Nobody else will clean up the mess in Iran. That means President Donald Trump needs to finish the war he started so impulsively — by setting a limited, achievable goal of reopening the Strait of Hormuz and containing an Iranian regime that’s seething for revenge.
This metastasizing war entered a dangerous new phase Wednesday as Israel struck Iran’s South Pars gas field and Iran retaliated by hitting Qatar’s nearby liquefied natural gas facilities at Ras Laffan. The Trump administration’s predicament was suggested by Thursday’s statement from Treasury Secretary Scott Bessant that the United States may “un-sanction” Iranian oil in tankers to ease the price shock, even as the war continues.
Gas may be an even bigger worry for the global economy than oil. Qatar provides about 20 percent of the world’s LNG supply, and spot prices have nearly doubled this month. Energy experts tell me Gulf countries could export at least 7 million barrels a day using pipelines to bypass the strait. No such workaround exists for Qatari gas.
Trump took a rare step away from Israel after the gas attacks, saying it had “violently lashed out” in attacking South Pars without informing him. He promised that Israel would launch “NO MORE ATTACKS” on South Pars if Iran refrained from hitting Qatar again. It was Trump’s first hint of reciprocal de-escalation since the war began Feb. 28.
Unwinding this conflict will be much harder than starting it was. Declaring “victory” and walking away would leave the region in dangerous disarray. To truly end the crisis, Trump will have to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and put limits on Iran’s ragged new leadership. He can achieve these goals through coercion, or diplomacy, or a combination of the two. But he must choose a strategy and implement it.
Trump will compound the damage if he takes out his frustration over Iran by bashing Europe for its refusal to provide military aid. Attacking Iran was defensible; wrecking NATO isn’t. And if Trump, in his pique, decides to abandon Ukraine and seek solace from Russian President Vladimir Putin, even as Moscow is reportedly feeding Iran intelligence about American targets, Congress should rebel.
U.S. allies took a step Thursday toward helping Trump defuse the widening crisis. The leaders of Britain, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Japan issued a joint statement in which they expressed “our readiness to contribute to appropriate efforts to ensure safe passage through the Strait.” That’s far from a joint naval coalition, but it gives Trump some support when he needs it.
Politicians are rarely good at self-criticism, and Trump usually seems incapable of it. But he should recognize that he has stumbled in Iran because of his “chaotic, ego-driven approach to the presidency,” as the New York Times described it this week. He didn’t heed warnings that Iran would be a tougher adversary than Venezuela, and he didn’t think through an endgame. He was afflicted by what military analyst Tom Nichols described as “victory disease.”
Trump should listen to Susie Wiles, his friend and White House chief of staff. She told Vanity Fair that the president has “an alcoholic’s personality.” He “operates [with] a view that there’s nothing he can’t do. Nothing, zero, nothing.” That sense of infallibility, drunk with power, so to speak, was evident in his Iran decisions. Trump is a teetotaler but maybe Wiles and other close aides should consider an intervention anyway.
The path out of this war begins with realistic objectives. The United States and Israel probably can’t topple the government, but they can weaken it so severely that its threat can be managed. In an acceptable endgame, missile and missile production facilities are destroyed; the nuclear program and its scientists truly have been obliterated; and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is hobbled.
A battered regime may prefer a ceasefire to internal chaos and dysfunction. Israeli sources gave the Wall Street Journal details suggesting that this moment may be approaching because of relentless decapitation strikes. “A sense of disorder is starting to take hold” in Tehran, the Journal reported Wednesday. That disorder will grow.
If Iran opens a serious negotiating channel, Trump should demand at least three conditions: Iran must agree to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and allow free passage for all vessels; it must verifiably remove or dilute down more than 400 kilograms of highly enriched uranium buried near its nuclear facility at Isfahan and other sites; it must allow International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors to verify that its nuclear program remains dismantled.
Maybe such an agreement would only be temporary, and the regime would use the pause that followed to rebuild its missile and nuclear programs. That would bring another round of war, in the cycle Israelis chillingly describe as “mowing the lawn.” Many Americans may be furious that Trump put us in such a “forever war” situation, but his decisions can’t be undone now.
If Iran does agree to open the strait, then European and Asian nations must join in providing ships for a coalition to safeguard commercial traffic. In that situation, America’s allies can’t complain, in the words of German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius, “This is not our war, we have not started it.” They’ll have an overwhelming interest to protect a ceasefire and ensure free transit in the Gulf.
Iran may refuse negotiations. In that case, Trump would have to reopen the strait via military power. The United States has already begun bombing military facilities at the oil terminus of Kharg Island and along the Iranian coast. What would come next? Mark Montgomery, a retired rear admiral, told the Journal that keeping the strait open would require constant presence of fighter jets armed with anti-drone missiles, helicopters that could strike small boats, and Aegis-class destroyers to escort tankers.
Trump would escalate this conflict further if he sends Marines to seize Kharg Island, an idea floated on X by his friend Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina). Holding Iran’s oil terminal hostage would be dramatic, but it strikes me as a bad idea, if the goal is to reduce oil prices. “You can’t shoot the hostage,” as Robert Kagan of the Brookings Institution told me this week. Taking Iranian oil off the market indefinitely would only make the oil squeeze worse.
Trump’s dilemma in ending a war he bizarrely still calls “a little excursion” was clear in comments in the Oval Office on Thursday. “We can take out [Kharg] island anytime we want,” he said. But wary of going further down the slippery slope, he cautioned, “We’re not putting troops anywhere.”
Finishing this war successfully will take a lot more planning and patience than Trump has shown so far. If he keeps flailing at imaginary enemies who refuse his demands for support, he’ll only make things worse. He got the world into this situation. Now he has an obligation to find a pathway out.
The post The Iran war is metastasizing. Trump needs an endgame. appeared first on Washington Post.
