President Trump is eager to declare success in Iran and Gaza, but he is struggling to impose his will in either conflict.
President Trump may want to let go of the Middle East. But it won’t let go of him.
Over the weekend, Mr. Trump said his new strategy was to be “low-keying it” in Iran, a suggestion that he wants to pressure the country into making a favorable deal without taking major military action. But a stark reminder of the limits of U.S. power in the region came from Israel, where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared Sunday he was “ruling out” Mr. Trump’s peace plan for Gaza.
The two Middle East conflicts have underscored Mr. Trump’s eagerness to declare success and his inability to impose his will on them, despite the enormous military firepower that he has been able to deploy.
Mr. Trump is “clearly trying to find a pathway as the midterms approach to downgrade all of this,” said Brian Katulis, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, a Washington think tank. Instead, Mr. Katulis went on, “reality is slapping him in the face.”
Mr. Trump faces depleted weapons stockpiles, an Iranian regime determined to impose pain on the United States, an Israeli prime minister battling for re-election and American voters reeling from high prices induced by the Iran war. The November midterms keep ticking closer, steadily raising the political costs of the turmoil to Mr. Trump and Republicans.
Mr. Trump laid out his low-key approach to Iran in a brief interview with the news website Axios on Sunday. Rather than make new military threats, he said that “we are just watching Iran with its huge inflation and the fact they have no money.” He added: “It will work out. It always works out. It’s like a chess game.”
“Now, can they make trouble? Yeah, they can make trouble,” Mr. Trump told reporters in the Oval Office Monday, acknowledging Iran’s ability to keep harassing commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz. “But they’re broke.”
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