President Donald Trump is now applying the unpredictable style that built his business empire and political brand to a much more complex and sensitive role as a wartime leader.
Supporters love it when Trump breaks things — like the Republican establishment. He tends to maintain room for maneuver by avoiding definitive positions. And although he is often shallow in detail and historical context, his personality projects certainty.
Trump’s talent for decisive action yielded success in a bold U.S. operation that transferred Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro from his headquarters to a New York prison cell in January. But in many of his public statements about the war with Iran he has still failed to convey the gravity and clarity of a traditional wartime president.
Trump now faces interconnected crises in the conflict. Tehran’s fierce resistance risks creating a long standoff. Economic pressure worsens as Iran virtually closes the Strait of Hormuz. Domestically, Trump faces a political upheaval highlighted on Tuesday (17), when a senior national security official guided by the MAGA movement resigned.
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Trump was surprised by the intensity of Tehran’s retaliatory strikes against US allies in the Gulf. He also seemed unprepared for the closure of the Strait — something many experts had already expected.
And the president’s attempt to pressure allies away from Hormuz hit a dead end when they refused to join a war about which they were not consulted.
Trump bets his risk tolerance will pay off
When wartime presidents are unable to clearly present a justification and an outcome strategy, they run the risk of losing their strategic direction and distancing themselves from the people.
Still, it is too early to adequately assess a war in which U.S. and Israeli strikes appear to have caused devastating damage to Iran’s ability to threaten its region and the United States with its nuclear and ballistic missile programs.
No one can predict, at this point, how the country’s political future will unfold following the death of so many senior regime figures, including , the long-time de facto political leader, last Tuesday.
Time may show that some of Trump’s instincts were shrewd and that his tolerance for risk produced results that other presidents have failed to achieve.
But it will be difficult for him to claim victory if the conflict ends with the Strait of Hormuz blocked, the world economy hostage and Iranians facing even harsher repression under a recalibrated regime.
The same will happen if Iran keeps highly enriched uranium that it could use in a future nuclear program.
Resolving these dilemmas may require even riskier operations—likely involving ground troops—than those attempted thus far.
Such missions would benefit from meticulous presidential planning, clear objectives, and careful management of consequences and public expectations.
A resignation that strikes at the heart of the MAGA movement
The resignation on Tuesday of Joe Kent, the MAGA-oriented former director of the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center, shook Washington.
The episode suggested that Trump is losing control of his own political coalition and highlighted an important question about the president’s justification for war.
Kent, a special forces veteran who lost his wife in an Islamic State attack in Syria, wrote to Trump in a letter that he had been misled by an Israeli disinformation campaign into believing that a quick victory over Iran was within reach.
He also argued that the Islamic Republic did not pose an “imminent” threat to U.S. national security, contrary to assurances from Trump and senior administration officials.
“You can change course and chart a new path for our nation, or you can let us slide further into decline and chaos,” Kent wrote. “The cards are in your hands.”
Some GOP lawmakers asserted that the views expressed by Kent in his resignation letter were anti-Semitic, with Rep. Don Bacon writing on social media: “Goodbye and good riddance. Anti-Semitism is an evil I detest, and we certainly don’t want it in our government.”
Senator Mitch McConnell expressed a similar sentiment, criticizing the “virulent anti-Semitism present in the resignation letter.”
Kent has little in common with the prominent Democrats who opposed the war. He has faced criticism in the past for associations with far-right figures, including white nationalists and a Nazi sympathizer.
But his resignation — amid intense turmoil over the war in the MAGA movement and among conservative media figures — shows that if the president has to fear a political uprising over the war, it could come from his own right.
That’s a potentially important factor for a president who has traditionally tried to avoid breaking ties with his base.
Kent’s resignation also highlights the lasting impact of a comment made this month by Secretary of State Marco Rubio that the US went to war preemptively because it believed Israel was about to attack and that Iran would respond by attacking American forces.
Trump denied being pressured into war and insists he was more enthusiastic than Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
While polls show many Republican voters still trust Trump, signs of dissent among his base are important as the war is already unpopular with most voters. And many American wars in the past have been weakened by the country turning against them.
Even more inaccurate war messages
On Tuesday, Trump gave critics more reason to question his justification for the war, his reluctance to say when it might end and the inconsistency of his positions.
Days after demanding U.S. allies send ships to help open the Strait of Hormuz, he insisted he never wanted them. “I didn’t apply full pressure because I think if I had, they probably would have gone, but we don’t need help,” he said.
When asked if he was worried that Iran could become a new Vietnam if it sent troops into the ground, Trump responded: “No, I’m not afraid…in fact, I’m not afraid of anything.”
Another reporter asked Trump if he had a plan for the day after the military actions ended. “We have many,” he said, although he never specified any. “If we left now, it would take them 10 years to rebuild. But we’re not ready to leave yet, although we will in the near future.”
Trump has offered sometimes contradictory reasons for going to war. He suggested that Iran posed an imminent threat to the US without providing evidence. He implied he sought regime change when launching the attack, but has since downplayed the possibility of a popular uprising in Iran.
On Monday (16), the president fueled new concerns that he was not fully convinced, in his own mind, why he went to war. He denied that his justification was for oil, but added the following elliptical comment: “We didn’t need it, but we did it. It’s almost — you could say we did it out of habit, which is not a good thing to do. But we did it because we have some good allies there.”
Trump has created further confusion by repeatedly claiming that the war is already won, while at the same time arguing that it is too early to bring American troops home. He said he will know the right moment “in his bones.”
His trust in his own almost mystical intuition helped him overcome countless personal, business, and political problems. But now it represents another risky gamble, as moments of great consequence and potential pain loom in war.
