No Good Options for Trump in Iran
The world’s most intemperate leader has some world-impacting decisions to make.
By Ryan McGreal.
475 words. Approximately a 1 to 3 minute read.
Posted March 26, 2026 in Blog.
Notwithstanding his ever-shifting rationales, for Trump to “win” his Iran war in any meaningful sense of the term, he needs to achieve a set of military and political objectives that are impossible without a major ground invasion (and effectively impossible even with one).
For Iran to win, all they need to do is survive.
They don’t need to hit every ship trying to pass through the Strait, they just need to hit one or two and every other ship immediately loses its insurance.
It’s the perfect asymmetrical power imbalance. There is no way to protect every single ship from all the cheap and undetectable methods Iran has to deploy weaponry.
That gives them outsized leverage, but it also increases the likelihood that Trump decides he can’t afford to leave them in power.
Ironically, the US vis-a-vis Iran is in some ways not too different from Russia vis-a-vis Ukraine. Despite a vastly higher population and economic capacity, Russia fell into a trap when it invaded. It can’t make sustained progress and is hemorrhaging people and equipment at a staggering rate.
But unlike Russia, the US government cannot withstand the political fallout from a deadly military quagmire.
Which is not to say I have any confidence that Trump understands this. Instead of solid intel and clear policy guidance, he’s getting daily sizzle reels of explosion porn from his staff.
All of which is to say: this war could fizzle out, or it could escalate into a catastrophic morass. And the person with the power to decide has no principles, no strategic sense and no capacity to honestly evaluate his decisions and learn from them and is surrounded by shameless sycophants.
Trump’s greed might be our saving grace. So far, markets are pricing oil based on the TACO principle, assuming he will declare victory and withdraw rather than trigger a global recession.
But his need for approval and validation cuts both ways. He also loves to be the guy who Went There when others balked.
Domestically, he’s acting as if his dismal poll numbers don’t matter. He could just be delusional, or he could be trapped in a filter bubble in which he doesn’t get to see negative polls, or he might be betting that he’ll be able to suppress enough votes to hold onto Congress through the midterm elections scheduled for this fall.
If it’s any one of those, he might decide the risk of looking weak is worse than the risk of sending oil prices to $200+ per barrel and tanking the global economy - or he might even allow himself to be convinced that consequences just don’t apply to him.
So much of what will happen in the next few years will come down to the whims of the most intemperate, capricious and reckless person to sit in the Oval Office in any of our lifetimes. This is no way to run a planet.