Name: The real consequences of Trump’s Iran war flip-flops | Fareed's Take
Uploaded: 2026-03-29T23:01:55.000Z
Duration: 10 min 40 s
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In the years after Barack Obama's presidency, it became an article of faith that one of his central errors in foreign policy was the Syria Red Line.

The second conditional

He said that he would attack Syria if it used chemical weapons.

But when evidence emerged that it had used those weapons, he pushed the question of intervention to Congress, which declined to act.

A disaster, Donald Trump called it at the time, a cause of generational and reputational damage, said then-Senator Marco Rubio.

Part of an incoherent maze of foreign policy, Pete Hegseth argued a few years later.

In ignoring a red line that he had drawn, Lindsey Graham explained Obama had risked squandering American credibility around the world.

Obama's red line flip-flop looks like the model of careful policymaking compared to what we have witnessed since the Iran war began.

Last week, President Trump posted on social media that if Iran doesn't fully open without threat the Strait of Hormuz within 48 hours from this exact point in time, the United States of America will hit and obliterate their various power plants, starting with the biggest one first.

Iran refused to be cowed by this threat and continued its attacks and its closure of the strait.

To quickly climb down and announce that he had postponed any action on energy infrastructure for five days, claiming that suddenly, overnight, Iran and the U.S.

had been engaged in productive conversations to aid a complete and total resolution of our hostilities in the Middle East, quote unquote.

The Iranians denied any such talks were taking place.

Now Trump says he's extending the pause by another week and a half.

It is by now clear that Donald Trump is being graded on a curve.

When he says he will raise tariffs to 130 percent, or that he will blow up Iran's biggest gas field, or that, quote, the war is very complete, pretty much, unquote, none of these statements mean much.

They could be actual American policies or not, or they could stand as policy for a day or a week, after which they will change.

After saying that the war was pretty much complete that same day, Trump asserted, we haven't won enough and we will not relent until the enemy is totally and decisively defeated.

He said that he agreed to negotiate with Iran's leaders, but

then couldn't because they keep getting killed, though it is, of course, his own military and Israel's, which is doing the killing.

Trump supporters claim this incoherence is strategic genius, that he's keeping people off guard, except that the policy seems to change for a variety of reasons.

Maybe the stock market falls, or maybe the target country lavishes praise on Trump and gives him a gold bar.

Trump's superpower is that he is flexible enough to turn on a dime and has a base that will accept anything he proposes.

Once unalterably opposed to Middle East wars, many of his MAGA supporters now believe in this Middle East war with the zeal of converts.

And while Trump has made clear that he would like to end the hostilities, the problem this time, unlike with tariffs, is that he cannot unilaterally stop what he started.

it is currently voting to keep fighting, calculating that, though weakened, it has enough military power to do damage to the world economy, thereby inflicting pain on the U.S.

For the world, there is no longer any such thing as American credibility, just a strange reality television show in which the main actor swerves, bobs, and

weaves his way through crises, hoping that what he says today will solve the crisis caused by what he said yesterday.

The day before he threatened to obliterate Iran's power plants, Trump claimed that the U.S.

was considering winding down its military operations against Iran and implied that protecting the Strait of Hormuz was not his problem and could be dealt with by other nations whose imports pass through the strait.

At another point, he said he didn't need any other country's help.

Businessmen used to rail against previous administrations because of policy uncertainty, quote unquote.

Now they line up to praise Trump as his carnival of chaos royals markets almost every week.

Donald Trump has gotten used to playing with the United States' massive power, punishing those who don't bend the knee and rewarding those who do.

In doing this, he's squandering credibility built up over decades to extract short-term goodies, sometimes to the benefit of his own family's business interests.

But in Iran, he seems to have come up against an adversary that won't play by his rules.

The Trump administration sent Iran a 15-point peace plan to end the war this week, but

At the center of the proposed deal is Iran's nuclear program.

The Trump administration is pushing for Iran to dismantle its main nuclear sites, halt its uranium enrichment, and

hand over its current uranium stockpile, among other commitments.

A key player in any potential deal will be the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Rafael Grossi, the director general of that organization, has been involved in the mediation efforts.

Let me ask you, director general, about the nuclear issue.

So on the nuclear part of the demands and counterdemands, you know, what is the nub of the disagreement?

The Iranians say that they have the right to enrichment.

The Americans say they don't want them to have any enrichment.

Because that seems to me the heart of the matter.

Of course, there can be many forms of compromise.

And this is, of course, something that the negotiating parties have to come to.

I was part of this frustrated, truncated negotiating process that was taking place last February, you may remember.

And then last year as well, there was another attempt, both mediated by the foreign minister of Oman, you may remember.

And there, of course, the issue of enrichment is at the center.

This idea of a right to enrichment per se does not exist.

they have to submit all their facilities, all their facilities to inspections by the IEA.

The United States has said repeatedly, we do not want to see enrichment there.

And in the past processes, we were considering some alternatives that would result in a very limited activity related to uranium enrichment, which, of course, as is evident, didn't work.

So now the question mark here is whether we would go or they would try in the conversation to go to zero enrichment or some activity, and

also probably some form of moratorium, maybe for a number of years, whereby Iran would not renounce to this activity but would put it on the side, so to speak, for some time in a wider process of confidence building.

But here I am already speculating, and I'm not very comfortable in that area.

Do you believe that given the level of bombardment that has taken place, Iran could still rebuild its program?

You do hear people say, look, they have the knowledge.

Or do you think that the facilities are now in such bad shape that, you know, it would be many, many, many years before they could do something?

You know, Fareed, there is no contradiction in both assertions of what you said, what you just said.

So there was enormous damage, in particular during the 12-day war last year at Isfahan, Natanz, and Fordo.

You remember that that campaign was mainly focused on the nuclear facilities.

What we are seeing now, this war that has more than a month, has had, you know, a number of targets and objectives that go far beyond the read of the nuclear.

So last year there was enormous damage done, but not everything was destroyed, of course.

And we are not here doing a military assessment of what survived and what not.

But it is obvious that not everything was destroyed.

And also your second phrase is absolutely true.

One cannot unlearn what one has learned and has been doing.

Don't forget that this activity of uranium enrichment, which is rather complex, is not something that is impossible to do.

It's metallurgy, quite sophisticated metallurgy.

So the centrifuges that spin at high velocity to separate the isotope of uranium, which is interesting, from the one which is not, all of these things Iran has mastered throughout the years.

And this is not per se a nuclear activity.

So you may have in Iran dozens or perhaps more workshops or small factories where they could, you know, reproduce these capacities.