What did Donald Trump do today?
He replayed his old threats of atrocities, to no effect.
Today, with Iran showing no interest in bargaining for peace on his terms, Trump retreated to an earlier tactic: threatening atrocities. From the safe space of a Fox News interview, Trump blustered that Iran would be "blown off the face of the Earth" if it used military force against US Navy ships in the Persian Gulf. He didn't specify the ruling regime, any more than he did when he said that Iran's "whole civilization will die" if it didn't open the Strait of Hormuz back in early April.
In reality, Iran hasn't opened the Strait then or since, which once again goes to the practical problem that Trump has trapped himself in: nobody is taking him seriously.
From a humanitarian standpoint, that's a good thing: what Trump is threatening (or pretending to threaten) is genocide, the mass punishment of Iranian civilians for the misdeeds of the dictatorial regime that rules the country. Even his lesser "threats" against the Iranian people, to destroy critical civilian infrastructure under the paper-thin justification that power plants and bridges help the Iranian military, would likely kill hundreds of thousands.
But in terms of the United States' ability to influence world events, the Iran situation is disastrous and getting worse with each new attempt by Trump to turn the page. Today was the day that ships trapped in the Persian Gulf were supposed to be "guided" safely out through the Strait of Hormuz by the United States, according to Trump's announcement of what he calls "PROJECT FREEDOM" yesterday. But no US Navy ships entered the conflict zone, and it doesn't appear that any neutral ships made it out of the Gulf without Iran's blessing.
Instead, Iran responded to Trump's ploy by attacking the Trump-aligned UAE and, apparently, at least one civilian ship in the Persian Gulf, a South Korean cargo vessel. Trump's reaction was to demand that South Korea join the fight—in other words, the same angry plea for the rest of the world community to extricate him from the quagmire that he's made several times in the past.
Why does this matter?
- It's a problem that Donald Trump can't find a way out because at this point there's no hiding how unbelievably badly he has fucked this up.