Beyond Trump’s inability to cultivate understanding lies an important issue. Who shapes the fragments of reality he does absorb? How did his picture of Iran emerge? How far did his picture of Iran emerge from private conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu?
Trump derives narcissistic supply from Netanyahu and has reason to prioritize Netanyahu’s framing over more cautious assessment from his own officials, although it’s not even clear that these professionals were in the room where decisions were made. It was amateur hour when decisions were made. The human content in the room was amateur hour.
This raises a serious question. How far is the US being led by Israel and is it even making its own foreign policy? By extension, the Europeans who are covering for US action are themselves outsourcing policy to the United States, who is potentially outsourcing policy to Israel.
Here’s Marco Rubio. “There absolutely was an imminent threat and the imminent threat was that we knew that if Iran was attacked — and we believed we would be attacked — that they would immediately come after us and we were not going to sit there and absorb a blow before we responded because the Department of War assessed that if we did that, if we waited for them to hit us first after they were attacked and by someone else, Israel, attacked them, if they hit us first and we waited for them to hit us we would have suffered more casualties and more deaths. We went proactively in a defensive way to prevent them from inflicting higher damage. Had we not done so, there would have been hearings on Capitol Hill about how we knew that this was going to happen and we didn’t act preemptively to prevent more casualties and more loss of life.”
His idea is that there was an imminent threat of Israel attacking Iran and that that would lead to consequences. If you think of America and Israel as one actor in significant respects, that’s just a contradiction in terms. We’re only imminently threatened if we attack first and therefore we have to attack first because we’re imminently threatened.
Or say the actors (Israel and the US) are more apart than that. Then questions arise about why the United States doesn’t control Israel to a sufficient degree as to prevent it from doing something that’s going to endanger the United States.
So where does the truth lie?
The truth lies in the fact that the idea of a preemptive threat wasn’t ever a serious reason for war. A serious reason for war was a constellation of two things. There are many other reasons, but this is the central constellation: two things.
First, Netanyahu wanted to do it. Netanyahu could have planted language in Trump’s head about what a good idea it is to do this. The people in the US government who do serious work on this were not allowed into the meetings that mattered, where decisions were made, and instead decisions were made amateur hour style by clowns.
Second, the other factor was Trump’s impulsivity. It’s not that maybe Netanyahu manipulated Trump into this, not at all. It was Trump being drawn toward this, like a moth to the light, not acting out of weakness, but acting positively; not being pushed into a corner by the Israelis, but actually being lightly urged on by the Israelis, and fundamentally moving toward this end because he was so excited by the prospect of playing war president and by the adrenaline rush that comes with it.
The story here is not that the Israelis manipulated the US into this. The story is that the Israelis pushed and prodded the United States toward this, and then — in the form of Donald Trump — the United States positively grabbed at this outcome, too. Because of Trump’s personality disorder and his neurodiverse traits that make him both rigid and impulsive, he needed this adrenaline hit. That’s above all what this war with Iran is all about: a single man’s adrenaline rush.
There is ludicrous stuff online somewhere on Substack by Niall Ferguson. “This is not regime change. This is regime alteration.”
It’s not regime alteration. It’s Trump acting impulsively because he has narcissistic personality disorder. He’s got neurodiverse traits that fuel him and make him both rigid and impulsive. Going for an adrenaline hit because he doesn’t have a clue about what he’s doing. That’s the central reason for why he needed the adrenaline hit. He needed to play president.
Rubio comes across as a political entrepreneur who shouldn’t be in this administration, and is only in this administration because he’s too weak to be ethical. Rubio was having to do these epistemic dances when giving his explanation.
What’s worrying is that it’s not the case that the “preemptive strike due to imminent threat” rationale was used as an excuse with a serious alternate strategic rationale disguised beneath it. As perhaps Ferguson might claim, there is no rationale there at all.
Different actors in the administration might have different feelings about why war with Iran is a good idea. Trump doesn’t have feelings about why this is a good or a bad idea. Trump doesn’t operate in terms of good or bad ideas. He operates in terms of what physiological and emotional reward he’s going to get from certain pictures appearing in the world and from him being able to front them and talk about them. He wanted that adrenaline hit.
Now Trump has a problem: he is really enjoying playing war president, but he is also little by little beginning to face the prospect that it’s not clear how this is going to work out. When the fact that it’s not clear how this is going to work out becomes reality, a very serious manipulative leader — like Putin, maybe, at least like younger Putin, because Putin is nowadays much more ruined psychologically – would just cut his losses as soon as possible and declare victory, even if there is no victory. A seriously manipulative leader would declare a victory and go home.
That requires hard discipline. That requires being ready to draw a hard-nosed line. That’s not that easy for Trump. He’s entirely capable of being drawn deeper and deeper into this and losing his war with Iran. Now he’s beginning to uncomfortably feel that way. He’s just edging into waters that indicate that sort of possibility to him, and he’s beginning to feel uncomfortable. That’s why he’s been a little bit more sober over the past few days, a little bit more detail focused in his most recent public presentations. Nonetheless, he’s still for now enjoying the rush of it more than being worried by the serious direction in which it could go.
Footnote: The 1979 Iranian revolution was one of the worst events of the 20th century. It began 47 years of terrorism, extremism, and theocratic fascism. It started with one to two million people dead in the Iran-Iraq war in 1980. There were 241 Americans killed by Iranian supervision in Beirut. Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis have destabilized the Middle East, they have killed people in Syria, and a couple of weeks ago they killed somewhere between 10’000 and 30’000 people in Iran who were protesting. So this is a destructive and savage regime that has destabilized the Middle East. It’s also a regime that is in an unprecedentedly vulnerable situation. It has lost the faith of its people. Its economy is in tatters. Its military is destroyed. Its regime is decapitated. The regime could fall. That could happen. However, what bugs me, frankly, is the people who are sure; the people who are sure this is a terrible thing and the people who are sure this is a good thing. We just don’t know yet. The people who are ignoring the horrors that Iran has perpetrated on the world for the past 47 years should be hoping this works.
Categories: Uncategorized
Gregory's Writings 
Leave a comment