Iran war: One miscalculation after another

Still not four full weeks into the war, and already Donald Trump's “short-term excursion” — decapitate the Iranian regime with a surprise attack and impose harsh terms on the defeated survivors — has morphed into a global economic crisis and a region-wide war that could destroy the wealth of all the countries on both sides of the Gulf.

- Gwynne Dyer

At the very least.Back in January, Mr Trump was high on his success in changing the regime in Venezuela (just a bit), so he was an easy mark for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s suggestion that he could do the same to Iran. Mr Netanyahu probably knew better than that himself, but his life’s goal has been to inveigle the United States into a joint attack on Israel's greatest enemy.

Mr Trump swallowed the plan hook, line and sinker, and they cobbled together a story about a new nuclear threat from Iran.

Nobody really believed it, maybe not even Mr Trump. His Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, wrote last week that “Iran’s nuclear enrichment programme has been obliterated. There have been no efforts since [US air strikes last June] to rebuild their enrichment capability,’ and she probably tried to tell him that herself.