President Trump wants to be a transformative leader. He can’t be if he dives into a war with Iran.
Leaders love military glory. The Romans had their famous triumphs and would add the sites of famous victories to the names of their renowned generals: Coriolanus, Africanus, Germanicus, Britannicus, and so forth. Now, some would have Donald Trump adopt “Persicus” as his own cognomen: victor over the Persians. How might thrashing Iran help the president’s political fortunes? Less than one might think. A war with Iran could give Trump a temporary sugar high of popularity. It could also be his political undoing.
The Bush Dynasty Legacy
We need look no further than George HW and George W Bush to see war’s impact on American political fortunes. The father-and-son presidential duo—let’s call them Bush the Elder and Bush the Younger, in keeping with our Roman theme—both waged wars with Iraq, and we chiefly remember them for those conflicts. However, we forget that Bush the Younger’s deeds as a conqueror once appeared greater. He invaded Iraq, captured and hanged its leader, and dispatched a proconsul to rule it. Seventy-one percent of voters thought he was doing a good job. “Dubya” was becoming Bush Mesopotamicus.
As we know, his war became a quagmire. Bush’s approval last broke 50 percent a few months into his second term. His party lost both houses of Congress in the war-focused 2006 midterms. It then lost the next two presidential elections. The next Republican to win the presidency had humiliated Bush’s little brother and repudiated much of what his Republican Party backed—including the now-hollow conquest of Iraq. Together with the 2008 financial crisis, Bush the Younger’s Iraq adventure transformed our own nation, making it angrier, more divided, and less trusting of authority.
Perhaps the author of a clear and enduring victory would fare better. Here, Bush the Elder warns us. The mild-mannered patrician oversaw the rout of Saddam Hussein’s armies in Kuwait. The international coalition he assembled threw the Iraqis out in fewer than one hundred hours. Casualties were low. The public rejoiced. Bush’s popularity soared to 89 percent in February 1991. Yet, Bush Kuwaiticus fell at the ballot box 21 months later. He had trailed in every poll after the mid-July 1992 Democratic National Convention. Around the same time, his approval bottomed out at 29 percent.
Bush didn’t have it easy—he faced a generational political talent in Bill Clinton, and the economy stank. Still, George HW was still the author of a smashing military win abroad. It wasn’t enough. Bush the Younger found political defeat in military defeat; Bush the Elder found it in military victory. Unlike Rome, America is not a nation that lives for the glory of war.
All this matters as Trump weighs his options on Iran. The President clearly wants to be a transformative politician. His selection of JD Vance as his running mate suggested a plan to ensure that transformation endures.
Nobody says protective tariffs can bring back American manufacturing in just a few years. Restoring America’s borders, making immigration policy serve the common man, and reclaiming the culture from wokery are long-term projects, too. None of that will happen if Republicans lose big in the 2026 midterms and then fumble the presidency in 2028.
Iran: The Pessimistic Scenario
A war with Iran won’t help Trump’s project. It could destroy it. The pessimistic scenario is that limited US strikes spark a general war, with Iran widening the conflict now that it faces its only external existential threat. Iran blasts American bases across the Middle East. American aviators bombard Iranian missile farms, headquarters, and eventually infrastructure. None of it convinces Tehran to stop shooting.
Oil prices spike and stay high as tankers burn in the Strait of Hormuz. High petroleum prices drags down consumption, tipping the world into a recession. Terrorists strike Americans, Jews, and Israelis around the world. American arms flood the Middle East as China eyes Taiwan. Trump’s name becomes a byword. Lashed to the President, Vance loses in 2028. Trump’s Democratic successor lobs missiles at the mullahs for eight years; Iran still gets the bomb. The neoconservatives, some returning from their Trump-era migration to the Democratic Party, offer to lead Republicans out of the wilderness.
Iran: The Optimistic Scenario
The optimistic scenario is that a limited military campaign wipes out the last remnants of Iran’s nuclear program. The accumulated threats convince Tehran that major retaliation would only expose the regime to greater losses. Even better, standing over the ruins of their uranium enrichment halls, Iran’s leaders ditch their nuclear program.
Military defeat inspires a palace coup and popular protests; the greediest elements of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps strike a quiet deal with demonstrators to relax social controls and open Iran’s economy to international investment. The regime figures that had threatened to kill Trump flee to Russia, where they fall out of windows. The American embassy reopens, and rumors fly that the Israelis are in for normalization talks.
Joe Schmoe Doesn’t Think about the Middle East
That’s an extremely optimistic scenario, mind you, where things turn America’s way at each of a dozen forks in the road. Yet, even in this unlikely eventuality, what does Joe Schmoe from Idaho think? He doesn’t live in the Middle East. He’s never even been there. He felt proud when America won, but it wasn’t a deep feeling—the air campaign was short, and he mostly saw maps on CNN and blurry videos on social media. There were no troops on the ground and no statues pulled down.
A few months later, trying to put off the dishes after the late NFL game, he watches a 60 Minutes story on new freedoms in Iran, which makes him feel good. But at the ballot box that fall, he’s thinking about things that actually impact him and life in this country: the economy, taxes, culture, immigration, crime. Joe’s not voting on Iran. It just doesn’t mean that much to him.
President Trump has thus been politically wise to sit out the war. Trump needs no Crassus-style quest for Middle Eastern military glory. He should use American forces in the region to deter Iran, not strike it, and get back to the business that matters to ordinary Americans.
About the Author: John Allen Gay
John Allen Gay is executive director of the John Quincy Adams Society and coauthor of War with Iran: Political, Military, and Economic Consequences.
Image: Joey Sussman / Shutterstock.com.
