Will Trump ‘TACO’ on Iran?

WASHINGTON – US President Donald Trump

has built a potential off-ramp by suggesting the Iran war could end soon

, but the world is still guessing whether he will take it – and whether Tehran will allow him to.

With surging oil prices threatening both the global economy and his political fortunes at home, Mr Trump’s tone appeared to shift abruptly on March 9, when he called the war “very complete” and a “short-term excursion”.

But the 79-year-old commander-in-chief continued to send mixed messages about when the war could end – and what its goals are – leaving it far from clear what he will ultimately settle for.

For Mr Trump, that calculation will almost certainly involve November’s US midterm elections, with rising gas prices likely to fuel voter anger at his Republican Party over the cost of living.

Polls so far show historically low support among Americans for the war.

“I think he’s going to keep going until his advisers tell him that the economic pain is going to risk the midterms,” Dr Colin Clarke, executive director of The Soufan Center in New York, told AFP.

“He’s going to make a political decision about a military operation.”

For some observers, Mr Trump’s comments on a short Iran war timeline were evidence of what traders have dubbed the TACO phenomenon – “Trump Always Chickens Out”.

“What they did communicate clearly, to the delight of markets, was that Trump is looking for an exit,” wrote Mr Robert Armstrong, the Financial Times journalist who coined the term TACO.

In the opening days of the US-Israeli strikes, Mr Trump suggested the war could last four or five weeks, but markets surged at his hints on Monday that it could be shorter.

Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said on March 10 that Mr Trump, and Mr Trump alone, would determine the timeline. “It’s not for me to posit whether it’s the beginning, the middle or the end. That’s his,” said the former Fox News host.

Dr Clarke said he believed Mr Trump would “go hard for the next two weeks tops, then things are so messy he’s going to declare victory”.

‘Wounded animal’

Victory will then be in the eye of the beholder.

Both Mr Trump and his administration have publicly given a panoply of shifting goals for the war, ranging from seeking regime change in all but name to securing the flow of Gulf oil.

On paper, the administration has listed some core military objectives – ensuring Iran has no nuclear weapons, eliminating its ballistic missiles and navy, and curbing its regional proxies – that could be easier for Mr Trump to sign off on.

But Iran will likely see any such declaration as Mr Trump blinking first.

Despite the significant damage from the US-Israeli air campaign, Tehran has stepped up its defiant tone since Mr Trump’s remarks, vowing to block Gulf oil supplies and mocking the US leader’s claims to be in control of the timeline of the conflict.

“It is we who will determine the end of the war,” Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said in a statement, while the republic’s security chief Ali Larijani warned Mr Trump himself to be careful “not to be eliminated”.

Israel, meanwhile, has its own timeline, which Mr Trump also has only limited control over. Differences have already emerged over both the long-term goals and Israel’s strikes on Iranian energy infrastructure.

And while Mr Trump insists he must have a role in choosing Iran’s new leader, there is no sign yet of large-scale internal resistance to Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, who was chosen over the weekend to replace his slain father.

If the new Supreme Leader and the regime survive, Operation Epic Fury would be “remembered as the Mother of All Lawnmowers” for having only skimmed the surface of things, Mr Walter Russell Mead wrote in The Wall Street Journal.

Mr Trump could then leave an even more dangerous situation, Dr Clarke said, with a “rump IRGC” going all out for a nuclear bomb and the risk of various ethic groups launching a large-scale insurgency in the heart of the Middle East.

“If it’s Khamenei’s son or another hardliner, what’s different?“ said Dr Clarke. “It’s now like a wounded animal, which is arguably more dangerous.” AFP