Astonishingly, President Trump and his aides were caught unprepared when Iran, under air assault from the United States and Israel, retaliated by targeting shipping in the Persian Gulf region and specifically through the Strait of Hormuz. Military planners have pointed out for decades that the waterway—through which one-fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas passes—is highly vulnerable to Iranian assault. But the Trump administration acknowledged in classified briefings, CNN reported last night, that it did not make provision for a closure because officials assumed that such a move would hurt Iran more than the United States.
In its failure to anticipate Iran’s reaction, the administration ignored a dynamic that former Defense Secretary James Mattis, a first-term Trump appointee, was fond of pointing out: Once hostilities begin, “the enemy gets a vote.” U.S. leaders have drastically underestimated the Iranian regime’s ability to survive, adjust, and strike back. Just two weeks into a war that began at a time of the president’s choosing, the U.S. appears uncertain about what to do next.
[Tom Nichols: Operational excellence, strategic incompetence]
The campaign that Trump launched in conjunction with Israel has so far depended on superior air power and detailed intelligence about which targets to hit. But Iran has multiple ways to imperil vessels in the Strait of Hormuz. The country is a major producer of cheap aerial drones—which Russia has used to deadly effect against Ukraine over the past four years. Iran also seems to be using sea drones and, according to some reports, may be laying mines in the strait. Many of the systems used to deploy such weaponry are small and easily transportable, so tracking them down is not easy. Doing so requires constant air patrols, and even with those, some Iranian equipment will slip through.
Deploying U.S. naval vessels to accompany ships from the Persian Gulf through the Strait of Hormuz could help protect the flow of oil and other vital raw materials, but it would also leave the escorting vessels themselves vulnerable. The Trump administration—for good reason—seems terrified of that option. “It’ll happen relatively soon, but it can’t happen now,” Energy Secretary Chris Wright told CNBC Thursday. “We’re simply not ready.” Some military experts have suggested that the only way the United States can reopen trade through the vital strait is to send ground forces into Iran—a step that, opinion polls suggest, would be highly unpopular with the American public.
When Trump went to war with Iran, he made the same assumption that Vladimir Putin had in invading Ukraine four years earlier. Each believed that his nation’s superior weaponry and military experience would crush any opposition that the target government could muster. In a video address released shortly after U.S. and Israeli forces began bombing, Trump said of Iran, “This regime will soon learn that no one should challenge the strength and might of the United States Armed Forces.” He added that “no military on Earth” was “even close to its power, strength, or sophistication.” Iran, he was suggesting, was all but doomed.
Initially, the air campaign achieved everything Trump could have hoped for. The U.S. and Israel quickly gained air supremacy over Iran and now have the ability to hit almost any target they choose. They succeeded in killing much of Iran’s top leadership, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei. Yet ever since, the limits of Trump’s ability to control the situation have become clearer and clearer.
In capturing Venezuela’s dictator, Nicolás Maduro, two months ago and apparently consenting to Vice President Delcy Rodríguez’s assumption of power in that country, Trump pulled off his version of regime change—removing an antagonistic leader without pulling down the underlying system of autocratic government. He was satisfied with, even ecstatic about, what Rodríguez and her allies did: They quickly bowed to U.S. power and put on at least the appearance of compliance.
By contrast, the Iranian regime did not capitulate, but fought back, even while lacking a supreme leader for days. Iranian drones and missiles struck American forces, most notably in Kuwait, and compelled the United States and its allies in the Persian Gulf region to run down their stocks of air-defense weaponry.
In the meantime, the surviving members of the Iranian regime have continued to publicly defy and insult the United States. Trump seemed to assume after Khamenei’s death that Iran’s next ruler would be someone of his choice. “We’re going to have to choose that person along with Iran,” he told Reuters. “We’re going to have to choose that person.”
Top Iranian clerics ignored Trump’s preferences and chose Khamenei’s son Mojtaba, a hard-liner whom the U.S. president had previously deemed “unacceptable to me.” In his first public statement as supreme leader, the younger Khamenei declared, “Certainly, the lever of closing the Strait of Hormuz must continue to be used.” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Friday that the new Iranian leader is wounded, but whether that will hamper Tehran’s military operations is unclear.
Trump is now learning what Putin found out in Ukraine: that most leaders who start a war with an assumption of a quick and decisive victory are underestimating the enemy. Some militaries are too confident in their own capacity to overwhelm any hostile army; some are drawn from societies that simply look down on their enemies. Discounting the enemy’s ability to adapt is also a trait of megalomaniacal leaders—many of whom choose advisers who tell them what they want to hear and suppress information that would make them unhappy.
At a briefing Friday, Hegseth disputed the CNN report about the administration’s failure to plan, calling it “fake news,” and implied that a Trump-friendly billionaire’s impending acquisition of the network would head off such skeptical news coverage in the future. “The sooner David Ellison takes over that network, the better,” Hegseth said. But the plain facts of the situation are obviously unfavorable to American interests. While U.S. allies suffer and world oil prices rise, Iran is exporting more oil than before war broke out. Other producers, including Russia, that do not rely on the Strait of Hormuz are profiting handsomely.
[Rogé Karma: ‘We would be entering a completely different world’]
Things have become so bad that the Trump administration has been pivoting wildly from grandiose statements of victory to desperate warnings that, for example, the Iranians “better not try anything cute.” This week, the administration changed position completely on releasing oil reserves from strategic stocks.
In a slightly bizarre turn, the United States has had to reach out to Ukraine for assistance in defending against Iranian drones. The Trump administration scaled back U.S. assistance to Ukraine and has consistently appeared sympathetic to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s views, but Ukrainians are now working with American forces and those of some of the Gulf States, training them on how to use cheap, effective Ukrainian equipment to take down inexpensive Iranian UAVs.
U.S. forces are not going to be defeated in battle and can still attack any individual Iranian target they want. But the U.S. is struggling because Iran also got a vote. And with that vote, it is posing strategic questions that the Trump administration clearly did not anticipate and for which it did not prepare.
*Sources: Morteza Nikoubazl / NurPhoto / Getty; AFP / Getty; AP; Getty
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