Why Trump is about to surrender

Friends,

No one knows what Trump is going to do from minute to minute, least of all Trump. But it’s looking ever more likely he’ll be exiting Iran within days, declaring his “excursion” into it (as he’s termed his war) a major victory — and then changing the subject.

On Friday, Trump posted on his social media site that “we are getting very close to meeting our objectives as we consider winding down our great Military efforts in the Middle East.”

What objectives? He never said what they were to begin with.

And, on Monday, he announced a pause in bombing attacks as he claimed representatives of the U.S. and Iran were having productive conversations.

He’s about to wind down and exit because he doesn’t give a damn about anything except maintaining his wealth and power — and the war is now costing him both.

It’s hurting his financial backers in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar — whose wealth has been seriously diminished by the war and whose vulnerability has been exposed.

It’s p---ing off Trump’s wealthy political backers at home — who are getting pummeled as the U.S. stock market sinks under the weight of the war.

It’s infuriating American voters, as gasoline sells for nearly $4 a gallon — causing Republicans to become ever more anxious about a political backlash in the midterm elections. Most were elected on Trump’s coattails in the 2024 election, in which Trump promised to reduce prices and avoid foreign entanglements — rather than do the exact opposite.

So, forget regime change. Forget freedom for Iranians. Forget “obliterating” Iran’s nuclear capabilities (which Trump claimed he accomplished last June).

Trump will say he vanquished Iran’s military and defense capacities, destroyed its economy, and decapitated its leadership.

Job over. Mission accomplished. Iran obliterated (again).

Right now, though, he has to save face. Iran has rejected Trump’s threat that if it doesn’t open the Strait of Hormuz by Monday night, the United States will strike Iranian power plants. Iran says if the U.S. attacks Iran’s power plants, it will attack energy, information technology, and desalination facilities across the Gulf.

So Trump will do some more bombing this week. He’ll then leave the job of opening the Strait to other countries, claiming that the U.S. doesn’t need it because we produce enough oil on our own (which is untrue because oil prices depend on the global market, and U.S. refiners depend on foreign grades of crude).

And he’ll leave the bombing of Iran to Benjamin Netanyahu, who’d rather continue striking Iran and Hezbollah’s strongholds in Lebanon than stand trial in Israel for bribery and corruption. (Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said Friday that the military campaign in Iran would “escalate significantly” this week.)

So what will America have gotten out of Trump’s “excursion”? Zilch. Actually, less than zilch because in many ways we’re worse off than when it started. We’ve lost blood and fortune.

Thirteen U.S. service members have been killed, and the war has cost the U.S. an estimated $18 billion so far, not counting the costs to American consumers of higher-priced energy and food.

The regime in Iran has changed, but there’s been no “regime change.” And the change that’s occurred has been toward a harder, more nationalist, more belligerent Islamic state.

Iran is still hiding its enriched uranium and is presumably more determined than ever to turn it into nuclear warheads.

Trump and Israel may crow about destroying Iranian launchers and missile stocks, but Iran is firing even more ballistic missiles and drones across the Middle East now than it did a week ago — launching new missile attacks on Israeli cities and damaging key energy installations in Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates.

On Friday, Iran launched intermediate-range ballistic missiles at the U.S.-U.K. Diego Garcia military base 2,500 miles away. That’s far enough to hit much of Europe.

Iran figures that political and economic pressures are mounting against Trump faster than they are mounting against Iran. While Iran uses cheap drones to disrupt global supply chains, it’s generating huge profits on its sale of oil (mostly to China), reportedly $8.7 billion in additional oil profits since the war began, driven by a $47 per barrel increase in prices compared to pre-war levels.

Forget Iran negotiating with the U.S. over ending the war. Ebrahim Rezaei, spokesman for the Iranian Parliament’s foreign affairs and defense committee, says any talks with the U.S. are off the agenda as Tehran “focuses on punishing the aggressors.”

Other Iranian leaders are demanding as conditions for ending the war massive reparations from the U.S. and the expulsion of American military from the region.

They’re also talking about transforming the Strait of Hormuz into an Iranian toll booth controlling a third of the world’s shipborne crude oil.

We have no way of knowing whether America will now be more vulnerable to Iran-sponsored terrorism, but the risk seems greater than before Trump launched his war.

All told, there has been no American victory here, only tragedy — although the sociopath in the Oval Office will surely claim victory and lie through his teeth about what he has accomplished.

Make no mistake: This will be a surrender. As Vermont Republican Senator George Aiken suggested in 1966 when the U.S. found itself mired in another unwinnable war, Trump’s only real course of action now is to “declare victory and get out,” which I expect him to do momentarily.

• Robert Reich is an emeritus professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/. His new memoir, Coming Up Short, can be found wherever you buy books. You can also support local bookstores nationally by ordering the book at bookshop.org