Stephen Wertheim
@stephenwertheim · Think tanks & analysts — US/UK
Stephen Wertheim is a Carnegie Endowment senior fellow and Yale Law lecturer on US foreign policy.
As Trump touts progress in the Strait of Hormuz, some say time is now on Washington’s side, not Tehran’s. Don’t count on it. To convert operational progress into strategic success, the United States would have to convince Iran to capitulate or make a deal on terms it wouldn’t previously have accepted. But if Iran’s leadership feels so pressured as to consider major concessions that would damage the standing of the regime at home, it is more likely to escalate in an attempt to get Trump to back down. I discussed this and more with @tparsi and @TomSwitzerMedia: https://t.co/zwg3B5DiQa
I told @TomSwitzerMedia that Trump’s strategy creates a paradox: the more it succeeds in making Iran hurt, the more incentive Iran has to escalate.
Important from @RoKhanna. If the Iran war doesn’t end before the midterms, Trump will likely try to escalate after them and from there will be even more driven by his legacy rather than the needs of Americans.
The Iran war is a crisis of American governance. Nobody voted for it. Trump ripped up the nuclear deal for partisan reasons and then launched an attack he thought would be quick but that every decent analyst said would unfold basically as it has. Even so, Congress won't end it. https://t.co/1OMMZCtS8G
Trump's Iran paradox: he wants to squeeze Iran without returning to all-out war, but the more effectively he squeezes Iran, the more incentive Iran has to escalate and force him to back to all-out war. https://t.co/Gm4kqUWeJ5
If Americans got the chance to vote on the Iran war at the outset, and were told it would cost over $1,000 per household for the first six months, they would have rejected the war in a landslide.
I told @Monocle_Radio that having attacked Iran to burnish his legacy, Trump may not stop until he can semi-plausibly claim a win. If so, he’ll probably be at war for the rest of his term — and end up as the president who started another forever war. https://t.co/Rn1SJ9xIxO
"All the pathologies I saw in the Iraq War are present in this one, only in more virulent form." https://t.co/oJdN8DCuX6
“The irony of Trump’s failed war on Iran — and his stop-start negotiations to try to end it — is that it has so severely weakened Washington’s ability to exert pressure on Tehran that no future administration will ever be able to revert to the traditional U.S. playbook . . . The war could — and should — force a broader reckoning with 47 years of failed strategy and change Washington’s approach for good.” https://t.co/EncaKBGWAf
Incidentally, about the same percentage of Americans who support the Iran war say violence may be needed to get the United States “back on track.”