'Emboldened' Trump could leave himself 'politically exposed' with new war plan: analysis

Donald Trump may find himself dealing with fallout his administration cannot handle should one act in office go wrong.

The president is, according to CNN analyst Stephen Collinson, feeling bold after his team's actions in Venezuela, and though it may not have gone well for Trump in Greenland, his weight in world politics has not diminished. Collinson believes the president could risk it all in the lead-up to the midterms with a move against Iran that, if it goes wrong, could be a political disaster for Trump.

The analyst wrote, "Ordering the military into battle is the most somber duty of presidents. Their assumption of the highest office comes with an obligation to explain why force might be necessary. And fuzzy thinking could imperil the mission.

"Leavitt implied that Americans should just trust the president. 'He’s always thinking about what’s in the best interests of the United States of America, of our military, of the American people,' she said.

"This would be a thin foundation on which to launch a major war that might end up costing billions of dollars and unknown numbers of American and Iranian lives, and that could trigger huge military and economic repercussions in the Middle East."

Despite the thin foundations, Trump may push for a strike against Iran even if it could "worsen Trump's already stark domestic unpopularity in a midterm election year."

Collinson added, "Trump wouldn’t like any comparison with the Iraq war that began in 2003, given its disastrous aftermath. But before that conflict, the Bush administration spent months in a PR offensive designed to convince the country of its later-debunked rationale for the war. It also managed to win congressional authorization for the invasion — at least securing a domestic legal basis for its actions.

"If Trump persists in failing to level with citizens and Congress and then takes military action, he will be prolonging a trend of his second term. And he will be leaving himself politically exposed in the event that strikes go wrong.

"But it also appears that Trump is emboldened by his successful ouster of Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro in a spectacular operation last month that killed no US troops.

"His tolerance for risk may also be heightened because the US assassination of Iranian military and intelligence chief Qasem Soleimani in his first term failed to trigger the kind of regional conflagration and Iranian attacks on US allies that some experts predicted."

The analyst went on to suggest that, should Trump take action against Iran, he may find himself "creating a box" that is "difficult to exit with credibility".