No. of Recommendations: 14
Where is the hard evidence supporting your position? Of do you take it on faith, that a government of the United States would not act in a manner I have been describing?
As I alluded to, Occam's razor and all that. There's no mystery here. The simplest explanation is that Trump did this because he thought the U.S. would "win," and that if he attacked Iran they would give agree to the things he was demanding.
As a general matter, that's exactly what his personality is like. He believes in the efficacy of dominance rather than mutual benefit as a negotiating tactic, he is so unbelievably convinced of his own skills that he passes through arrogance well into uncontrolled narcissism, and he is utterly disdainful of expertise generally and of the intelligence services generally.
And particular to Iran, it fits entirely with his long history on the topic. He's long criticized Obama's deal as being weak and getting far less than what could have been achieved, has been utterly convinced that he could get more concessions from them, and has previously used limited force against Iran to get what he (at the time) regarded as a major strategic win for virtually no cost. Couple that with the low cost, high perceived reward of Venezuela, and there's absolutely no reason to suspect that Trump didn't genuinely think that Iran would turn out with the regime agreeing to our demands.
I don't take it "on faith" that the government wouldn't act the way you're describing - I'm pointing out that it doesn't make any sense. High gas prices are political poison. Creating an energy crisis that could lead to a global recession is also political poison. Doing something to benefit a foreign country instead of the U.S. would be especially political poison to Trump. Trump's political brand was built in large part on opposition to long-term interventions that benefit other countries. Heck, it's built on the idea that America should never do anything that isn't "America First." And Trump is supremely self-interested - even the most generous spin on that is that he only wants to act in the interests of "his team" and no other people's teams. It's absurd to think that he would be burning his political resources and all his personal lucrative relationships with Gulf State wealth on a deliberate choice to help either oil companies (which he has no personal interest in) or Bibi Netanyahu. That doesn't fit with anything we know about Trump, his Administration, or any of the incentives and political forces that would shape his government.
The real explanation is almost certainly the simplest one. Trump made a bad choice because he is overconfident and doesn't pay much attention to people who know more than he does when they tell him he's making a bad choice. He thought it would be one way, but it's the other way. He now doesn't have a way out of the box canyon he marched himself into, so he's doing whatever he can to try to avoid having to turn around and march out in defeat. He's not being controlled by the Israeli government, he's not committing political suicide by intentionally driving up oil prices so that the American people become enraged enough that he can get Congress to authorize a ground invasion of Iran and completely alienate his base, he doesn't have some 3D super-strategy where this all makes sense. He blew it and doesn't have any path forward but to keep insisting that Iran's going to accede to his demands eventually, and hope that something changes the status quo in a way that extricates him.
