Is the Fog of War Between Trump’s Two Ears?
Mar
30, 2026
Once again, American
hubris has triggered gung-ho global chaos that will last for decades, long
after whatever extrication is possible from the Iran misadventure. Trump’s
feckless bluster has trapped us in the “known unknown” outcome of Iran’s
command of the Strait of Hormuz and the potential for a ground-force quagmire.
Massive troop dispatches tend to acquire their own momentum. It’s the Chekhov
gun theory. If there is a pistol on the mantelpiece when the curtain goes up,
someone will fire it in the third act.
Sharpie Burble: Trump goes
off-piste at Cabinet meeting (March 26)
At the on-camera Cabinet
meeting on Thursday, Trump’s free-associative drivel, in the midst of a world
crisis, ranged from the new White House ballroom: “The military wanted it more
than anyone,” to the Kennedy Center: “It’s going to be beautiful when you add
the name Trump,” to his favored Sharpie pens: “They do treat me well, Sharpie.”
My historian friend Sir Simon Schama sent me a despairing text. “It was like a
bit from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. What was the 25th
Amendment for, if not for this? The stroke-struck Woodrow Wilson was a combo of
Jefferson, Lincoln, and FDR, compared to this oozing hulk of cognitive rot.
HELP US, Obi-Wan, HELP US.”
Master of Disaster
Propaganda War: Tehran
tweaks Trump
The Iranian leaders may
have a caricature understanding of America but it’s still better than the Trump
administration’s understanding of them. “Thank you for your attention to this
matter” is a recurring troll line from the mullah meme reel, accompanying AI
spoofs of the Dept. of War’s Mortal Kombat-style manosphere videos. Iran’s
feature Trump as a Teletubby playing with toy war planes in the Oval Office or
paired with Bibi as demonic warring Lego figures. Their Trump taunts even
reference Jeffrey Epstein’s island. “A reminder to the corrupted Island Man:
The ground and map of the world is in our hands.” Heh Heh Heh. For propaganda
cred, they beat the battle prayers of Hegseth, who sounds like a medieval
mullah himself when he vows to “break the teeth of the ungodly.”
Hegseth’s tattooed one-man
crusade is even freaking out the pope. His Holiness went on a Palm Sunday tear
about how Jesus “does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war.”
Just as the posse of Saudi
hijackers with simple box cutters terrorized the world on 9/11, the Iranian
regime has seen that, in the Strait of Hormuz, small, nimble boats and cheap
drones made from sanction-busting, off-the-shelf components can be as effective
in panicking the West as the threat of a nuclear weapon. Nothing speeds up
innovation more than an existential threat. After last June’s bombing of Iran’s
nuclear and ballistic missile facilities, Netanyahu declared that Israel had
achieved a “historic victory, which will stand for generations.” But, in the
nine months since, Iran, like an evil starfish, has reconstituted its missile
capacity.
There’s an unsettling
imbalance in expertise and experience between Iran and the Trump team, who are
bored by the complexities of diplomacy. “The IRGC’s chief negotiator, foreign
minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi, has been negotiating with the West for two decades.
He knows his file intimately,” Iran policy analyst Karim Sadjadpour told me.
Trump and his bellicose secretary of war imagine that “targets” can replace
strategy. In a social media post on Monday, Trump warned that if a deal is not
reached “shortly,” and if the Strait of Hormuz is not immediately reopened, the
U.S. will “conclude our lovely stay” in Iran by pulverizing its electrical
plants, its oil wells, and Kharg Island. Easy, right? Boom! But all the might
of the military cannot make up for the U.S. administration’s deficit in human
and cultural understanding. An infinite number of books have bloviated about
American exceptionalism, but, as geopolitical analyst Bobby Ghosh, author of
the excellent new Substack Ghoshworld, told me, “Iranians believe in Persian exceptionalism.”
In the last years of Ayatollah Ali
Khamenei’s life, he noted, the country had been transitioning from a theocracy
to an authoritarian militarized state. That process has now been accelerated by
the ascension of a third-tier cadre of ruthless hard-liners, who replaced the
more worldly and pragmatic leaders we just whacked. Disrupting the flow of oil
through the strait will hurt Iran too, but the usual pressure points don’t
apply. “The IRGC is prepared to ruin the Iranian economy if they can humiliate
Trump,” Kenneth Pollack, Vice President for Policy at the Middle East
Institute, told me. “Plus, they’ve already proved they are willing to kill
anyone who protests. And it worked.”
Deal Guys: Jared Kushner
and Steve Witkoff at U.S.-Iran negotiations in Geneva, two days before
Operation Epic Fury. (Credit: Umman Foreign Ministry/Handout/Anadolu)
Alas, one of Trump’s
closest advisors on Iran is not Ken Pollack, Bobby Ghosh, or Karim Sadjadpour,
but real estate macher Steve Witkoff, who told Atlantic magazine that he watched Netflix documentaries to learn about geopolitics
and diplomacy. Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, now roving envoy to anywhere
that will fatten his private equity fund, told the NYT proudly, “It’s just different being deal guys—just a different
sport.” Possibly the only member of the team who could conduct a sophisticated
national security debate is Marco Rubio, but, at this point, it’s impossible to
know what he really thinks. As secretary of state, national security adviser,
and part-time viceroy of Venezuela, Rubio looks as dazed as the rest of us
feel. I am told he is eyeing the exit after the midterms to make some real
money before he runs for president.
Trump will never
understand that the Iranian regime has zero affinity for “deal guys.” His
bafflement was clear in a March 26th Truth Social post when he described Iranian negotiators as “very different and strange.” Before the
bombing began, Witkoff
said, “He’s curious as to why
they haven’t . . . capitulated.” In the simplistic real estate world, leverage
is the only commodity that matters. Trump’s expedient approach has allowed Iran
to sell oil as a quick fix to lower gas prices, a political and market
necessity, given that his approval rating has sunk to 33%. Iran reads it as
their victory. In the blink of an eye, Trump made a concession that Iran has
wanted for eight years of sanctions. All thanks to their choking off the Strait
of Hormuz.
It’s ironic that, thanks
to Trump and Netanyahu, Iran does indeed have a different regime now. It’s
worse, and even more steeped in a deep-rooted identity of resistance and thick
layers of vengeful pride. I am told Fidel Castro once joked to his pal Sean
Penn that if America were to lift the Cuba embargo, he would do something
provocative the next day to get it reinstated. He knew his power could only be
preserved in an isolated bubble. Iran is not a regime that can be disinfected
with sunlight. Rather than crumble to the demands of the Great and Little
Satan, it would rather die in the dark. And when the U.S. obliterati walk away,
declaring victory, the real trouble for the region begins.
