Trump in 'difficult spot' as losses mount despite his 'bluff': conservative

As President Donald Trump’s approach to the war with Iran shifts into a new phase, a leading conservative magazine warns that he’s in a “difficult spot” because his adversaries know he’s “always bluffing,” and everything he’s tried so far has failed. This is according to the editors at the National Review, who on Thursday expressed skepticism at Trump’s new strategy and warned that he may not have the “patience” to see it through.

“After months of on-again, off-again military strikes and rhetoric ranging from dovish to apocalyptic,” writes the Review, “President Trump has turned to a new strategy for Iran — economic warfare. The U.S. has already been maintaining a naval blockade of Iran, and Trump is taking the strategy further, calling for a D-Day on the Iranian economy. On Monday, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced what he portrayed as crippling new sanctions on Iran. ‘Our objective is to sever every economic lifeline that sustains this tyrannical regime until Tehran stands alone,’ he said in describing the new ‘Operation Economic Outcast.’”

But as the Review notes, “It’s not clear, though, what the follow-through will be, which renders the economic D-Day billing inapt; what made D-Day so decisive is that it wasn’t announced in advance, with the details TBD.” And what’s more, Iranians have good reason for their unwillingness to make a deal: they know that “Trump is always bluffing.” And the Review warns that another reason not to oversell the latest strategy came from Bessent himself, who said they would delay the sanctions because they didn’t want“to blow up the global financial system.” So no one knows if these theoretical sanctions will have real teeth at all.

According to the Review, if the administration does stay on its current path, “immediate results” are unlikely as “the ideologically rigid rulers of Iran have proven resilient through decades of sanctions and pounding from the joint might of the U.S. and Israeli air forces, as well as the targeted assassinations of its top leaders. It’s true that the level of economic pain that Trump is seeking to inflict on Iran is more intense than anything the regime has been forced to navigate to this point. Yet, the same basic dynamic applies as during previous rounds of pressure on the regime. The leadership of Iran is radical and more shielded from the effects of a bad economy than are the people whose welfare the regime is indifferent to. Importantly, it still has the guns and, presumably, the willingness to use them during a popular uprising, as it did in last year’s massacres.”

What’s more, Iran could decide to escalate by attacking other Gulf States — as some have warned it may do just before the midterms — and “given that Trump has indicated time and again that he has no appetite for a renewal of large-scale military operations, the decision of how far to go to protect these leading oil producers would put the president in a difficult spot.” So with limited options and all other efforts failing, the Review says the new strategy will require one of Trump’s greatest weaknesses: patience.

“Ultimately, for any strategy of economic warfare to be effective, it will take months or even years of sustained effort — and there is no guarantee that it will work even then,” concludes the Review. “This will be a drain on resources — how long do we want to go without an aircraft carrier in the Western Pacific? — and attention. Trump, whose patience with this conflict has been somewhat surprising to this point, will need to dig in for the long haul.”