View from Washington: Trump’s weird Iran War

Donald Trump and his Iran war: His insistence on the primacy of his gut. His lack of interest in procedures and advice. His public pining for a Nobel Peace Prize. His mythologizing of a “stolen” 2020 election. Behind it all, his insistence on keeping his administration a reality show, as if the show is what ultimately underpins his presidential power (and immunity), notes Holman W. Jenkins Jr., a member of the editorial board of The Wall Street Journal.

All of this invites a search for the motives of an Iran war that, vexingly, is not strongly backed by any of the usual Trump constituencies.

In my own hierarchy of Trump motivations, I put first his knowledge that he’s certain to be impeached if Democrats take over the House. I put second that he lives partly in the past (as we all do), wanting to conquer the problems that made fools of his predecessors, which describes Iran.

I weigh next how U.S. strategic interests intersect with Mr. Trump’s, in his own way of thinking. He criticized the wars of his predecessors not because they were interminable but because they were unprofitable. We failed to seize Iraq’s oil. The U.S. put democracy-building above its own material interests. It forfeited the respect of other nations. Mr. Trump revels in U.S. energy power, but notice it doesn’t cause him to downgrade the strategic importance of the Mideast (the way other presidents did); it increases his interest in other countries’ oil.

The inchoate babble about elites, which has been background noise in the Trump political career, heralds something new. Technology makes them realistic to target. Knocking off specific figures was a key element of the U.S. and Israeli campaign in June that ended with Mr. Trump’s Midnight Hammer strikes. It recurrently lifts its head in Ukraine’s war to defend itself from Russia.

It gets dicey here, but let’s continue. Mr. Trump conceives himself the biggest player on the stage, inseparable from the U.S. as the strongest country. The counterparties he cares about are Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping. I might guess he’s sending a very specific message even at the risk of depleting current U.S. military stocks. He’s showing his willingness to pummel leaders personally who threaten his remaining time in office. If I were to guess, the target here is China with respect to Taiwan. The message: The U.S. isn’t about to fight over an island; it will take aim directly at China’s stability and its leaders’ nearest and dearest personal and material interests.

My guess is that Mr. Trump would actually welcome a charge of waging illegal war being added to the inevitable articles of impeachment, Democrats diluting their many other and often plausible complaints and legalisms by trying to make a “high crime and misdemeanor” out of Mr. Trump striking at a historic enemy whose slogan for five decades has been “Death to America.”

Impeachment is coming. It will be less a test of Mr. Trump, who will be a lame duck, than of his enemies. The post-Trump era is nigh. Can Democrats be methodical and disciplined enough to bring out the genuinely bipartisan discomfort with the legality and boundary-stretching of many Trump actions?

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