Trump backing off his threat to “obliterate” Iran’s power infrastructure has to be good news, right?
Hardly.
Let’s be clear right from the jump: Trump is not responding to negotiations with Iran. In fact, Iran has denied there has been any contact with the United States government or its representatives.
He’s following the same shopworn path from the now year-long tariff disaster: threaten something that will cause an economic disaster, watch as American markets crash out, and then pull back from the brink only to return to the same policy a few days or weeks later.
Given that Trump has as much historical, diplomatic, geographic, political, and cultural knowledge of the Gulf (and Iran in particular) as the average toaster oven, it’s important to view his motivations as they are, not as we (and certainly not his gullible Baghdad Bobs and assorted dead-enders) wish them to be.
Trump has not learned a lesson about the economic complexities of the Gulf energy markets. Trump has not decided that the rebukes of our allies matter.
And he most certainly isn’t having second thoughts about the war. For him, the war is fun, a dude-coded video game that costs a billion a day. One of the safest bets of all time is that Trump has never, ever “learned his lesson,” in the words of the soon-to-be-ex Senator Susan Collins, or experienced some moral awakening, or decided to take a path beyond his own narcissism and greed.