As the conflict with Iran reignites and spirals into a “forever war,” a former official of President Donald Trump has revealed the real reason the commander-in-chief has allowed the U.S. to slip into endless fighting. That reason: Trump simply can’t help himself in the face of Iran’s “taunting.” In other words, the president’s fragile ego compels him to take the bait.
This is according to Miles Taylor, who served as chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security during Trump’s first term, and writes, “Trump’s character defects cannot be contained – and some nations are exploiting them to create chaos.” Iran and its allies are aware that they benefit from allowing the war to drag on, “and have learned that the cheapest way to prolong it is to keep insulting the man in charge. Indeed, Iran is delivering a masterclass on how to bait the U.S. President.”
Taylor explains that during Trump’s first term, it became clear that other leaders were choosing one of two approaches to handling him: flattery or provocation. “The hunger for respect that makes Trump easy to flatter also makes him even easier to provoke,” writes Taylor, who notes that he saw firsthand how “a well-aimed insult could send the President into a tailspin and upend the operations of the White House.”
North Korea, for example, used both praise and provocation to great effect. As Taylor explains, “In 2017, Pyongyang timed its missile launches for maximum spectacle, called the President a ‘dotard’ in state media and baited him into threatening ‘fire and fury.’ We were baffled by how easily he was sucked into the tit-for-tat. Having proved that strategy could jerk Trump’s emotions on command, Kim Jong-un then switched levers and offered respect. The summits followed, then the love letters. Kim banked legitimacy that no North Korean leader had ever enjoyed by luring a U.S. President onto his shores; kept every warhead; and purchased years of American inattention.”
Iran, says Taylor, has been paying attention to Trump’s malleability.
“Just look at what the Iranians have done since the war began in February,” he explains. “Regime propagandists have flooded the internet with videos ridiculing Trump, with content engineered for an audience of one. Murals in Tehran depict his death and menace his family. Assassination plots keep surfacing in public view rather than staying in the shadows, where a serious intelligence service would normally keep them, which tells you publicity is the point.”
“The regime has studied Trump for a decade,” asserts Taylor. “They know their taunts goad him, maybe not always exactly how they’d hope, but enough to give them leverage the regime has never had before. They’ve developed influence over a man who sees this as a personal feud. And in doing so, they put him in a position where he offered perhaps the most absurd deal America has ever offered to an enemy just weeks into a war[.] Iran has now spurned the U.S. offer.”
“Governments losing wars do not refuse golden exits unless someone is making it worth their while,” says Taylor. “I suspect, if you follow that trail, you’ll end up in Moscow and Beijing – two capitals where leaders have also learned to play Trump, where they see how effective Iran has been in taunting the U.S. and where they see opportunity to keep weakening the world’s pre-eminent superpower.” Taylor notes a number of recent trade and diplomatic pacts between the three U.S. adversaries.
“A stable U.S. president would see this obvious trap and starve it,” Taylor argues. “They would recognize that their enemies are conspiring and exploiting their ego, and would decline, publicly and repeatedly, to be baited. Yet, in four decades of public life, Trump has not been known to decline a bait. Now, he is preparing to double down again in what some officials say might become a wider war.”
Taylor’s forecast is not optimistic, writing, “Iran will drag the U.S. into an expanded air campaign. The regime will deploy more proxies to harass shipping and American bases at a tempo calibrated to justify the next sortie without ever forcing a decision. In other words, it will keep the war too hot to leave and too cold to win.” At the same time, Russia and China will continue to exploit the situation.
What’s more, the American elections could be impacted. According to Taylor, “We should be watching for Iran to dangle negotiations again at the moment of maximum political damage, perhaps weeks before the U.S. midterms, so that accepting a deal looks like surrender and refusing one extends the bleeding.”
“Trump will not rescue himself from this,” Taylor concludes. “America’s enemies are spending next to nothing on insults and cartoons to purchase the exhaustion of the West. Until Trump learns that taking the bait is more expensive than restraint, they will keep getting serious value for their money.”