Head-on | From stone age to scorched earth: Trump’s presidential legacy

In his 19-minute speech on April 1, US President Donald Trump threatened to bomb “Iran back to the stone age where they belong”. This is not the first time America has threatened to bomb another country back to the “stone age”. Trump borrowed the threat from former US deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage.

Former Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf revealed in an interview to CBS in 2006 that, shortly after the 9/11 terrorist attack on New York and Washington in September 2001, Armitage threatened to bomb “Pakistan to the stone age” if it did not give complete logistical and territorial support for the impending US invasion of Afghanistan.

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The US-led NATO invasion of Afghanistan lasted 20 years. In 2021, the US retreated from Afghanistan in haste and disarray. The Taliban, whom Washington had fought for 20 years, swept back to power.

What does history tell us about how the US-Israel war on Iran will end? There are obviously differences. In Afghanistan, the US had a powerful NATO coalition. In Iran, Trump has Israel, a formidable undeclared nuclear power, but without the resources of NATO, which had large contingents of British, French, German and Italian troops in a force of 1,30,000 troops from 51 partner nations.

In the Iran war, the US and Israel are fighting alone and shielding several non-combatant Gulf states that are sitting ducks for Iranian missiles and drones.

The US-NATO invasion of AfPak had broad US public support following the 9/11 terrorist attack that killed nearly 3,000 Americans in New York’s Twin Towers. The war in Iran has very little US public support. It is widely seen as Israel’s war that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tricked the US into joining.

For Israel, bombing Iran to the stone age is the very essence of the war so that Iran never again poses a nuclear threat to it. Netanyahu has a strong ally in Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, who is as hawkish a Zionist believer in “Greater Israel” as Netanyahu himself.

It was at Kushner’s prompting that Trump structured his April 1 speech to warn Iran: “We’re going to hit them extremely hard over the next two to three weeks — we’re going to bring them back to the stone age, where they belong. We are systematically dismantling the regime’s ability to threaten America or project power outside of their borders. That means eliminating Iran’s navy, which is now absolutely destroyed, hurting their air force and their missile programme at levels never seen before, and annihilating their defence industrial base. We’ve done all of it; their navy is gone. Their air force is gone. Their missiles are just about used up or beaten.”

Embarrassingly for Trump, hours after his speech, Iran launched over 100 missiles and drones on Israel, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Trump had days earlier threatened to launch a ground invasion of Iran’s Kharg Island with US marines. Tehran exports 90 per cent of its oil from its terminal in Kharg. There was no reference to Kharg in Trump’s speech.

Trump’s instinct is to cut and run. Over the last five weeks of the war, he has declared multiple times that the “war is won” and America will leave Iran “very soon”. Within days, following pressure from Netanyahu and Kushner, Trump reverts to aggressive rhetoric, threatening to annihilate Iran.

The Epstein factor

Trump initially used the Iran war to knock the Epstein Files off the front pages. Iran was a useful distraction. But with the war extending well into its second month, support among Trump’s MAGA base, which voted for Trump on his pledge to get America out of “forever wars”, is fast eroding. That could prove fatal for Trump in the Congressional midterm elections due in November. If Trump loses his slender three-seat majority in the 435-seat House of Representatives — a near certainty according to opinion polls — Trump will be a lame-duck president for the final two years of his term.

Once the Iran war is over, the Epstein Files will return to the headlines. Trump will need to manufacture new controversies to deflect attention. His threat to withdraw the US from NATO is not taken seriously by anyone on either side of the Atlantic. But Trump will hope to divert attention to the 2026 FIFA Football World Cup that begins on June 11 in the US, Canada and Mexico. It will be followed by celebrations to mark the 250th anniversary of US independence. Trump has designated himself as the master of ceremonies for the July 4, 2026 event.

But as summer turns to autumn, the harsh truth of the November Congressional midterm elections will loom. Trump, 80 years old in June, knows his presidency faces its biggest threat: political irrelevance as attention swings away from him to his likely successors, Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

That is why Trump will spend the last two years of his presidency following a scorched-earth policy. He has nothing to lose. In January 2029, he will be an 82-year-old private citizen. Before that, Trump will again fight global tariff wars, invade Cuba, threaten Denmark over Greenland, and bully Europe over NATO.

Meanwhile, Gaza remains in ruins. Israel has reduced it to rubble, a strategy it has tried, unsuccessfully, to replicate in Iran. Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and other real estate developers seeking an Arab Riviera in Gaza lie in wait to turn Trump’s mind back to the real business of his rapidly shrinking presidency: profiting from the ruins of war.

(The writer is an editor, author and publisher. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.)