Trump and Hegseth American nutter-o-cracy gets Iran sanity check

Spare a thought for Lindsey Graham. The long-time Senator from South Carolina, whose overwhelming desire to bomb Iran can only be understood as the sublimation of a more libidinal desire, is learning one of life’s harshest lessons: sometimes there is nothing worse than getting exactly what one wants.

A month after the initial assault that killed its Supreme Leader, Iran has emerged remarkably well off in the war against the US and Israel. Though it has not secured a decisive win, Iran at least has the superior hand going into the negotiations in Pakistan.

This was, of course, never supposed to happen. The idea that Iran could pose any meaningful resistance to the US military in an actual confrontation does not seem to have occurred to this administration.

American foreign policy, at least as it is presented to the public, has long been predicated on the notion of a hostile world full of evil, irrational actors who require occasional thumping with a big stick to keep them in check. The US never has competitors with interests at odds with its own, only a rotating cast of madmen.

Iran has, for decades, held a special place in the rogues’ gallery of the US’ enemies. I remember growing up in the States, my father, with his Reagan-era political science degree, speaking derisively about “the Mullahs.” I remember cable news pundits painting a picture of black-clad death cultists, bent on building The Bomb, animated purely by their hatred of Israel and America. This Iran was possessed by an ur-evil, unable to be reasoned with, a somehow permanent, imminent threat.

The distance between this projection and the held beliefs of the man calling the shots has widened and narrowed with administrations. Trump’s strength, historically, has been his ability to spout the line while tacitly acknowledging, in his overriding need to be seen as a deal maker, that his adversaries are rational agents with material motives.

But here he has blundered. High off their string of unchallenged war crimes in Gaza, Lebanon, Venezuela, and Cuba, it is increasingly clear that there was a full belief that cutting off the head would result in the collapse of any Iranian resistance. Instead, Iran steadily applied pressure through a series of horizontal and vertical escalations, making support for the US costly to its neighbours, and holding a knife at the throat of the global economy at the Strait of Hormuz.

Each passing week revealed the extent of Trump’s failure to plan.

His trademark capriciousness, typically deployed to destabilise his opponents, has smacked both of desperation and market manipulation as of late. He claimed, week after week, that the war was won. As soon as he declared Iran was unable to defend itself, a new volley of missiles would rain down on Tel Aviv.

His final bluff that a “whole civilisation [would] die” if Iran did not open the Strait of Hormuz was terrifying only insofar as we all knew that he knew that we knew he had been humiliated.

By that point, talk of liberating the people of Iran had long evaporated. Instead of the expected grass-roots regime change, numerous pro-government protests filled Tehran’s Revolution Square. After just a week, even the Iranian monarchists at my local leisure centre were flagging. “Not like this. Not like this.” As it turns out, slaughtering nearly 200 school children does not win hearts and minds.

If the Iranian people have rallied and their government has largely coalesced in the face of this existential threat, the cracks in the MAGA coalition have never been more apparent. The growing number of disenchanted former true believers — Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, and Marjorie Taylor Greene — have all been taking shots at the president, now from outside the tent.

Alex Jones called for the president to be removed from office using the 25th Amendment.

Even among those who are supportive, there is no unifying logic underpinning the war. Instead, a pack of competing motivations is contributing to a spasmodic, faltering campaign.

The neocons, or those who have managed to ride out America First, were happy to take this opportunity at regime change to secure US interests in the region, even if it seems Israel may have provided the push. The Polymarket profiteers are trying to line their pockets with their insider knowledge. The clash-of-civilisations crowd has been keen to strike at the heart of Islamic resistance to the West. For the Christian Zionists, this war represents just another stepping stone on the path to sweet Armageddon.

And then there is whatever is happening with Pete Hegseth. The “secretary of war” fancies himself something of a crusader of antiquity, tattooed with “Deus Vult” (God wills it), a massive Jerusalem cross, and kafir in Arabic. Hegseth’s confirmation was mired with controversy surrounding his treatment of women and his penchant for a drink, but it is his infusion of Christian nationalism into the US armed forces that has been the subject of scrutiny during the war against Iran.

Despite the relative recency of his religious awakening (many such cases), he has thrown himself into his role as a warrior for God. Long before he joined the administration, Hegseth has been psyching himself up for a confrontation with Iran and guiding Trump towards intervention.

In 2020, he said, “I don’t care about Iranian cultural sites,” when it came to strikes on the country because, as he told it, Iran would destroy every American cultural site and build a mosque on them.

Now in the cabinet, he has started monthly Christian worship services at the Pentagon, where he has prayed for “overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy.” He recently dismissed the army’s top chaplain, Major General William Green, as part of a purge that has seen the removal of almost two dozen top brass, and has ordered military chaplains to remove their rank insignia, instead displaying signifiers of their respective faiths.

Brooks Potteiger, Hegseth’s chosen spiritual advisor, reportedly told top brass in a sermon, “If our Lord is sovereign even over the sparrow’s fallings, you can be assured that he is sovereign over everything else that falls in this world, including Tomahawk and Minuteman missiles.” Presumably, this includes Tomahawks that fall on schoolgirls.

And yet, for all this bravado, the war is not going well for Hegseth and Trump. Not even John Bolton is confident in the venture, let alone God. Trump’s behaviour following the collapse of the negotiations in Islamabad has only become more erratic. He has implemented a naval blockade on Iranian ports and the Strait of Hormuz on top of Iran’s selective closure.

If the plan is to pressure Iran via China, he seems to be forgetting that there is another international shipping chokepoint bordering part of Iran’s forward defence. In the early hours of Monday morning, he attacked the Pope for his anti-war statements and shared an AI-generated image of himself as Jesus on his social media platform.

The net result is that Trump’s global sway has greatly diminished. Iran’s neighbours are likely wondering how much protection alignment with the US affords them. Europe is staring down a cost-of-living crisis. And as gas prices surge past $4/gallon, Americans may have to start asking themselves whether the real theocratic threat to their way of living was at home the whole time.

Alex Foley is a researcher and painter living in Brighton, UK. They have a background in molecular biology of health and disease. They are the co-founder of the Accountability Archive, a web tool preserving fragile digital evidence of pro-genocidal rhetoric from power holders.

Follow them on X: @foleywoley

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Opinions expressed in this article remain those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The New Arab, its editorial board or staff.