PART I — When a Leader Who’s “Never Wrong” Commits a Catastrophic Blunder

Trump has now committed an error so large that it threatens the central illusion on which depend not only his public identity (hats saying “Trump was right about everything”) but also his intense narcissistic needs. To his base—and to himself—he is always the winner, always the one who knows best.

In 2020, and ever since, we’ve witnessed that he is incapable of accepting even the disgrace—relatively minor compared with his present bungling—of losing an election to gain a second term. Jimmy Carter and George H. W. Bush both absorbed such a defeat, and were able to carry on with dignity. But Trump denied his defeat—to the country, and likely to himself.

If he couldn’t handle that defeat, how will he deal with the scale of failure that is now becoming visible?

His ill-conceived, unilaterally decided war on Iran appears to be a failure of an entirely different order—one that threatens not just his standing, but the standing of the United States itself.

With the combination of its disastrous consequences and the strikingly slipshod way in which this war of choice was launched, this stands to be judged the least defensible presidential blunder in American history. Less defensible than Herbert Hoover’s missteps in the early years of the Great Depression, which were grounded in much of the economic thought of that era, or Lyndon B. Johnson’s disastrous escalation in Vietnam, with which much of the American national security establishment agreed.

And what will be especially hard for a malignant narcissist like Trump to admit is this: with this blunder, he has made the United States an object of contempt and disdain. As Simon Rosenberg put it, the world is experiencing “an ongoing, global humiliation of our once great country,” with cascading economic and geopolitical consequences.

Not only is this likely to prove a complete failure; that failure will also be completely Trump’s.

The decision to launch this war was Trump’s alone—undertaken without meaningful consultation with Congress, without bringing the American people along, and without the coordination with allies that has traditionally helped shape and restrain American power. (Not only did the buck STOP at the President’s desk; it originated there, too.)

Never has an American president made such a decision so entirely on his own. Even more striking is the utterly reckless folly with which this unilateral decision was made—bizarrely lacking in careful consideration of possible scenarios and without any plausible path to achieving results that would justify going to war.

So, if America is being humiliated, Trump OWNS the humiliation.

And it attaches to America itself only because the nation elected him President.

That is one reason why the nation might want to slough off this malignant figure. But there’s another reason, too. Ending the catastrophic consequences of this war may require the United States to do something that this President will never do.

Because ending the pain will require changing course, and the necessary changing course may require the President of the United States to do something that this President will never do because it would be tantamount to an admission of error and failure.

Here’s the trap we’re in – so long as Donald Trump is America’s commander-in-chief.

PART II — Iran Can Inflict Pain Indefinitely

The Iranians can keep this war going — and that regime can survive the pain the Americans inflict far longer than Americans can endure the economic and diplomatic damage the Iranians inflict.

Iran’s great power, for the long game, is that it has a choke-hold on the American and global economies.

With relatively simple means—drones, mines, small boats—it can repeatedly disrupt shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, a chokepoint through which a large share of the world’s oil must pass. It does not have to shut the Strait down completely. It need only make its use uncertain enough to destabilize energy markets and send economic shockwaves through the world.

And it can do this again and again.

The United States can escalate – more bombing, boots on the ground – but no escalation promises to solve the problem. American and Israeli bombing do not seem to have loosened the regime’s hold on power, and Iran’s ability to inflict economic pain appears in vulnerable to further such attacks.

So a grim pattern emerges. (A pattern that University of Chicago political scientist Robert A. Pape has called an “escalation trap” — see his Substack, The Escalation Trap — in which initial tactical success draws a country into a conflict that becomes more costly and harder to escape over time.)

Iran can continue to impose pain. The United States cannot easily stop it. And time works in Iran’s favor, because governments that answer to the people can’t keep paying a high price that purchases nothing.

Time is on Iran’s side for another reason: the damage the United States can inflict is already showing diminishing returns, because so many strikes have already hit the most valuable targets—while the economic damage Iran can inflict by choking off roughly 20% of the world’s oil supply can grow steadily more punishing over time.

Ending this crisis will likely require a change of course—some way of ending that seems destined to look like all pain and no gain. While such a retreat might be dressed up in various ways, the greater the costs that have been paid—and the clearer it becomes that the nation has nothing to show for the mess our President has made—the harder it will be to disguise the reality of failure. And failure and defeat are what this President appears incapable of acknowledging.

That’s the trap we’re in—so long as Donald Trump is America’s commander-in-chief.

PART III: A Way Out? 

If that becomes clear to most of the nation, including elected officials, a question that once seemed unthinkable may begin to arise: If the costs of this blunder are unendurable and there is no escape from this trap so long as Trump remains in office, how can the obstacle to a solution be removed?

While that scenario may seem unlikely, it is nonetheless plausible. Americans have shown themselves far more responsive to declines in their economic well-being than to violations of moral norms. Many who can tolerate the latter react sharply when their purchasing power is diminished. For that reason, the political repercussions of an Iran war—given its potential to inflict serious economic injury—could prove far greater than the forces that have already driven Trump’s support well under water.