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President Donald Trump waging war against Iran is a “man-child playing with matches,” warned a Pulitzer Prize-winning foreign policy analyst in a recent editorial — and therefore he has only one clear off-ramp to quickly and effectively end the conflict.
“President Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel started a war with Iran assuming that they would trigger quick and easy regime change,” The New York Times’ Thomas Friedman wrote on Tuesday. “They vastly underestimated the staying power of Iran’s surviving leadership and its military capacity not only to inflict damage on Israel and America’s Arab allies but also to close off the most important oil and gas shipping lane in the world.”
He added, “This is imposing serious harm on the global economy, including the U.S. stock market, and Trump has no clue how to get out of the mess that he has created by starting a war without thinking through the implications.”
When analyzing what to do, Friedman suggested that Trump give Iran an ultimatum with two parts.
“Iran gives up its more than 950 pounds of nearly bomb-grade highly enriched uranium, and in return the United States gives up on regime change,” Friedman said. “Both sides would then agree to end all hostilities. That is, no more American and Israeli bombing, no more Iranian and Hezbollah rockets, no more Strait of Hormuz blockade and, for darn sure, no U.S. ground troops landing in Iran.”
If the United States succeeded at this, they could claim the war had been waged simply to reduce Iran’s nuclear threat, and had therefore succeeded.
“Trump will be a very lucky man if the surviving leaders of the Iranian regime say yes,” Friedman concluded. “It’s a measure of Trump’s incompetence that they now hold his fate in their hands.”
Other experts don’t think Trump will have it so easy. Writing earlier this month, former White House and Department of Defense official Ilan Goldenberg warned that “a short war now seems unlikely…Instead, we may be staring at something far worse: A war with no clear endpoint.”
In his post on X, Goldenberg — an expert on war game scenarios with Iran — pointed out that “this war has the potential to go nowhere good and to do far more damage than anyone anticipated. It could reshape the Middle East in deeply negative ways, damage the global economy and further erode America’s standing in the world.”
Similarly, experts question whether Trump’s recently-rumored plan to take over Kharg Island could in fact prove to be an exacerbating rather than calming variable.
Michael Eisenstadt, director of the Military and Security Studies Program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told The Washington Post earlier in March would put US troops in significant danger and could drag on for a long time.
“I just wouldn’t want to be in that small place with Iran’s ability to rain down drones and maybe artillery,” said Eisenstadt.