(Dobbs) Does Iran Look Worried?

It is a tragedy of Donald Trump’s own doing.

Isn’t it tragic that as we awaken this morning, we might find that our erratically fickle president has struck a deal with Iran that could bring peace, or alternately, that as he threatened two days ago, Iran has been “blown off the face off the Earth.” It’s tragic because decisions he makes, life-and-death decisions on which people’s lives rely, decisions that can change the course of history for better or for worse, hang on which way the wind blows.

And isn’t it tragic that Iran’s leaders seem to have a greater grasp of the stakes in this war, and sometimes make more sense than our own leaders do? They might be guided by Islamic fanaticism, but ours are guided by deceit and delusion. Self-deceit, self-delusion.

How so?

When “Operation Epic Fury” goes way beyond what Donald Trump once projected as “two to three weeks” (this is now Week Ten)…. When an estimated 3,500 people die in Trump’s war-of-choice but he casually refers to it this week as “a skirmish” and “a mini-war”…. When Iran is attacking ships in the Strait of Hormuz and still firing at American allies, and the U.S. is shooting back at them but a chief lieutenant like the secretary of state declares on Tuesday that “The Operation Epic Fury is concluded”…. When the president all but begs for a deal with Iran on its nuclear program that essentially would parrot the deal President Obama struck but Trump trashed in his first term… When the newest iteration of the American strategy is to open up one of the world’s most critical waterways which already was open until Trump decided to attack…. then yes, our leaders are guided by self-deceit and self-delusion.

In light of the newest U.S. opinion polls that show disapproval of Trump at a record high, clearly their hope is that the American people will buy their deceit and delusion.

I think not. I think the people see through it. The polls bear that out. The New York Times ran a headline yesterday that summed it up: “White House Insists Iran War Is Over, Even While Missiles Fly.” The article said, “The White House is turning to rhetorical leaps.”

Say what you will about the Iranians but they deliver their messages with a dose of reality. It’s reality Trump doesn’t like, but his relationship with reality has always been loose.

What Iran’s foreign minister wrote yesterday on X was, “Events in Hormuz make clear that there’s no military solution to a political crisis.” He warned the U.S. to be “wary of being dragged back into quagmire.”

The U.S. has struck more than 13,000 targets in the Islamic Republic and helped assassinate its longtime supreme leader and killed thousands of innocent civilians and left whole neighborhoods of rubble in what was a cosmopolitan capital, yet Iran has not compromised its positions. If the United States still doesn’t see that missiles and bombs alone haven’t brought the regime to its knees, then arguably there is no end to the standoff. That’s the quagmire the foreign minister is talking about.

On CNN on Tuesday, the former secretary of defense, CIA director, and White House chief of staff Leon Panetta put the quagmire in blunt terms: “Trump is stuck.” He’s stuck because despite his bloviated posts, he does not hold all the cards.

The U.S. has not secured Iran’s enriched uranium. It has not destroyed Iran’s missile arsenal. It has not changed the regime, only some of its personnel. It has not won control of the Strait of Hormuz. And lest we forget, although on the first day of the war Trump told the Iranian people that with America’s help, “Your hour of your freedom is at hand,” it has not inspired a popular uprising because millions don’t want it and millions more know the regime would crush it.

If anything, simply by surviving, Iran in some ways has more leverage than it did before.

The irony is, although Donald Trump started this war, he’s the one looking for an offramp. He’s the one who wants to end it, who needs to end it. His biggest miscalculation of all was to fail to understand two things about the Iranians. First, that they have the capacity to endure hardship and suffer pain that we don’t have. When I covered Iran, that’s something I saw firsthand. And second, as a culture that dates back some 10,000 years, they are not a quick fix society and will not always promptly react to whatever threatens them. Without public opinion to worry about, they can wait in the wings until they think the timing is right. Unlike us. We panic the first time gas goes over four dollars.

So now, to dig himself out of the hole he dug, he’s forecasting a deal with Iran. In a post yesterday, Trump wrote, “Assuming Iran agrees to give what has been agreed to, which is, perhaps, a big assumption, the already legendary Epic Fury will be at an end, and the highly effective Blockade will allow the Hormuz Strait to be OPEN TO ALL, including Iran. If they don’t agree, the bombing starts, and it will be, sadly, at a much higher level and intensity than it was before.”

Does Iran look worried? Not from the latest editions of its newspapers. One named Farhikhtegan yesterday used Nazi imagery to paint the president as a threat to America. Its headline read: “Trumpism will spell America’s doom.” Another, Kayhan, headlined with, “Trump’s mountain of initiatives gave birth to a mouse! The Strait of Hormuz became narrower.”

Who’s trolling whom?

No one in the West wants Iran to have a nuclear weapon. No one in the West wants Iran to back terrorist groups that act as its proxies. But somehow, the U.S. has lost more moral ground than Iran. Secretary of State Rubio said at his news conference Tuesday, “If we live in a world where a rogue state like this Iranian regime is allowed to claim as a new normal control over an international shipping lane, it will not be long before you see that happen in multiple shipping lanes around the world.” It saddens me to ask, but couldn’t you say the same about the United States of America? If we are allowed to attack nations that do not immediately threaten our security, will it be long before we see the same from China? In Ukraine, we’ve already seen it from Russia.

It is all tragic. But it is a tragedy of Donald Trump’s own doing.

Over more than five decades Greg Dobbs has been a correspondent for two television networks including ABC News, a political columnist for The Denver Post and syndicated columnist for Scripps newspapers, a moderator on Rocky Mountain PBS, and author of two books, including one about the life of a foreign correspondent called “Life in the Wrong Lane.” He also co-authored a book about the seminal year for baby boomers, called “1969: Are You Still Listening?” He has covered presidencies, politics, and the U.S. space program at home, and wars, natural disasters, and other crises around the globe, from Afghanistan to South Africa, from Iran to Egypt, from the Soviet Union to Saudi Arabia, from Nicaragua to Namibia, from Vietnam to Venezuela, from Libya to Liberia, from Panama to Poland. Dobbs has won three Emmys, the Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Professional Journalists, and as a 39-year resident of Colorado, a place in the Denver Press Club Hall of Fame. He also has been a consultant for the Counterterrorism Education Learning Lab.

You can learn more at GregDobbs.net