Hello,
In this edition of Week Signals:
IN REVIEW. Drills in Korea, dills in Washington, human printers, human failings, nuclear war.
UP AHEAD. Elections in Kazakhstan and South Carolina, Nvidia, Jackson Hole, and Iceland.
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The Week in Review: War and self-deception
The week began with Donald Trump curtailing drills in South Korea, ostensibly on account of his friendship with Kim Jong Un. It ended with warnings of “the most crushing economic operation ever taken” on Iran and “any country that allows its financial institutions, businesses, airports, or government entities to provide any type of lifeline”. The White House is set to announce the details of this “economic D-Day” on Monday.
As the USS George Washington carrier group positions in the Arabian Sea, and President Masoud Pezeshkian puts out signals of Iran quitting while it’s ahead, you could be forgiven for thinking it’s all 3D chess. But if there’s one thing the last six months have shown, it’s that there’s no chess, no checkers, nor even tic-tac-toe (though possibly tic-tac-taco).
Since the beginning, the Iran campaign has been a disaster. Claims that Tehran’s nuclear program has been set back are unsubstantiated (and legislation is now reportedly being considered to leave the Non-Proliferation Treaty). A Shah-era conventional navy may be at the bottom of the sea, but Iran’s cutting-edge missiles and drones continue to threaten the region (and have degraded a credible US deterrent). The region is anticipating a Western exit, and is splitting between rival blocs. Nuclear-armed Israel is threatening war with NATO ally Turkey. Iran may be broke and isolated, that’s for sure, but no more so than it was before February.
In his Iranian zugzwang, we’ve likened Trump to Jimmy Carter during the 1979 hostage crisis. Every move seems to make things worse. The clock, if it ticks for anyone, ticks for the US president. And while Trump may have opted to drain the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, rather than tell Americans to turn down their thermostats, the dilemma is much the same. The Iranians themselves have said that they’ll only seriously consider a deal after January 2029 – after the inauguration of whoever comes next.
Seen in this context, Trump’s latest gambit makes sense. One last attempt at controlled escalation, perhaps. But the chaos of his approach and the claims that his gatekeepers are keeping away bad news suggest a better comparison might be with another 1970s leader, British Prime Minister Harold Wilson, whose second term in office was defined by economic crisis and political scandal, least of all a bizarre, co-dependent relationship with his private secretary Marcia Williams, whom her colleagues allegedly plotted to murder.
In the background to the geopolitics of Korea and Iran this week, there have been the daily revelations of an allegedly inappropriate and almost equally bizarre relationship between Trump and close aide, “human printer”, Natalie Harp. From her unctuous letters to the president (no doubt leaked by another near-homicidal rival) to a Democratic Senator’s suggestion of an affair, to the ludicrous notion that she was hiding in a Turkish catering truck with him while Marco Rubio and Scott Bessent sat on an IRGC decoy, the focus has been on an ambitious but somewhat pitiful young woman – a cross between Marcia Williams and that other British political stock character, Mattie Storin – but the attention should really be on the man who likes to be called “Daddy”.