President Donald Trump’s unauthorized war in Iran is doomed to bring chaos and anarchy, not positive change, his biographer claims.
Early Saturday morning, Trump announced that the U.S. had begun “major combat operations in Iran.” The president has argued that the war is meant to eliminate Iran’s nuclear program, which he previously insisted had been completely “obliterated,” and bring regime change to the country.
“Iran is a country,” Wolff said on the Inside Trump’s Head podcast. “It’s a deeply factional situation. So what is he saying?… Well, he’s not saying anything is the point. But what is the result of what he’s saying? The result is, I don’t know: Chaos? Anarchy? A civil war?”
“A civil war,” Wolff’s co-host, Joanna Coles, agreed.
Wolff continued to say it’s a “situation even more precarious and unpredictable than the current situation. We don’t know. So this is back to this black hole thing: We don’t know what the goals of the United States are.”
“We don’t know what the personal goals of Donald Trump are. We don’t know what the goals of the Iranian people are,” he added.
“Well, we know enough that there are a lot of Iranian people who are protesting against a really dominant, violent, unpleasant regime,” Coles said.
Protests against the Ayatollah erupted in Iran late last year, resulting in the largest protest movement in the country since the 1979 Iranian Revolution. Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei ordered a crackdown on the protests, and thousands of people have been killed as a result.
“We know that Iran has been a problem in the Middle East for some time,” Coles said. “We know that it’s been a headache for America for many years.”
Coles pointed to one moment in Trump’s middle-of-the-night war declaration in which he referenced the 1979 Iran hostage crisis, in which 66 Americans were taken hostage at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran.
“He basically gives a potted history of Iran,” Coles noted. “It’s almost as if he’s giving it to himself as much as to anybody else—but reminding people of the American hostages, which is such a Boomer moment. It’s probably perhaps the moment most seared in Boomers’ memories in terms of foreign policy. Jimmy Carter tried to release them, absolute disaster. Reagan swings into power and immediately they’re released.”
She added, “I wonder if that’s at the back of Donald Trump’s head, too.”
“There’s always a mishmash of factual, semi-factual, and historical references that he doesn’t quite understand and that he skimmed over,” Wolff said.
“I’m sure someone’s given him a deep briefing document, and he’s just kind of ‘Enough with that,’” Coles replied.
Wolff said that he had recently read the book King of Kings: The Iranian Revolution—A Story of Hubris, Delusion and Catastrophic Miscalculation, by Scott Anderson. He said he was sure that Trump did not read that book.
“We can be confident in that,” Coles quipped.
“Everyone else should, because it really sets the stage for an understanding that Iran has been probably the single most pivotal field of contention, foreign contention, from the last several generations,” Wolff said.
“Right, and a problem for all American presidents,” Coles said.
“We have gotten this wrong so many times. And it’s such, in the end, an incredibly complicated situation of which Donald Trump is not going to want to deal with, does not want to deal with, is not going to deal with,” Wolff said.
“The thesis being that we will use what may be this overwhelming example of shock and awe to destabilize the situation and then claim victory,” Wolff continued.
When reached by the Daily Beast for comment, White House Communications Director Steven Cheung gave a recycled statement on Wolff.
“Michael Wolff is a lying sack of s–t and has been proven to be a fraud. He routinely fabricates stories originating from his sick and warped imagination, only possible because he has a severe and debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome that has rotted his peanut-sized brain,” Cheung said.
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