If Donald Trump does not find a way out of the impasse he is in regarding Iran, history may come to consider his decision to start the war as one of the defining errors of his presidency.
So far, however, he has avoided a potential mistake with disastrous consequences: the massive escalation of the conflict beyond the ability to control it, writes CNN.
History shows that presidents who escalate wars in an attempt to find a way out or to protect their own prestige or the reputation of the United States end up on a slippery slope. In Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, they often did this half-heartedly, in conflicts that could no longer be won.
Not for the first time, Trump finds himself at a crossroads with three directions in a war fueled by Iran's refusal to surrender or negotiate seriously.
- If diplomacy continues to fail, is he willing to indefinitely extend the so far inefficient campaign of airstrikes, fragile ceasefires, and American and Iranian maritime blockades?
- Or does he intensify the American offensive, surpassing his own limits and attacking not only military targets but also Iranian civilian infrastructure and assets—crossing the Rubicon by using ground troops in limited operations?
- The third option would be extremely painful: to accept that both he and the United States would have the most to gain if they limit their losses and withdraw from the conflict without achieving their main objectives.
Each of these questions involves politically and strategically difficult answers, explaining why Trump remains stuck in a war he cannot afford to win or lose.
It is a measure of the difficulty the US is in that the Pentagon has asked a group of military analysts for new ideas on how to punish Iran, according to an exclusive CNN report.
Trump warns of an "Iran decapitation"
Trump's frustration spilled over onto the Truth Social platform on Monday, after Iran rejected his latest initiative. Over the weekend, he had suspended the devastating strikes he had promised, stating for the umpteenth time that an agreement could be imminent.
"The Iranian leadership is incredibly duplicitous!" Trump wrote, ironically echoing one of the accusations that the Islamic Republic, known for its repressive nature, levels against its coercive diplomacy. By the afternoon, Trump had returned to threats. "This is their last chance to sign a good document," he said in the Oval Office.
However, his warning that Iran could face a "decapitation" raises a natural question: what will he do if Tehran ignores him again?
Any major escalation on Trump's part would be a risky gamble, as there is no indication that Iran can be bombed into returning to the negotiating table.
Most likely, Iran would respond to attacks on bridges, power plants, and other infrastructure by hitting similar targets from the territory of US allies in the Gulf and by increasing the economic costs of the war.
Regional leaders seem to have raised this very possibility in discussions with Trump over the weekend. "We were ready to act. And they called. Plus, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar called," said Trump.
Theoretically, Trump could use the US Navy to forcibly reopen the Strait of Hormuz. However, this would expose American ships to missile and drone attacks.
Ground operations against the oil terminal on Kharg Island or to push Iranian forces away from the strait could turn into bloody confrontations.
The past 60 years show that the stakes increase exponentially when an aerial war turns into a ground war. The conflict takes on a different dimension for Americans at home. The political costs rise as human losses appear—a situation Trump cannot afford with just a few weeks before the midterm elections.
And when soldiers die trying to find an exit strategy, their sacrifice can, paradoxically, prolong the war, as it may not seem that they died in vain.
Many American presidents have faced similar crossroads to the one Trump is going through now. Although the wars in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Trump's conflict with Iran began in different ways, all have come down to the same equation: an unfavorable status quo, escalation, or withdrawal.
And no president wants to go down in history as the one who lost a war.
How LBJ and Bush Slid Down the Same Slope
In 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson faced the dilemma of expanding the Vietnam War inherited after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
"We have already started bombing them; we have crossed that threshold," LBJ told Defense Secretary Robert McNamara in a remark that partially echoes Trump's strategic choice. "I don't think there is anything worse than losing. And I don't see a way to win," Johnson added.
Nevertheless, Johnson ordered Operation Rolling Thunder, intensified bombings of North Vietnam, and sent tens of thousands of young Americans into hell.
He should have listened to Undersecretary of State George Ball, who wrote in a memorandum that, once the US starts to suffer human losses, they will enter an "almost irreversible process" and will endure a "national humiliation" if they stop before achieving their objectives.
Ball, who anticipated the disaster, argued that the United States would worsen its global leadership position by continuing the war rather than adopting "a carefully planned course toward a compromise solution."
The war ended Johnson's hopes of winning a second term, and Richard Nixon inherited the conflict after winning the 1968 election.
Many historians argue that Nixon and his national security advisor, Henry Kissinger, had already concluded that victory was impossible but continued the war in hopes of creating conditions for an orderly withdrawal—a futile attempt to bolster anti-communist South Vietnam and avoid the impression of an American defeat.
"If, when the situation becomes critical, the most powerful nation in the world, the United States of America, behaves like a helpless and pitiful giant, the forces of totalitarianism and anarchy will threaten the nations and free institutions throughout the world," Nixon told Americans on April 30, 1970, explaining the decision to expand the war into Cambodia.
Over 20,000 Americans would die in Vietnam during Nixon's presidency. The last American troops left the country in 1973, and all American personnel were evacuated during the fall of Saigon in 1975 under President Gerald Ford.
More than 30 years later, President George W. Bush delivered his own wartime address to the nation. He took responsibility for the mistakes made but warned in 2007 that "failure in Iraq would be a disaster for the United States."
Bush announced the deployment of thousands of additional troops to support Iraqi forces in fighting insurgents.
History has not yet rendered a final verdict on that strategy. The counterinsurgency campaign succeeded in certain areas. However, the question of whether American losses were justified remains a painful one, considering that the United States eventually withdrew completely from Iraq.
President Barack Obama was elected promising to end America's endless wars. However, eight years after the September 11 attacks, which pushed the US into Afghanistan, he announced his own military surge to stop the Taliban's advance and definitively destroy Al-Qaeda.
Aware of the escalation trap that Johnson, Nixon, and Bush fell into, Obama promised to begin troop withdrawals by mid-2011. Critics argued, however, that having a deadline encouraged America's adversaries to simply wait for the Americans to leave.
Trump Rose to Power Condemning the Very War He Could Wage Now
America's military stalemates in recent decades shaped Trump's vehement criticisms, which helped him win the White House in 2016. Just four days before his election as president, he denounced "wars that never end, wars we never win."
Yet, in his first term, Trump himself ordered the augmentation of American troops in Afghanistan in an attempt to end the conflict.
"My first instinct was to withdraw—and, typically, I like to follow my instincts," he declared.
Less than three years later, he blamed his first Defense Secretary, James Mattis, for that decision, saying, "I gave him more people for a short period, and it didn't work."
Today, Trump faces another solitary decision point, which he himself described in a speech about Afghanistan in 2017: "All my life, I've heard that decisions are entirely different when you're in the Oval Office."
The war with Iran is not Bush's war. It's Trump's war.
And how he handles it will define his political legacy and influence the fate of countless lives, far beyond the walls of the White House.