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Donald Trump says Keir Starmer has damaged the special relationship by not helping him more in the US-Israel war on Iran. But you have to remember that when you do help, Trump pretends you didn’t anyway, and also pisses on your war dead. Still, what could be more enticing than the Americans trying to sell you a timeshare on a war in the Middle East?
And so to Iran. “War is the realm of uncertainty,” said Carl von Clausewitz, who – and not to be a bitch – I still think of as a more impressive military theorist than Pete Hegseth. Certainly, Carl had fewer Crusades tattoos than the US defence secretary. Hegseth is 100% certain about all his nailed-down positions, even the ones in apparent conflict with each other. And it feels like a great sign that he, Marco Rubio and JD Vance already seem to have different rationales for why this war was launched. This is an administration that came to power on an explicit “no more wars” ticket – but look, as Pete keeps saying, this isn’t a regime-change war. If that seems confusing, given he first said it about 10 minutes after US-Israeli strikes had just cratered the ayatollah’s compound, Hegseth has since been on hand to scoff that what’s going down in Iran is “no nation-building quagmire, no democracy-building exercise”.
Of course not! Trump and his guys don’t even love democracy in their own country, so they’re not exactly going to want it for one of the so-called shithole countries. Too many moving parts. Think of this as a regime-refresh war. You’re still not going to be able to spell the difference between ayatollahs, but ideally, the new guy will have more of a Venezuelan puppet feel to him. I don’t know about “women” and “freedom” and stuff, but I can guess that Hegseth would be extremely relaxed about them being in the old TBC file.
Alas, so stupid and binary has the standard of debate become that anyone even writing about the subject – the most irrelevant act in the world, sorry fellow columnists – has to preface it by saying “of course I believe in freedom and women’s rights”, for fear of being jumped on by guys who six calendar weeks ago were righteously furious about Trump’s threat to annex Greenland but now think he’s Boudicca. Wake up. How many times do you have to get hurt by this wingnut before you start thinking yourself into positions where, actually, his way might not be the answer? More times than we’re up to, apparently. I know they think this is realpolitik. But it’s not. It’s just real forgetful politik. There is a certain strand of our muscular politician/pundit class who actually just resemble the friend you sit in a bar with every few weeks as she explains why the latest dumping hasn’t held. “No, but he’s changed. This time, he has. I really believe it. He even paid me back the money he owes me. Well, he says he’s going to.”
For crystal clarity, the last ayatollah was scum and I’ll loathe his successor, too. I truly wish the Iranian people had freedom, most especially the women and girls who live under the most wicked oppression of all, and I cheer their every uprising. But to be clear-eyed about the region for two minutes, there isn’t a single democracy in the Gulf, and that’s the realest of the realpolitik. Furthermore, Trump lies or dissembles about absolutely everything. If he really can permanently end Iran’s nuclear programme (a few months ago, he said he already had), stop Tehran funding all its revolting terrorist proxies and bring about favourable regime change in what he’s said will be about “four weeks or less”, then great. But realistically, what’s the betting? It is massively more likely that fog and unpredictable consequences ensue. Already in the post are the years – decades – of unintended consequences that will flow from his backing for the razing of Gaza.
Meanwhile, it’s quite something to think that bombing Iran might turn out to be not even the most significant US military decision of the past five days. Consider the news that the defence department – sorry, department of war – had dramatically terminated its contract with AI firm Anthropic, after the latter refused to loosen its ethical guidelines. They prevented use of Anthropic technology for things like mass domestic surveillance, but also for autonomous lethal weapons (that is, no humans in the loop). The Trump administration wanted this amended, and when Anthropic wouldn’t do it, they binned them off, threatened madly punitive sanctions – and seem to have found an alternative provider. It is, of course, our old friend Sam Altman at OpenAI, who initially said his deal had the same red lines as Anthropic. So why did the Pentagon threaten to destroy Anthropic if the OpenAI deal had the same guardrails? Perhaps because it has since emerged that it likely hasn’t. As always with Altman, things aren’t quite what they seem – and by the time you find out what they are, it’s always just that bit too late. Bad with chatbots, arguably a little worse with murderbots.
Rather than getting any kind of handle on this unknowably dangerous, civilisation-altering technology, perhaps it’s inevitable that Trump should revert to something very 1.0 and bomb the Middle East. For a no-more-wars guy, his entire MO has been taking things that were once priced in and throwing them up into the air.
So there is a counterpoint to the idea that he is resetting the world in a positive way. Namely, that the most pressing damage being done to our way of life – yes, our selfish western way of life – is being done by a certain Donald Trump. As I said, leave aside democracy in the Middle East, where it barely exists – does he truly care about it in the US, where it is under demonstrable threat by him and his proxies? Isn’t he letting AI get out of control and get into the most dangerous places before our very eyes? Has he not abandoned the notion that leadership is built on any kind of moral code, lying daily to his people and the world without a second thought? Has he not repeatedly undermined trust among his own international allies? Has an American president ever personally enriched himself so nakedly and so eye-wateringly while in office? When he leaves that office, gracefully and smoothly or otherwise, will the world be safer and more widely prosperous than when he found it? He can talk all he likes about our way of life. Like the call in a horror movie, the threat’s coming from inside the house.
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Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist
