Trump Is Charting a New Course on Iran

The war with Iran has now passed its six-month mark. Hostilities abate, then flare up again—most recently over the weekend, with American forces striking two Iranian tankers in the Strait of Hormuz in retaliation for attempted attacks on U.S. ships. As the war turns hot, then cold, then hot again, one question is on everyone’s minds: What is the president thinking? This piece by Mike Doran, first published in Tablet, is an attempt at an answer, and one that—unlike so much that is written on this conflict—generates more light than heat. We’re pleased to run it in our pages. —The Editors

Lindsey Graham and Donald Trump agreed on the objective: an Islamic Republic stripped of its nuclear program and of the power to hold the region hostage. But they frequently disagreed about how to make Tehran yield. Graham never wavered. More force, he recommended.

Three weeks into the war, the senator revealed the advice he had given the president: “Keep it up for a few more weeks, take Kharg Island. . . [and] let this regime die on the vine.” In May, he put the theory plainly: “Hurt them more. Maybe they’ll make a deal if you hurt them enough.” And in June, three weeks before his death, he predicted that if Iran contested the Strait of Hormuz, “We will obliterate them.”

Since last Easter, Trump has repeatedly threatened Tehran in accordance with the late senator’s advice. During the summer, the U.S. military prepared what reportedly would have been the largest strike of the war. At the urging of regional allies, however, the president again gave the military the order to stand down. Graham did not live to accept that rejection, but many of his political allies, my friends among them, reached what they considered to be an obvious conclusion: Trump had lost his nerve.