Iran’s Trump card is better than a nuclear weapon

There is no question that President Trump is 100 percent responsible for a stunning victory in the Iran war. His actions will completely reconfigure the Persian Gulf for a generation. 

Unfortunately, there is also no question as to who won. Hint: It wasn’t the United States.

On the plus side, Iran will probably agree to give up its nuclear ambitions, because Trump has given it something better: a stranglehold on the Persian Gulf and the world economy. 

If there is one military lesson from the Iran war, it’s that having a handful of nuclear weapons is useless. Modern air defenses are just too good. More than 90 percent of Iran’s drone and missile attacks were intercepted.

The only way to overcome defenses like these is by zerging — that is, launching a swarm of weapons at the same target and hoping that one or two get through. Ideally, these weapons are much cheaper than the missiles used to intercept them. It’s hard for the defender to keep up if he is using a million-dollar missile to shoot down a $10,000 drone. 

Using nuclear weapons, especially if you only have a few, requires the opposite approach. If you aren’t very confident it will reach its target, you can’t afford to launch it. 

Iran has now discovered that its arsenal of drones and missiles is just as useful as a nuclear weapon and far more flexible. Iran forced Trump to abandon demands for “unconditional surrender” because it demonstrated it could inflict mutual assured destruction on a regional scale. 

True, Iran could not stop Israel and the Trump administration from bombing Iranian targets at will. But the U.S. could not stop Iran from destroying Gulf oil and gas facilities and bringing shipping through the Strait of Hormuz to a standstill. 

In short, geography, drones and missiles will do a much better job of securing Iran’s survival than a handful of possibly undeliverable nuclear weapons. The Iranians should be happy to trade their nuclear ambitions for an end to sanctions, and at least de facto acceptance of their control over the strait. 

That de facto acceptance has already happened. Iran has always claimed the Strait isn’t closed and that all countries need to do to send their ships through is to contact the Iranian government for permission. After the cease-fire, Iran is still requiring ships to pass through the “toll booth” as a condition of transiting the strait, promising to sink any ships that do not. Shortly after the ceasefire, it even closed the Strait again, on the grounds that Israel was violating the cease-fire terms by continuing its attacks in Lebanon.

This is all going to be a geopolitical catastrophe for the U.S. Looking ahead, it is entirely possible that, over the next few years, Iran will make peace with its neighbors in return for the removal of the American bases they host. After all, the reason these Gulf countries began hosting American bases in the first place was largely to protect them from Iran. How did that work out for them?

Iran will argue that its entire goal has always been to eliminate American influence from the region, and that once the Americans are gone, there will be no reason everyone can’t get along. Even if the Gulf states don’t trust Iran, they probably do trust China, its close ally, which may be happy to step into America’s shoes and use its influence to ensure the free flow of oil from the Gulf. It is even possible that Gulf oil will eventually be traded in yuan, breaking the petro-dollar and having tragic long-term effects on the American economy. 

On the domestic front, Trump’s brilliant negotiating ploy of threatening to commit genocide if the Iranians did not open the strait came within about an hour of destroying the American military rather than the Iranian one. America doesn’t do genocide. There is no possibility whatsoever that the U.S. military would have agreed to destroy “a whole civilization.” These are the kinds of illegal orders that Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) and his compatriots warned us about. Had Trump given such an order, he would have been faced with mass resignations and open mutiny.

Trump is not a genius playing four-dimensional chess. He is a six-year-old playing with soldiers as if they were toys — and he is squandering America’s blood, treasure and reputation in the process.

Not only has he wasted tens of billions of dollars and American lives, he has plunged the world economy into crisis. Americans now face much higher gas prices and higher inflation. Even the most optimistic forecasts of the U.S. government predict oil prices will not return to their pre-war levels until sometime in 2027.

And it was all for nothing. After surviving 13,000 air strikes, Iran’s regime is in a better strategic position than when the war began.

Trump is already talking about his “next conquest.” What is that going to be? Greenland? Cuba? Mexico? The House and Senate will be back in session on April 14; congressional Republicans can either put a stop to Trump’s ridiculous adventurism, or they can own it and all the consequences that come with it. There is no middle ground.

Chris Truax is an appellate attorney who served as Southern California chair for John McCain’s primary campaign in 2008.