Trump’s vanity war in Iran echoes Biden’s Ukraine gamble, weakens America further

“Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I am not sure about the former.”

— Albert Einstein

Generally, I have little patience for the ideological pretensions of The Economist. Its worldview is predictably pro-West, often reflexively dismissive of Bharat, and cloaked in the smug certainties of 'liberal' internationalism. Yet, its recent assessment of Donald Trump’s war in Iran is a moment, albeit a rare one, of clarity: the conflict is making Trump “weaker — and angrier,” notes the magazine.

This is not merely a bad war. It is a reckless, unnecessary and strategically incoherent gamble — one that may come to define Trump’s second presidency just as Iraq did during George W Bush’s stint. But even that comparison flatters Trump. Bush made a case for the Iraq War, however dubious it might have been. Trump has not even bothered to do that. He has dragged America into a conflict it neither needed nor was prepared for, especially at a time when it is already entangled in Ukraine.

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Let there be no doubt that this is not a strategy. This is vanity masquerading as power: a typically Trumpian vanity.

Looked at closely, there are only two winners of the Iran war — Israel and Russia. For Israel, this war is not a policy choice but an existential doctrine. It doesn’t see Iran’s nuclear programme as an abstract phenomenon but as a doomsday clock. Every day without action poses a proportionately greater risk. The current war serves the Israeli purpose perfectly: weaken Iran so thoroughly that it ceases to matter who rules in Tehran. Regime change becomes irrelevant in that case. Negotiations turn immaterial. Tehran pushed to the Stone Ages is the best-case scenario for Tel Aviv.

As for Russia, it is the war’s biggest beneficiary. For Vladimir Putin, this is not a crisis but a gift. As bombs drop in West Asia and crude prices spiral, Ukraine fades from global headlines. Western unity is fractured. And with oil prices rising, Russia’s sanctions-hit economy gets a fresh lease of life. Moscow, cornered till recently, finds more elbow room today.

More importantly, for Putin, this is revenge served cold. In Ukraine, after all, Washington armed, advised and emboldened Kyiv against Moscow. In Iran, Russia — backed by Xi Jinping’s China — is returning the favour. Tehran is provided with real-time Russian/Chinese intelligence and military know-how. The cost of American intervention rises with every passing day. Putin is not merely watching the Iran war; he is shaping it — quietly, methodically and effectively.

China, too, plays the long game. Yes, disruptions in Iranian and Venezuelan oil supplies have been aimed at hurting Beijing. But a distracted, overstretched America is a strategic dividend Beijing will gladly accept. Trump’s so-called attempt to choke China’s energy arteries may end up putting the decline of Pax Americana on the fast lane.

At the centre of it all is Trump’s delusional foreign policy, which assumed that Iran would collapse like a house of cards. Instead, the US has stumbled into a quagmire. Tehran has adapted, learned and weaponised asymmetry. Missiles, drones and proxy networks — combined with Russo-Chinese backing — have turned this into a grinding, expensive war with no clear endgame. And the costs are mounting not just in blood and money but also in chaos and credibility.

The roots of this disaster, however, do not begin with Trump. They lie in the accumulated failures of American foreign policy, particularly the Bidenian blunder in Ukraine.

The Ukraine war, just like Iran, was not inevitable. It was largely provoked by incessant Nato expansion that ignored Russia’s genuine security anxieties. Washington chose triumphalism over prudence, expansion over restraint, and Cold War obsessions over post-Cold War realities. Even George Kennan, America’s foremost Russia strategist and architect of the Cold War containment doctrine, called Nato’s eastward expansion “the most fateful error of American policy in the post-Cold War era”.

The consequence? Russia was pushed into a corner and then into China’s arms. In trying to weaken Russia, Washington strengthened a Moscow-Beijing axis, when an astute American policy would have created a wedge between them by bringing Putin closer to the West. In a post-pandemic era, when the Xi Jinping dispensation should have faced global condemnation and isolation for its Covid-19 role, the Ukraine war provided China with a much-needed distraction.

Trump recognised part of this mistake when he promised to end the Ukraine war. He understood, at least rhetorically, that driving Russia towards China was a strategic blunder. But his part-imperialistic, part-egoistical vanity has now pushed him into the Iranian muddle. If Ukraine was the first crack in the edifice of Pax Americana, Iran may well be the fracture that hurts it even more.

What we are witnessing is not just policy failure; it is a symptom of systemic decay. The Bidenian blunder and the Trumpian folly seem to be complementing each other: one is driven by ideological rigidity, the other by impulsive hubris.

As the world feels the Iranian pinch, Einstein’s words resonate with unsettling clarity: that human stupidity can be infinite. First Ukraine and now Iran have conclusively proved that.

(Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.)