PNN – CNN wrote that the Iran crisis has revealed a world that is increasingly resistant to Trump’s demands, and that the power-based rules of his era are now being challenged both inside and outside the United States.
According to the report of Pakistan News Network; the iron rules of the world that govern Donald Trump’s presidency – power, might and might – are increasingly being challenged at home and abroad, CNN reports.
Trump and his subordinates have made no secret of their belief in dominance and their willingness to use America’s “unbridled” power in pursuit of economic, geopolitical and domestic victories. His policies are an extension of a personal brand built on confrontation and escalating differences.
But the increasingly turbulent international situation and widespread domestic turmoil suggest that the authoritarian American president’s approach to escalation and coercion has its limits and could drive him into damaging political corners. The aggression against Iran would prove the ultimate test of Trump’s approach.
Trump’s instincts may help explain his decision to attack Iran’s military, nuclear and regional ambitions, something previous presidents have avoided, CNN writes. But Tehran’s refusal to yield to Trump’s demands exposes the limits of American power – and his own.
This has left the US president with a tough choice. According to US media, Trump could escalate the conflict to force Iran to comply with his demands, but that would increase US casualties and lead to a severe economic backlash. He could claim victory and walk away, but Iran’s control of the Strait of Hormuz and its retention of its enriched uranium stockpile would preclude such a claim.
CNN wrote: To escape this trap, Trump has chosen a path that combines American military might with his refusal to cede ground to an enemy that is retaliating. His new blockade of the Strait of Hormuz is an effort to strangle Iran’s economy despite a potential backlash in global energy markets. The search for an endgame in Iran is the president’s most pressing crisis. But his erratic leadership of the war has also been reflected in other controversies.
According to the report, he has failed to persuade NATO allies to join a war they opposed and were not informed about in advance. Even his threats to leave the NATO alliance have not convinced nations to abandon what they see as their national interests. Their lack of buy-in has deprived the United States of the options it has often relied on in past wars.
CNN believes Trump’s ruthless approach can be “effective,” as when he used a tariff war against U.S. trading partners to clinch some deals. But China, itself an economic superpower, responded by threatening to cut off vital exports of rare earth elements. Beijing used the potential of a trade war to collapse global markets and force Trump to back down.
The American media wrote: Iran seems to have learned from that incident that the United States is vulnerable to global economic shocks and has done its best to implement this strategy by closing the Strait of Hormuz.
The sense that some of Trump’s powers are waning goes beyond the Iran standoff. Trump has made no secret of his belief that he holds unchallenged power. Last August, Trump said: I (have the right) to do whatever I want. I am the president of the United States. He told the New York Times this year that the only obstacle to his actions abroad is “my own morality.”
This belief is reflected in his refusal to consult Congress or prepare his country for battle before the start of the war, which has now been going on for more than six weeks.
When asked about next steps in Iran, White House officials often respond that “only the president knows what he will do,” reflecting a trend toward rejecting the principles of separation of powers in the American republican system.
The belief in power and escalation that underpins Trump’s second term was best expressed by White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller. “We live in a world, the real world … that is governed by power, governed by force,” Miller told CNN’s Jake Tapper in January, amid White House euphoria over the capture of Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro.
The war began with a display of devastation that is similar to other 21st-century American conflicts, but it soon highlighted the historical lesson that overwhelming air superiority alone cannot produce decisive victories or regime change.
But one lesson of the war, according to this article, is that Iranian leaders believe they are in a vital battle and are prepared to accept endless suffering. They may bet that Trump does not have the political patience for rising oil and gas prices and rising inflation in a midterm election year and that it may take months for the blockade to bring Iran to its knees; time is a boon that Republican congressional candidates lack.
The American network believes that a similar inability to dictate outcomes is becoming apparent in Europe. Trump’s belief that he has unbridled power has never been rooted in the American Constitution or political tradition. And the inevitable decline inherent in a second term may further weaken him, just as Iran is challenging his strongman aura from abroad.