When President Donald Trump and his brain trust of deep thinkers started their war with Iran, they had a long line of things they just didn’t think about.
They were so focused on their legitimate desire to remove the murderous Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei from power and replace him with someone better, that they didn’t consider the possibility that his successor could be someone who was, in fact, even worse.
But that’s what happened.
When Ali Khamenei died early in the fighting, the new supreme leader who emerged was Mojtaba Khamenei, his son. Even before this war began, the younger Khamenei was far more committed than his father to developing Iran into a nuclear power.
This war has claimed the lives of Mojtaba Khamenei’s father, wife and son. He hated the United States, the West and Israel before the first shot even had been fired in this round of fighting. Now, his hatred will achieve new levels, and he will spend all his time focused on revenge. He will devote himself to nothing but figuring out ways to kill Americans.
Trump, his advisors and his allies thought they would make the world safer for Americans by removing the elder Khamenei from leadership.
They didn’t produce a strategy to deal with a new Iranian leader who would be even more dangerous to the United States because they thought killing Khamenei senior would solve the problem.
So, they didn’t ponder contingency plans if things went south on them.
They just didn’t think about it.
Nor, it appears, did they contemplate how Iran would respond to the attack.
They didn’t develop plans for keeping Iran from widening the war and using the fighting to radicalize other parts of the Middle East, a piece of the world that already was only one spark away from exploding into apocalyptic violence. They didn’t contemplate the ways their attack might be used for propaganda purposes to turn huge swathes of an already troubled land into breeding grounds for still more Mojtaba Khameneis.
They just didn’t think about it.
Nor did they give consideration to the fact that they would create an opportunity for Russian leader and war criminal Vladimir Putin to wiggle out of the corner into which our allies had worked to shove him.
Putin has gained ground in at least three ways from this Trump war on Iran.
Putin’s sold weapons to the Iranians, thus generating cash he desperately needs in his aggressive war on Ukraine. The easing of the embargo on Russian oil also has helped fund Russian aggression.
And the fact that the United States has seriously depleted its stock of weapons in this war means it will be much harder for us to supply the beleaguered Ukrainians—or defend ourselves, for that matter.
Team Trump didn’t ponder ways starting this war might make the United States and the world less safe because they didn’t want to acknowledge that things might not go exactly as they wished.
They just didn’t think about it.
Nor did they strategize about ways to keep the flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz clear without putting the lives of U.S. military personnel at risk. Because they didn’t do so, gas may soon cost $5 per gallon and our soldiers may be stuck on convoy duty for a long time to come.
Again, they just didn’t think about it.
That’s on brand for Trump.
He always thinks only about what he wants to have happen—and never about what, good or bad, could happen. He never asks what could go wrong before he plunges into action.
This impulsiveness explains not just how a man who inherited $400 million from his father managed to go bankrupt at least six times, but also why both his presidencies have been rollercoaster rides marked by unforced errors and self-created disasters.
There were reasons that seven other presidents, Republican and Democrat alike, tended to tread with caution in the Middle East in general and with Iran in particular. They knew the whole region was a spider web and that touching it anywhere could create vibrations and ramifications elsewhere.
Donald Trump, though, believes analysis, planning and thought are for sissies and softies.
He and his cohorts didn’t want to think about bad things that might happen.
So, they just didn’t think.
Period.
