligence” and nonetheless “concluded” there was a threat. (It was interesting to note that Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, who had testified about the intelligence community’s conclusions regarding Iran, was apparently not present at the National Security Council meeting at which the bombings were monitored.)
As for traditional steps that precede entering a war, like having a strategy, there was no hint of that either. Trump appears to hope that the bombings will intimidate the Iranians and force them to negotiate the deal they were negotiating previously—even though him breaking the prior deal and now attacking even while discussions were going on seem likely to have the opposite effect. In the wake of the attacks, the Iranians have said as much.
Neither Trump’s MAGA base nor his pal, Russian President Vladimir Putin, wants him to fight a protracted war. What is more, Russia’s post-attack response was pretty bellicose—not surprising given how important an ally Iran has been to Russia in the Ukraine war. Russia’s former president, Dmitry Medvedev, asserted on Sunday that the Iranian nuclear weapons program would continue and that “a number of countries are ready to directly supply Iran with their own nuclear weapons.”
Medvedev is known for demented bluster. But his comments illustrate just how many x-factors have been unleashed because Trump and Netanyahu have allowed their own egos to get in the way of reasoned strategy development, cool assessment of available intelligence, or their country’s national interests.
At this point, we just don’t know whether the attacks achieved their purpose, what Iran’s response will be militarily or through steps like shutting the Stratis of Hormuz, which their parliament has already voted to approve. Will Israel continue to push for regime change? How will the Iranian people respond? Will North Korea, which uses the same kind of centrifuges as Iran, help them with rebuilding their program? What will China do? Right now, there are more questions than answers by far, and it seems few of them have been considered by either Trump or Netanyahu.
While fears of all this spinning out into World War III are likely overstated, it seems almost inevitable that it will become a big, protracted, costly mess that jeopardizes America, Israel, the Middle East, and the world.
A “one and done” this is not.
Amazingly, after the huge disaster of an Iraq War that was based on faulty assessments of the weapons of mass destruction risk posed by a large country in the heart of the Middle East and an over-assessment of what could be achieved as a result of applying American force, we seem to have learned nothing.
A long time ago, I wrote an article for Foreign Policy in which I stated that historians would likely look upon our lifetimes as an era of not one but a series of interlocking, ill-considered, and self-defeating Gulf Wars. Tragically, we seem to be writing the latest sad chapter in that history. And once again, the reason for our miscalculations seems to be the arrogance and egos of the men we charged with keeping us safe, who seem to be driven, by their weaknesses rather than their strengths, to do just the opposite.
The post Opinion: Why Trump’s Ego is More Dangerous than Iran’s Nuclear Threat appeared first on The Daily Beast.
