The Constitution Is Clear on Birthright Citizenship. The Question Is Whether the Court Will Be

 

Sometimes showing up is a mistake. Donald Trump made that mistake today, becoming the first president to sit in on an oral argument before the United States Supreme Court, which heard the birthright citizenship case, Trump v. Barbara, today. He only made it through his side of the case, leaving midway through the argument shortly after the ACLU’s Cecilia Wang began, which just isn’t done.

Trump showed just how poorly he understands the dynamic with the Supreme Court. These aren’t people who need his approval. “Thank you again. Thank you again. I won't forget it”—the words Trump uttered to Chief Justice John Roberts at the State of the Union Address in 2025—make the justices cringe. This is why they have life tenure, so they can rule as they will, not as the person or the party who put them on the bench wants them to. We all understand the times we live in and the concerns about some members of this Court. 

But Trump’s brazen attempt to intimidate the Justices is the worst possible way he could go about it, and it showed. Trump can attack justices in his social media posts like he did over the weekend (“The World is getting rich selling citizenships to our Country, while at the same time laughing at how STUPID our U.S. Court System has become (TARIFFS!). ‘Dumb Judges and Justices will not a great Country make!’”) and again today (below), but ultimately, there’s not much he can do if he doesn’t like their decisions. They know that. And the birthright citizenship case is this term’s nadir, a train wreck of a case whose weaknesses were on full display today.

Solicitor General D. John Sauer’s opener: Birthright citizenship is about slaves, not illegal aliens. Children of temporary visitors aren’t citizens. “Unrestricted birthright citizenship” contradicts practice in other countries.

Sort of.

The Fourteenth Amendment, which, if you recall our earlier conversations, is the constitutional source of birthright citizenship, was the fix for the injustice worked by the Dred Scott case. Its rule is clear: People born in the United States are citizens, with rare exceptions for people like babies born to foreign diplomats who aren’t subject to U.S. law. 

The Court underscored that principle in United States v. Wong Kim Ark in 1898, holding that a child born in the United States to non-citizen parents automatically acquires U.S. citizenship at birth. That’s been the state of the law and our understanding of it ever since.

Donald Trump made his views on the subject plain before he had even returned to the White House: “We’re going to end that because it’s ridiculous.” That’s what he told NBC’s Kristen Welker during an interview for Meet the Press. The executive order he issued upon returning to office is inconsistent with the plain language of the 14^th Amendment, which the Supreme Court has always interpreted as doing precisely what its language suggests: guaranteeing citizenship to people born in this country.

Every serious legal challenge since then has run into the same wall: the Constitution. This one seems headed in that direction too. And Trump did nothing to improve the case by showing up in such a rank, performative manner. He could have sat in the Oval Office and listened to the argument online like the rest of us.

As for Sauer’s argument that birthright citizenship “contradicts” how other countries handle it, it took me a moment to pick my jaw up off the floor after that claim. Did the ultra-conservative Solicitor General of the United States really encourage the justices to take into account other countries’ laws that conflict with our own? That’s strictly verboten in Federalist Society parlance. What’s next? An appeal to Sharia Law? Gasp. (Seriously, I just can’t overstate how hypocritical this is).

Conservative justices, including Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Alito, have all strongly opposed using foreign law to interpret the Constitution, rejecting it as undercutting our democratic sovereignty. 

Conservative justices objected to the use of foreign precedents when they were the dissenters in cases involving the death penalty for juveniles and laws regulating sexual conduct. But now, and in a case where it’s the opposite of U.S. law, the Solicitor General felt free to call upon foreign precedent.

Chief Justice Roberts at his confirmation hearing: “In foreign law you can find anything you want,” Chief Justice Roberts said. “Looking at foreign law for support is like looking out over a crowd and picking out your friends.” Justice Alito at his: “We have our own law. We have our own traditions. We have our own precedents. And we should look to that in interpreting our Constitution.”

I’m belaboring this relatively minor point from the argument to show just how far this Justice Department, including the Solicitor General’s office, which is uniquely powerful and traditionally independent, has gone off the rails in service of what Donald Trump wants. Sauer’s willingness to wade in with this argument shows how willing this Justice Department is to contort itself into pretzel logic in service of Trump and abandon long-established conservative beliefs. But it’s also unlikely that this argument scored points with any of the justices who weren’t already inclined to go along with it no matter how contrary to existing law. It was a show for the audience of one who reclined in the courtroom, where he didn’t belong.

And in any event, isn’t the point that birthright citizenship is uniquely American and helps define our multicultural democracy and its values? We are a country like none other, fueled by immigrants and immigration. Birthright citizenship is part of our unique promise, a bright promise, not something to be afraid of, at least for those of us who welcome new people, new ideas, and new infusions of culture, food, and traditions. People who aren’t afraid of the promise displayed on the Statue of Liberty from Emma Lazarus’ 1883 poem:

“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Justice Gorsuch worried about the difficulty of determining each person’s immigration status based on indeterminate factors and about whether Congress could further restrict who qualifies for citizenship in the future. Justice Barrett was concerned about the fate of children born and raised here with no ability to influence their place of birth. Justice Alito asked about the “humanitarian” issues that would arise for people who have lived their lives here.

There was this exchange:

JUSTICE GORSUCH: “Do you think Native Americans today are birthright citizens under your test?”

SOLICITOR GENERAL SAUER: “Uhh... I think so? I have to think that through.”

And this one:

SAUER: “We’re in a new world where 8 billion people are one plane ride away from having a child who’s a US citizen.”

CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: “It’s a new world. It’s the same Constitution.”

You get the idea of how the argument went. It was a bad day for the government, but it was their own fault in insisting on a case that is contrary to law and that no solicitor general exercising independent judgment would have allowed to go forward.

At the end of her argument for keeping birthright citizenship as it now exists, Justice Kavanaugh asked Wang about her path to victory: “I think Mr. Sauer acknowledged that, and you mentioned this in your opening, that if we agree with you on how to read Wong Kim Ark, then you win. So that could be a -- if we did agree with you on Wong Kim Ark, that could be just a short opinion, right, that says the better reading is Respondents' reading, government doesn't ask us to overrule, affirmed? Is that …”

Wang responded, “Yes.”

This is how experienced Supreme Court advocates do it. The answer was perfect.

Kavanaugh continued, pointing out that Wang made one argument based on a statute and one based on the Constitution. He asked Wang which of her arguments the Court should rule on, pointing out that the Court typically rules on a statutory basis when that is sufficient to decide a case, rather than interpreting the Constitution, which it does only when necessary.

Kavanaugh: “Why would we address the constitutional issue…our usual practice, as you're well aware, of course, is to resolve things on statutory grounds and -- and not to do a constitutional ground.”

Wang: “Sure. You know, I think we obviously have these two paths to a win here. We're happy to win on either or both of them.”

There was laughter in the courtroom. It’s hard to predict with this Court, but the President’s presence today didn’t make his case any stronger. It may have been the final nail in the coffin.

You can read the full transcript from the argument here.

Cases can turn on oral argument—but the coverage doesn’t always capture what actually mattered in the room. I try to walk you through what happened and explain how it landed, based on years of arguing cases in the Courts of Appeals. If you appreciate this kind of analysis, subscribe to Civil Discourse and support independent journalism that isn’t afraid to take the administration on when it matters the most.

We’re in this together,

Joyce Vance

 

Trump's Other War Against Elections

 

US Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Tuesday accused President Donald Trump of trying to sabotage the 2026 midterm elections as his illegal war on Iran jacks up gas prices and threatens higher inflation throughout the economy, angering voters across the political spectrum.

The Massachusetts Democrat’s warning came shortly after Trump signed an executive order aimed at restricting mail-in voting, a move that was widely seen as unconstitutional. Warren wrote on social media: “Trump knows his war with Iran is unpopular. Trump knows Americans are angry that he’s made everything more expensive. Instead of reversing course, Trump is trying to rig the next election. It’s illegal—and we will fight back.”

Ben Raderstorf, a policy advocate at the nonprofit group Protect Democracy, said that “just like the war in Iran, the war against the midterms is extremely dangerous and will do so much damage to our elections and our democracy.”

A Reuters/Ipsos poll released Tuesday evening found that 66% of US voters—including 40% of Republicans—want a quick end to Trump’s war on Iran, even if his administration doesn’t achieve its vague and constantly shifting objectives, which have ranged from thwarting an imminent threat that analysts say was not present, to full-scale regime change, to destroying a nuclear weapons program that US intelligence has repeatedly found does not exist.

Reuters reported that two in three respondents to the new survey “said they ⁠expected gas prices to worsen over the next year, including 40% of Republicans.”

While oil prices fell sharply on Tuesday after Trump declared that US forces would end their assault on Iran in “two weeks or maybe a few days longer,” the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) estimated last week that the gas price surge stemming from the war was on pace to cost American drivers an additional $9.4 billion per month.

“Alabama is the most affected state in the nation, with residents spending an extra $52 per person, per month,” ITEP found. “Other heavily impacted states include Mississippi ($51), Wyoming ($49), Kentucky ($47), and New Mexico ($44).”

Trump is expected to address the nation on the Iran war at 9 pm ET on Wednesday, more than a month into a military campaign that was not authorized by lawmakers and that has sparked a regional conflict, killing thousands and displacing millions.

The president told reporters on Tuesday that Iran “doesn’t have to make a deal” to end the war, and Trump has privately told aides that he’s willing to end the assault without securing the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz.

“We leave because there’s no reason for us to do this,” Trump said.

-Common Dreams

Trump's Address

 

Trump said the United States plans to attack Iran “extremely hard” over the next two to three weeks in a speech last night that made little mention of diplomacy. It was his first formal address about the Iran war since its start more than a month ago. Yet Trump made no major announcements, instead reiterating recent talking points: core U.S. goals are “nearing completion,” Trump said, giving no assurances about the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz and saying that other countries should “take the lead” on the matter. Iran’s military command responded by vowing to carry out “more crushing, broader, and more destructive” attacks, according to state media. 

Trump said the United States plans to attack Iran “extremely hard” over the next two to three weeks in a speech last night that made little mention of diplomacy. It was his first formal address about the Iran war since its start more than a month ago. Yet Trump made no major announcements, instead reiterating recent talking points: core U.S. goals are “nearing completion,” Trump said, giving no assurances about the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz and saying that other countries should “take the lead” on the matter. Iran’s military command responded by vowing to carry out “more crushing, broader, and more destructive” attacks, according to state media. 

The president voiced plans to bomb Iran—a nation of more than 90 million— “back to the stone ages.” Trump threatened to strike Iran’s power plants and possibly its oil infrastructure if a deal to end the war is not reached. He also said the United States was surveilling Iran’s nuclear materials and would attack if Iran were to “make a move” toward them, while praising the degradation of Iran’s navy and air force as a result of the war. Global oil prices rose and stocks tumbled in the wake of Trump’s address.

The status of U.S.-Iran diplomacy: Unnamed U.S. and Iranian officials told the New York Times the two countries are exchanging messages but have not entered formal negotiations over a truce or peace deal. While Trump wrote on social media yesterday that Tehran had requested a ceasefire, Iran denied it. Iranian officials have said they instead seek a broad deal to end the conflict. Iran believes the United States is not serious about diplomacy, according to comments from its foreign ministry spokesperson published on state media.

The status of talks on Hormuz: The United Kingdom (UK) is hosting a virtual meeting of some thirty-five countries today to discuss reopening the Strait of Hormuz. For now, ships passing through the strait have done so via negotiations with Tehran; the Philippines said today it had gained permission to transit. Some ships have been required to make payments in Chinese yuan or cryptocurrency in order to get through, Bloomberg reported.  “In abandoning both military restraint and the strategy of great-power competition, the current Trump administration has pivoted to what it calls ‘flexible realism.’ Anchored in the principle that might makes right, this new approach seems designed to justify the president’s expansive use of coercion…But a penchant for power, unmoored from strategy or a clear definition of the national interest, does not qualify a leader as realist.”

—CFR expert Rebecca Lissner and the Brookings Institution’s Mira Rapp-Hooper, Foreign Affairs

 

Trump’s Mass Deportation Operation

Trump’s mass deportation operation is hugely unpopular. He was compelled to fire Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and to force Custom and Border Control thug Gregory Bovino into retirement. Now, we learn that Markwayne Mullin, Noem’s successor, wants “to get the department off the front page of the news.” The new mantra for a mass deportation policy that routinely violates human rights, engages in racial profiling, and kills people is “lower profile.”

The Atlantic reports, “[Immigration Czar Tom] Homan’s tactical shift would give ICE a lower profile while aiming to make it easier for local jurisdictions and their police departments to cooperate on immigration enforcement.” 

The Wall Street Journal reports on more profile adjustment: “ICE leadership isn’t moving forward, for now, with high-profile operations like the ones it previously conducted in big blue cities like Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Minneapolis.” Again, Mullin assured the Senate, “My goal in six months is that we’re not the lead story every day.” More profile lowering!

“Mass deportations” are verboten. “Cooperation” is in. Flashy SWAT operations are no good; “small workplace raids” are fine. Angry villain Stephen Miller is tucked away; Mullin, the face of the “softer approach” (not only on immigration but on FEMA), is front and center. What’s next — ads with Care Bears and rainbows instead of White supremacist imagery and scary shock troops?

Before you get lulled into complacency, understand that the Trump regime is not altering its policy one iota. “Although Mullin gives Trump a different face at DHS, his arrival doesn’t change the administration’s overarching goal—enshrined into law last July by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act—to remove 1 million people a year from the United States,” The Atlantic reports.

One Republican let on that the regime flunkies “[j]ust have to message it a little bit better,” Politico reported. “White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said the administration’s immigration enforcement isn’t changing, and that the president’s ‘highest priority has always been the deportation of illegal alien criminals who endanger American communities.’” But we know the vast number of people detained are not violent criminals. So: nicer words, the same undiluted xenophobia.

The new approach is just as cruel as the old approach. The Times of San Diego reports: Trump is deporting about four times as many moms of U.S. citizen children per day as Biden did. Immigration authorities are arresting more of these moms in the first place, but that doesn’t account for all of the surge in deportations. If arrested, they are seldom allowed to return home to their families anymore. About 30% of such arrests under Biden resulted in a deportation. Under Trump, almost 60% resulted in a deportation.

Compared with the Biden administration, Trump officials are detaining many more parents with only minor criminal histories or none at all. Under Trump, more than half of the detained fathers of American citizen kids, and about three-quarters of the mothers, had no criminal convictions in the United States except for traffic- or immigration-related offenses.

In a similar vein, the regime has not slowed its campaign of trickery and deception that turns lawfully present immigrants into undocumented and deportable targets. In 2025 alone, Trump’s Orwellian policies, such as stripping immigrants of Temporary Protected Status, created more than 1.5M undocumented immigrants. The Trump regime has gone after DACA recipients while DHS ambushes unwary immigrants at court and at scheduled immigration interviews.

Moreover, as ProPublica documented, U.S. citizens have been snared as well. “Americans have even been kicked, dragged and detained for days by immigration agents…. [M]ore than 170 U.S. citizens have been detained by immigration agents for some amount of time. That included Americans who have been handcuffed, held at gunpoint or simply prevented from leaving their location.”

Even in Minneapolis, ICE’s menacing presence has not ended. Just a day before No Kings 3, Minnesota Public Radio reported that “the enforcement tone has shifted away from some of the more spectacular arrests and public confrontations to a smaller-scale, more targeted and less visible presence. Although, in the end, they said they’re seeing the same outcome: Immigrants in Minnesota are still being arrested, detained for substantial amounts of time and deported.” 

The regime might claim ICE’s deployment is down to 150 but “a motion filed in federal court Friday by U.S. Department of Justice attorneys reported that almost 500 agents remain in the state.” Moreover, a recent decision by the 8^th Circuit Court of Appeals made it more difficult for immigrants who have been swept up to challenge their detention.

Finally, under substandard conditions, detainees continue to die. “The number of immigrants in ICE custody has nearly doubled in the last 14 months, and the detention centers have been strained by the surge,” the New York Times reports. As a result, facilities (many run by for-profit companies) have become “places where disease and illness are rampant and detainees are often denied sufficient food, clean drinking water, medications and medical care.” 

In lawsuits, detainees, doctors, and lawyers have documented those in custody “constantly feeling hungry, delirious and ill from rotten food, and lacking access to medication and medical care.” As a result, many experience “deteriorating mental and physical health.” Since Trump took office, 46 have died. Put differently, ICE has scaled down measures that traumatize entire cities and create widespread backlash, but for those affected immigrants, as well as their families and loved ones, not much has changed.

By the way, we must not ignore the extent and lasting impact of the community trauma. A UC San Diego’s U.S. Immigration Policy Center study, for example, found that during the surge, of those who had contact with ICE or CBP, “22.9% in Minneapolis and 13.9% in St. Paul said they were physically assaulted. Another 25.7% in Minneapolis and 17.7% in St. Paul said pepper spray, tear gas or another chemical agent was used against them.”

In addition, majorities in both cities say their trust in law enforcement has declined, nearly half are less likely to seek law enforcement assistance, “35.7% in Minneapolis and 20.5% in St. Paul missed work because of the operation,” over half of parents in Minneapolis and 45 percent in St. Paul kept their child home out of enforcement fears, while 39.9 percent in Minneapolis and 30.6 percent of people in St. Paul skipped medical treatment because of enforcement fears.

The Trump regime deserves no credit for a supposed “softer” or “lower profile” approach. Until the number of non-violent criminals drops dramatically, substandard detention facilities are closed, racial profiling ends, mass detention stops, children and parents are free from the horror of detention and separation, U.S. citizens are not victimized, and the regime discontinues “gotcha” games designed to entrap people, the only thing that will have changed is the level of hypocrisy. MAGA simply is putting a happy face on the same inhumane, reckless, and counterproductive mass deportation policy.

Democrats must continue to deny ICE and CBP any more money until real, substantive policy changes are made — lest they feed the Trump propaganda machine and further enable immigrants’ suffering.

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"Trump has no clue how to get out of the mess"

 

If it wasn’t clear before, it is undeniable now. President Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel started a war with Iran assuming that they would trigger quick and easy regime change. They vastly underestimated the staying power of Iran’s surviving leadership and its military capacity not only to inflict damage on Israel and America’s Arab allies but also to close off the most important oil and gas shipping lane in the world.

This is imposing serious harm on the global economy, including the U.S. stock market, and Trump has no clue how to get out of the mess that he has created by starting a war without thinking through the implications.

It is actually embarrassing to watch the American president flip-flopping around, from telling us that the surviving Iranian leaders have pretty much agreed to his every demand, that the war is close to being over and Trump won, to admitting that he has no idea how to get the Strait of Hormuz shipping lane out of Iran’s grip. 

If America’s Western allies, whom Trump never consulted before the war, won’t send their armies and navies to do the job for Trump, then it’s too bad for them, he says: We have all the oil we need. That is, unless Trump decides to “obliterate” — his favorite word — Iran’s industrial base and desalination plants until Iran says uncle.

In short, we are watching what happens when you put into the Oval Office an impulsive, unstable man who ran for president largely to get revenge on his political foes. Then he surrounded himself with a cabinet chosen for its handsome looks and its willingness to put loyalty to Trump over loyalty to the Constitution. 

Add to that Republican majorities in the House and Senate willing to write him blank checks, and it all eventually leads to sloppy, undisciplined decision-making, including starting a huge war in the Middle East with no plan for the morning after. Trump is a man-child playing with matches — the world’s most powerful military — in a gas-filled room. 

If all of that were not bad enough, we have a secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, who holds extreme Christian nationalist beliefs and, last week, reportedly held a prayer session at the Pentagon in which he prayed for U.S. troops to deliver “overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy. … We ask these things with bold confidence in the mighty and powerful name of Jesus Christ.”

In other words, it’s now our religious warriors against Iran’s. If this were not the leadership of my own country — and if Iran were not, indeed, the most destabilizing force in the Middle East and its transformation not a worthy goal for its own people and its neighbors — I’d just sit back and watch the show, savoring the spectacle of Trump getting what he deserves. 

But it is my country. Iran going nuclear is a threat that could unleash nuclear proliferation all across the Middle East. And we are all going to get what Trump deserves.

What to do? Trump should set aside his 15-point peace plan — which would be ridiculously complicated to implement — and reduce it to two points: Iran gives up its more than 950 pounds of nearly bomb-grade highly enriched uranium, and in return the United States gives up on regime change. 

Both sides would then agree to end all hostilities. That is, no more American and Israeli bombing, no more Iranian and Hezbollah rockets, no more Strait of Hormuz blockade and, for darn sure, no U.S. ground troops landing in Iran.

“We have to realize that what the Iranian regime wants most is to stay in power, and what the United States and Israel want most is for Iran not to have a bomb,” said John Arquilla, a former professor of defense analysis at the Naval Postgraduate School and the author of the forthcoming book “The Troubled American Way of War.” “Both sides can get what they want most if they are ready to give up what they want second most.”

For America and Israel, second prize after eliminating Iran’s highly enriched uranium would be regime change. That doesn’t appear to be in the offing anymore, and Trump has already begun laying the groundwork for abandoning that objective. He told reporters on Sunday that given how the United States and Israel have now killed several dozens of Iran’s senior leaders, “it truly is regime change.” Iran’s leaders were “a whole different group of people,” who he said have “been very reasonable.”

Of course, this is ludicrous and a cover for the fact that the United States and Israel vastly overestimated their ability to topple Iran’s regime using air power alone.

The Trump team has reportedly been negotiating through Pakistan with the speaker of Iran’s parliament, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, who has strong ties to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, which appears to be the real power behind the scenes. The rump Iranian regime may well be ready to consider giving up its uranium in return for its survival. Yes, a million problems would remain unresolved, but that’s what happens when you try to use force without any long-term planning to solve a wicked problem.

Broadly speaking, a wicked problem is defined as a problem that resists quick fixes or permanent solutions. It involves numerous interdependent variables. Outcomes are never final, just better or worse, or good enough. Every wicked problem is essentially one of a kind, meaning there is no perfect, pre-existing template for solving one. And solutions often have irreversible consequences, meaning that you cannot easily undo a decision. That is about the best definition of the Iran problem that I can think of.

While he may have never spelled it out in so many words, if you look at President Barack Obama’s actions vis-à-vis Iran, he clearly understood that it was a wicked problem and therefore the wisest course of action was to focus on the core American interest, try to secure that and learn to live with the other features of the problem, mitigating them as best as possible.

That was the logic of Obama’s 2015 deal with Iran, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which put internationally verifiable limits on the country’s uranium enrichment program, and his decision to live with its growing ballistic missile arsenal and its cultivation of proxy militias in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Iraq — which did not threaten America.

Obama’s Iran deal worked as designed. When Obama left office, the curbs on Iran’s nuclear enrichment capacities — verified by international inspectors — meant that Iran, if it broke out of the deal, would require at least a year to produce enough fissile material for a nuclear warhead, providing plenty of time for the world to react.

Nevertheless, Trump, at the urging of Netanyahu, unilaterally withdrew the United States from the deal in 2018. But Trump never forged an effective alternative strategy to prevent Iran from securing enough uranium for a bomb. The Biden administration tried to clean up Trump’s mess but could not get Iran to agree.

When Trump came back to power, he again neglected to forge an alternative. So, Iran went from being a year away from a bomb under Obama’s nuclear deal to weeks away thanks to Trump’s reckless withdrawal from Obama’s strategy without an effective replacement strategy. And now with this war Trump has made it a really, really wicked problem.

It’s why we need to keep this as simple as possible. America should extend assurances that we will end the war, leave the regime in place, stop destroying Iran’s infrastructure and even offer some relief from oil sanctions, if Iran turns over all its near weapons-grade fissile material and halts all hostilities from its side. Everything else gets postponed for another day. (Meanwhile a much-weakened Iranian regime would have to be more responsive to its people.)

Trump will be a very lucky man if the surviving leaders of the Iranian regime say yes. It’s a measure of Trump’s incompetence that they now hold his fate in their hands.

Thomas L. Friedman is the foreign affairs Opinion columnist. He joined the paper in 1981 and has won three Pulitzer Prizes. He is the author of seven books, including “From Beirut to Jerusalem,” which won the National Book Award. @tomfriedman • Facebook

NY Times  

Photos at Dawn by Glen Brown

 

"Trump is under the gun to end his misbegotten war"

 

The “deadline” for Iran to open the Strait of Hormuz or face destruction of its power plants works like Donald Trump’s “concept of a plan” on healthcare: it’s always two weeks away. Trump surprised no one with his decision Friday to extend the deadline (the second such postponement) until April 6. When that date arrives, Trump almost certainly will punt again. His ever-moving deadline strategy (on healthcare, tariffs, war, etc.) has become his predictable fallback when a pressure tactic (e.g., threats to bomb Iranian power plants or impose tariffs) proves impossible, too expensive, or just pointless.

The New York Times reported that the excuse Trump gave this time was “what he claimed was progress in talks to end the war.” There is no evidence that “talks,” direct or otherwise, have progressed. Savvy observers, including traders on U.S. markets, which reached new lows, rolled their eyes. Trump’s declaration that Iran is “begging” for a deal had all the telltale signs of projection. Trump’s deployment of ground troops — without congressional authorization or public support — suggests “talks” are not progressing much, if at all.

The Iranians understand Trump much better than anyone in the Trump regime (devoid of any Iranian experts) understands them. For decades, Iran has prepared meticulously for what to do if a U.S. president was daft enough to attack: Batten down the hatches, close the Strait of Hormuz, and fire away at Israel and the Gulf allies. Only an ignorant narcissist like Trump could be so willfully blind and ignorant enough to imagine he could wipe out an Iranian regime — ensconced for 47 years in regional warfare — with a few weeks of bombing.

Now, the Iranians can see that Trump is desperate to end the war quickly. (They know enough that Trump’s lie that he “doesn’t care” if a deal is reached actually means he ‘really, really wants a deal.’ The Iranians are watching U.S. financial markets, oil prices, and even Trump’s approval polls. They follow U.S. media reports on rumbling discontent in the MAGA movement. They therefore reasonably can conclude that Trump can be snookered into a deal remarkably accommodating to Iran.

Moreover, the Iranians may be in a stronger position than they would have been under prior U.S. presidents, thanks to asymmetric warfare (e.g., drones, cheaper missiles) that can readily inflict damage, depleting the defenses of more expensive interceptors.

Evidence abounds that Israel and the U.S. are swiftly depleting their supply of interceptors. It’s a matter of math: Iranian drones can be quickly and cheaply replaced; their opponents’ defenses are extremely expensive and limited in number. Israel has already begun to ration interceptors, leading to more direct hits on Israeli towns. 

On the U.S. side, the “military has fired more than 850 Tomahawk cruise missiles in four weeks of war with Iran, burning through the precision weapons at a rate that has alarmed some Pentagon officials and prompted internal discussions about how to make more available,” The Washington Post reports. 

The U.S. military is scrambling to find Tomahawks from other hot spots. This is what happens when impulsive, ignorant men — intoxicated with blowing things up — utterly bungle a war. “The dilemma has laid bare broader concerns in both the Pentagon and Congress about the Trump administration’s war in Iran, its shifting explanations for why the conflict is necessary, and the risks a shortage could pose to the United States as it balances the potential for future conflict in other parts of the world.”

In addition, Israel is coming up against manpower limitations. The Jerusalem Post reports: The IDF could soon collapse if there is no solution to the shortage of manpower, IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Eyal Zamir warned in remarks during a security cabinet meeting held on Wednesday.

“I am raising 10 red flags before the IDF collapses into itself,” Zamir said during the cabinet meeting…. IDF sources also told the Post that there is tremendous concern due to the severe manpower shortage, especially amid the ongoing war.

After 2 ½ years of wars on multiple fronts and the Haredi conscription issue unresolved (i.e., approximately 66,000 ultra-religious men claim exemption from service), the IDF’s chief of staff’s warning spurred opposition parties to accuse Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of ignoring a looming disaster (a reference to the October 7 debacle) that could amount to “a major security crisis in the country.”

Thus, Trump is under the gun to end his misbegotten war — not only to stave off public anger over gas prices, but to stop the ticking clock counting down to the point at which Iran can penetrate defenses and inflict substantial damage and casualties on depleted U.S. and Israeli forces and munitions. In other words, time is on Iran’s side.

In addition to the limitation on the U.S. and Israel’s ability to wage war indefinitely, another factor may convince the Iranians to hold out for a very favorable deal: Trump’s ability to convince himself that an embarrassing failure is actually a roaring success. Self-delusion makes him an easy target for a lopsided deal when he hungers for the war’s end.

Trump’s predilection for self-deception may enable Iran to pull off a diplomatic coup that offers him empty, unenforceable promises (e.g., Iran won’t export terrorism, Iran won’t build a bomb) in exchange for very tangible benefits (e.g., no Israeli or Gulf attack, lifting of sanctions). Trump will trumpet Iran’s empty words (e.g., it has always denied it was building a bomb) without acknowledging that the war achieved very little at a huge cost.

Certainly, Iran has incentives to end the war. Its devastating domestic damage greatly worsens its pre-existing infrastructure problems (like insufficient water to sustain the population). The regime remains, but it is shaken and diminished. And although widespread domestic discontent may have gone to ground during the fighting, it remains a potent threat. Iran, therefore, cannot be entirely intransigent; it too wants to move on (if only to rebuild and sprint to the development of a bomb).

In sum, Trump did not get regime change or an unconditional surrender. His lack of strategy gave Iran advantages (e.g., control of the Strait of Hormuz, asymmetric missile/drone capacity) that neither he nor his yes men anticipated. He therefore flails about, desperately trying to end this debacle without total humiliation. Thanks to the considerable leverage Trump’s blunders have given them, the Iranians surely expect to avoid Trump’s most draconian demands. They want the war to end, but not at any price.

If only the U.S. had competent negotiators and a sane president, a deal might be reached soon. We don’t. Tragically, more lives will be lost, billions more spent before the war’s end.

 

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