President Donald Trump may have already passed the point of no return in Iran and walked headfirst into an “escalation trap” — with one senior White House official “practically” admitting as much, Axios reported Monday.
Trump first authorized strikes on Iran on Feb. 28 and appeared hopeful that the operation — purportedly aimed at toppling the Iranian government — would be swift, much like the Trump administration’s attack on Venezuela in January or its strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities last summer.
Iran has not capitulated, however, and has only dug its heels in further in vowing to block the passage of all U.S.-aligned sea vessels attempting to pass through the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial shipping route through which 20% of the world’s oil trade flows.
Iran’s defiance, according to one senior Trump administration official, has only strengthened Trump’s resolve, pushing the conflict further into what some experts have described as an “escalation trap.”
“A senior Trump administration official practically admitted as much,” Axios wrote.
“The Iranians f—— around with the Strait makes [Trump] more dug in,” the official told the outlet’s Marc Caputo, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
The “escalation trap” is a term coined by Robert Pape, a professor of political science at the University of Chicago, and describes a common pattern observed in modern conflicts in which military retaliations and counter-retaliations exponentially reduce options for de-escalation.
And, with Trump digging his heels in on his administration’s war against Iran, deploying thousands of U.S. Marines to the region and striking Iran’s oil export hub “just for fun,” the window for a quick end to the conflict is rapidly closing, Pape has argued.
“The most dangerous phase of war is rarely the beginning,” Pape wrote Sunday in a social media post on X. “It is the middle phase, when leaders believe backing down would signal weakness and escalation becomes easier than stopping. The opening moves of the Iran war are already behind us.”
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