From the beginning of the Iran conflict, Donald Trump has presented an array of reasons and objectives for attacking Iran.  Many of them are contradictory.  

• It’s about nuclear weapons (the same ones that were “obliterated” last year); 
• It’s about fundamental regime change (and yet the “Venezuela solution” would also be just fine); 
• There was an imminent threat of attack against the US (which no intelligence agency was able to pick up) – or, Trump just had a “gut-feeling” that it was simply time to do this as it has to be done sooner or later anyway; 
• An impending Israeli attack pushed him into it (or he pushed the Israelis); 
• It’s about the Iranian people choosing their next leader (but Donald Trump must have final say in who that is); 
• This could go on for a month or more (or it is “very complete, pretty much,” and could be over “very soon”).  

Trump supporters regard this as a sophisticated strategy designed to keep opponents off-guard. Sometimes called “the weave,” it is held to be a process of veering between different courses to keep opponents guessing and maintain maximum options until the last minute.  A large part of this strategy is reducing the number of people and power-centres involved in the ultimate decision down to a few, trusted individuals who report directly to Trump, thus keeping everyone else in the dark.  There is a reason why the entire diplomatic apparatus of the US has been sidelined in the search for peace in the major conflicts of the day (Ukraine, Gaza, and now Iran) by the President’s son-in-law and a real estate developer friend.  

Perhaps this approach works well in the world of real estate, though Mr. Trump has gone spectacularly bankrupt more than a few times.  But it is not well suited to statecraft.  If the United States expects allies to support American actions, it needs to let them know what it is doing and why.  If adversaries are to be offered “off-ramps” to de-escalate conflicts, they need to know what those ramps are.  Domestically, and perhaps most importantly, the American public needs to understand the course of action being taken if they are to support it.  

Moreover, Trump’s approach to diplomacy shows very little regard for any perspective but his own; the idea that the “other side” may have its objectives and priorities is alien to him.  And he is frequently so isolated from reality that his perspective can be spectacularly wrong.  In Gaza, the idea that Palestinians could be induced to voluntarily leave their homes and face permanent refugee status elsewhere, even if it could be made comfortable, so that Gaza could be developed into a beach resort for the benefit of others was jaw-droppingly insensitive and foolish.  The idea that Ukrainians would give up part of their homeland, after all they have suffered, because of seeing their President being yelled at in the Oval Office about “cards” was equally imbecilic. 

Any number of experts on Iranian politics and society could have told Trump, if he had been willing to listen, that the Iranians are a proud people who will not respond well to being bullied.  Even if they don’t like their current regime, which is brutal and repressive, the image of their homeland being bombed, and of an American President insisting that he must have final say over who their next leader should be, is not going to play well.  Iranians are sensitive to foreign intervention.  In the case of America, this goes back to 1953, when an elected leader was overthrown in a CIA-backed coup because he wanted to nationalize Iran’s oil.  

Moreover, the idea that a clean and surgical air campaign could lop off the head of the Iranian regime to permit a more pliable successor to emerge belies the reality of almost 50 years of the Islamic Republic.  Perhaps it will work in Venezuela (though it remains to be seen if the remains of the Maduro regime will ultimately have the last laugh), but Iran is very different.  The regime is deeply embedded and conditioned by ideas of “resistance.”  It is also deeply corrupt and its security services know they have nowhere to go if they lose power – they WILL fire on the crowd if they have to, as they have proven.  Succession plans run several people deep for all key posts, and they don’t much care how the people suffer as long as the regime endures.

The hope that real regime change could be accomplished from the air alone has been widely discredited.  But the one red line that Trump appears unwilling to cross is “boots on the ground.”  In that sense, if this exercise was about regime change, it was doomed from the start.  If, on the other hand, it is about changing the behaviour of the regime – the Venezuela idea – it needed to give the power brokers of the Iranian system (the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps) a sense that there is a possible and acceptable tomorrow for them.  They never had this, especially not from America’s ally, Israel, which sees the destruction of the Guard Corps as an existential goal.  

How will this end?  I suspect Trump doesn’t really know.  He will likely soon decide that it’s too costly economically and politically and he will just stop.  He will then select a goal from the wide range of objectives he has put out there and declare that it has been achieved and that he is completely victorious.   

Whether Israel will also stop at the same time, remains to be seen.  Though Israel and the US are supposedly in this together, their basic aims are not necessarily the same.  It is altogether possible that Netanyahu will want to keep going, at the very least in Lebanon, for some time yet.

And Iran gets a vote in how this ends too. The regime’s calculus could evolve, if it comes to believe that a) it will survive no matter what the US and Israel throw at it from the air, and b) Trump is increasingly desperate for a way out.  Sensing that Trump needs out, Tehran may opt to keep threatening global oil supplies for a time to teach him a lesson.  This would further erode public opinion in the US and also regional and global support for America.

The chaotic, downright dysfunctional way Trump and his team have tried to elaborate their goals offers many possibilities for Iran to keep going.  For example, on Monday of this week Secretary of State Rubio tried to offer a clear goal; “The goals of this mission are clear,” Mr. Rubio said at a State Department event. “It is to destroy the ability of this regime to launch missiles, both by destroying their missiles and their launchers; destroy the factories that make these missiles; and destroy their navy.”

This sort of statement creates a trap for the US.  So as long as Iran can show that it retains the ability to fire missiles and drones, even if only a very few of them, the United States and Israel have not achieved their objective – at least, not this one anyway.  And for all the different objectives and goals that Trump has offered up since the war began, there are ways for the Iranian regime to demonstrate that they have not been met.  All the regime needs to do is survive and it “wins.”

Trump is about to learn what military officers and strategists have known since the beginning of time: It’s very easy to start a war, but much harder to end one – particularly if you never had a clear goal to begin with.