Trump’s Madman Theory fuels Iran-Israel war

Israel’s anti-missile system near Tel Aviv trying to intercept incoming Iranian missiles. AFP

Will the United States join Israel’s war on Iran? This is the biggest question today, as Iran and Israel continue their war of attrition. On the eighth consecutive day of escalating hostilities—with missiles and drones striking each other’s cities—the US president’s decision could alter the course of the conflict. It could either de-escalate tensions or add fuel to the confrontation that risks engulfing the entire region for months to come. Which way, Donald Trump?

Already, the US is backing Israel to the hilt—providing vital satellite data, sharing intelligence, and heavily arming the Zionist regime to sustain its genocide in Gaza and now its war with Iran.

Trump likes to keep everyone guessing. He enjoys it. In international relations, such foreign policy behaviour is explained by the Madman Theory. The name suits Trump well, given his maverick conduct, though the theory is much older than his advent into presidential politics.

The madman theory tries to explain the foreign policy of a leader who deliberately cultivates a reputation for irrationality or unpredictability to gain leverage in diplomatic or military confrontations. The idea is that if adversaries believe a leader is volatile or capable of extreme actions—like launching a nuclear strike—they may be more likely to back down or make concessions to avoid provoking them. This is exactly what Trump is doing to Iran. He threatens Iran with a call for surrender and warns of attacks Iran has never seen before, thinking that his tactic—or the madman theory—would compel Iran to raise the white flag. 

Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei—whom Trump the sniper boasted of having in his crosshairs, ready to eliminate him at will—has called Trump’s bluff, sending a clear message: Iran will not surrender, and the US should stay out of the war. In his speech, there were not only signs of resilience and defiance but also a willingness to give peace a chance.

Iran erroneously believed that the nuclear talks it was continuing with the Trump administration would succeed. The talks were to be held in Oman last Sunday as part of an extension to Trump’s 60-day deadline for a deal. But fearing a US-Iran breakthrough, Israel on the 61st day—last Friday—launched a surprise attack on Iran with the help of Mossad agents and spies whom it was cultivating over the years inside Iran. The attack killed top Iranian generals, nuclear scientists and about 200 civilians. 

The US claimed it had no foreknowledge about the attack. The Iranians won’t buy that, for honesty is to the US what pork is to Muslims. If the US claim is true, then what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the International Criminal Court’s war crimes suspect, did was a stab in the back of Trump, for Israel’s attack denied Trump the opportunity to build up his image as a no-war president. But Trump would not mind Netanyahu’s backstabbing.

Shocked and humiliated by Israel’s attacks on more than 100 locations across the country, Iran launched a military operation codenamed ‘The True Promise III’ (Amaliyyah al-Wa’dah As-Sadiq III). Iranian missiles and drones rained down on Tel Aviv and Haifa, challenging the invincibility of Israel’s so-called Iron Dome and other missile defence systems.

Israel is the aggressor. Period. Yet, the Western media narrative and political discourse seem to indicate that Iran is the aggressor and Israel is the victim. Iran’s nuclear programme is not weapon-focused. As a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Iran has the right to pursue a peaceful nuclear programme. Even the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Rafael Mariano Grossi, whom the Iranians last week—supported by intelligence evidence—accused of collaborating with Israel, admits Iran’s nuclear programme is not aimed at a weapon.

If only Iran had a nuclear weapon, its deterrence value would have averted Israel’s attacks. North Korea is wise enough to understand this reality and lives happily with its nuclear arsenal without any worries of being attacked by an adversary. 

Trump’s own intelligence chief, Tulsi Gabbard, said in January during her testimony before Congress that there was no evidence to indicate that Iran was building a bomb. “I don’t care what she said,” Trump told reporters aboard his Air Force One flight as he was rushing back to Washington from the G7 summit in Canada. He insisted Iran was “very close” to having a nuclear bomb. Since then, Gabbard has been left out of Trump’s war room, as the president weighs his options for responding to the crisis.

Is keeping Gabbard out of strategy sessions an indication that Trump is moving towards war to appease Netanyahu, the genocide-loving modern-day Baal? He is hailed by Zionists and Scofield Bible-thumping evangelical Christian Zionists as their saviour? The true followers of Christ know the Prince of Peace would never approve of Israel’s genocide and war crimes. It is a shame that while mainstream Christianity stands for Palestinian rights, Zionist evangelicals support the genocide in Gaza—where hungry children and desperate civilians are killed or wounded daily, in their hundreds, as they attempt to collect food aid from the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.

What if the US joins the war and, at Israel’s request, drops bunker busters on Iranian nuclear facilities? What will be Iran’s response? Iran is likely to shut the Strait of Hormuz waterway—the 33 km chokepoint across which 20 per cent of the world’s oil supplies pass—and target US bases spread across the region—in Bahrain, Kuwait, Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia. The likely result will be an unprecedented rise in oil prices and the world economy collapsing into a painful recession—not good news for Trump. The US or Israel cannot launch a land invasion into Iran and effect a regime change as they did in Iraq. The Iranians say they are battle-hardened and Islamic warriors with faith in God. This was underlined in the powerful message delivered on Wednesday by Ayatollah Khamenei, a Syed—a descendant of Islam’s Prophet Muhammad and the fourth Caliph and Shiite Islam’s first Imam, Ali. 

Khamenei comes from the lineage of Imam/Caliph Ali’s son Husain, who was killed in Karbala, Iraq, by the soldiers of rogue Umayyad caliph Yazid on the tenth day (Asharah) of the Muslim month of Muharram. A well-known saying in Iran is that every day is Asharah and every place is Karbala—meaning the martyrdom of Imam Husain commands them to stand up against any attempt to subjugate them.

The US-Israeli axis and their Islamophobic Western allies may come together to strike Iran as hard as they can, but they will not succeed. They are now grooming a Zionist Shah—an heir to the discredited Peacock Throne—to be installed as Iran’s next ruler, just as his grandfather was installed following the 1953 US-British coup that ousted Iran’s democratically elected Prime Minister, Mohammed Mossadeq. It is, quite simply, wishful thinking.

Israel has more than 90 nuclear weapons and is not a signatory to the NPT. Nuclear disarmament cannot be piecemeal or selective. But the height of hypocrisy is when the very countries—the US, Israel and Britain, among them—call for the dismantling of Iran’s peaceful nuclear programme while arming themselves with offensive nuclear weapons enough to destroy our earth more than 100 times over.