The war in Iran has ripple effects across the globe. But its next steps come down to the nonsensical whims of just one man, warned veteran political analyst David Rothkopf.
“This is so different from any other war that we have ever seen, because it is being driven by the psychosis of one individual,” Rothkopf told host Joanna Coles on The Daily Beast Podcast.
The Daily Beast columnist warned that President Donald Trump has surrounded himself with yes-men, giving him the freedom to act as erratically as he pleases amid the surprise war with Iran he began in coordination with Israel on Feb. 28.
“Trump doesn’t listen to advisers. As he says, he relies on his gut,” Rothkopf said.
The president, 79, has repeatedly reversed course as his war with Iran enters its fourth week. On Saturday, Trump claimed he had wiped Iran “off the map” in a social media post, then threatened new military strikes just an hour later.
“We don’t have people around the president who will say no. And even if we did, he wouldn’t listen to that,” the foreign policy analyst continued.
“And everybody in Washington knows that. All the guardrails, all the processes, all the systems that have evolved over time to avoid just this kind of catastrophe have been shut down, broken down, run around, and we’re left with a decaying, elderly, ignorant, paranoid, vainglorious, deluded commander in chief making it up as he goes along.”
Trump and Israel’s war on Iran has killed 13 U.S. service members at the time of publication, and the ongoing economic and political fallout is becoming harder for the administration to ignore.
Iran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz—a waterway through which roughly a fifth of the world’s oil passes—has rattled markets and pushed up prices. Meanwhile, NATO allies have largely avoided stepping in—despite Trump’s constant barrage of public threats against them.
“[The] Trump administration’s foreign policy is sort of following the footsteps of a drunk out of the bar,” Rothkopf, the CEO and editor-in-chief of The DSR Network, said. “We go to the left, we go to the right, we’re doing this, we’re doing that. I’m on my knees. I’m standing up, you know, shouting at the heavens.”
To make matters worse, Rothkopf pointed to reports that the State Department fired its oil and gas experts just six months before Trump’s attacks—officials who would be central to the current conflict.
He also cited reporting that FBI Director Kash Patel’s revenge-fueled firing spree resulted in several key specialists on the threat posed by Iran losing their jobs just days before the war.
Patel terminated 12 FBI employees after discovering he and White House chief of staff Susie Wiles’ phones had been under subpoena as part of a probe into the illegal storage of documents at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property.
“The problem is there has been no planning,” Rothkopf said. “There is no sense of consequences.”
Trump has also repeatedly changed his mind about what constitutes victory over Iran. In the early days of the assault, the president demanded the country’s “unconditional surrender.” Since then, Trump has shifted his stance to preventing nuclear weapons and has signaled that he may “wind down” operations.
“There’s no metric by which you can assess what’s going on in this misbegotten war and which is the success,” Rothkopf said. “There’s none.”
The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for comment.
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