The Iran war is consuming the Trump presidency

Here is a thought to chill the blood of President Donald Trump. He would be in a far better place today if he had followed the foreign-policy advice of the predecessor he loathes, Barack Obama. According to the Obama doctrine, as explained years ago to Jeffrey Goldberg, a journalist, an American president’s first duty in world affairs is: „Don’t do stupid shit.”

As doctrines go, it is not very sophisticated. Moreover, cerebral Mr Obama left a mixed foreign-policy record: he was slow to grasp the full scope of the China threat, for instance. Still, if Mr Trump had heeded him, he might not have joined Israel in launching war on Iran on February 28th without a plan for victory. Mr Trump might not have boasted that the killing of Iran’s top leaders, followed by punishing air strikes, would soon trigger regime change. Given Iran’s complexity and its rulers’ ruthlessness, that was as daft as predicting that the Mafia could be bombed out of Sicily from the air. Now, Mr Trump’s war may consume his presidency.

De redactie van NRC selecteert de beste artikelen uit The Economist voor een breder perspectief op internationale politiek en economie.

The president’s Middle East record includes real successes, notably the recognition of Israel by four Arab states in the Abraham accords. Mr Trump deserves credit for (belatedly) strong-arming Israel’s prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, into a ceasefire last year with Hamas, though conditions in Gaza remain grim. His decision to join Israel in bombarding Iran’s nuclear sites last summer was risky, but not stupid. The operation came with costs, including the loss of access to Iran’s highly enriched uranium for international inspectors. Still, inflicting severe damage on Iran’s underground nuclear programme followed a coherent logic. Iran’s muted response in retaliation was a further vindication.

Not all presidential blunders meet the Obama-doctrine test. Take Mr Trump’s repeated demands to own Greenland. He is deeply unwise to alienate Denmark, the island’s colonial master and a devoted American friend. Still, Denmark remains a NATO ally, needing America to deter Russia. In contrast, an actual invasion of Greenland would qualify as unambiguously stupid shit.

When Mr Obama coined the term, he was thinking of his own predecessor, George Bush, and the fatal mix of vengefulness, impatience and over-ambition that doomed the American-led campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq that followed the September 2001 terrorist attacks. After studying the Bush years, Mr Obama learned (and indeed overlearned) abiding lessons about the dangers of American hubris. He was sceptical of nation-building in far-off lands, believed that only the gravest threats to America warrant armed intervention and thought of many allies as aggravating free-riders on American power. Striving to balance his coldly realist instincts with the liberal values that he believed his country should uphold, he suggested that America should pick its battles, and be „hardheaded at the same time as we’re bighearted”.

As it happens, Mr Trump shares many Obama-esque instincts, for all his sniping at the man. He too is wary of nation-building and annoyed by free-riding allies. He is unlike Mr Obama in his relish for America First bullying, his disastrous disdain for detail, his unblushing personal greed and his contempt for liberal values. In an unhappy mirror-image of the Obama years, Trumpian foreign policy too often revels in being bigheaded and hardhearted.

When it comes to the Middle East, both presidents hoped America could pivot away from a role as the region’s dominant security provider. From 2011 or so, the Obama administration openly sought to shift military and diplomatic resources away from Iraq and Afghanistan towards Asia, a dynamic region where investments of American power would „yield the biggest returns”. Obama aides talked of increased American energy production rendering the Middle East less relevant. With some bitterness, they accused such allies as Saudi Arabia of trying to goad America into fighting Iran on the Arab world’s behalf. Mr Obama’s full pivot to Asia was thwarted by renewed Middle Eastern instability, though, including civil war in Syria and the rise of Islamic State.

Mr Trump announced his own Middle Eastern pivot last year. The region would soon be „defined by commerce, not chaos”, he told Arab leaders in Riyadh. The days of the Middle East dominating American foreign policy are „thankfully over”, declared his national-security strategy, with conflict replaced by deals to sell American nuclear, defence and AI technologies. Seeking returns of their very own, Trump family members have secured hundreds of millions of dollars from Gulf rulers and their investment funds.

Then Mr Trump launched his war with Iran, upending Gulf business models. It is hard for Arab states to build billion-dollar data centres filled with American chips when Iranian missiles are falling. A different, gloomier sort of pivot now looms, involving Middle Eastern partners losing faith in America as a reliable ally.

The Gulf learns not to rely on America

Though the United Arab Emirates remains all-in on defence ties with America, others in the Gulf, led by Saudi Arabia, the regional giant, can be seen hedging. America remains uniquely important as a partner, but it is less trusted. Some Gulf rulers will quietly pay Iran for a quiet life. Others are deepening defence ties with such actors as Turkey, and economic links with China. It does not help that Mr Trump has played down Iranian attacks on American bases and local infrastructure in Gulf countries, anxious to obscure the war’s costs. Perhaps eager to convey his dominance as the war raged, in March Mr Trump publicly mocked the Saudi crown prince, Muhammad bin Salman, bragging that the prince never imagined „he’d be kissing my ass” as American president.

In a rough world brains are not everything, as the Obama administration learned to its chagrin. But Mr Obama was right that reckless presidential stupidity causes catastrophes. If Mr Trump talked less and listened more, he might have heard the warning.

© 2026 The Economist Newspaper Limited. All rights reserved.