Donald Trump has built his foreign policy around one core commitment - no more American wars in the Eastern Hemisphere. Two and a half weeks into the Iran campaign, he has found himself staring at the possibility of exactly that, George Friedman, founder of Geopolitical Futures, has warned in a podcast cited by "Hvylya".
"He swore that we would not be engaged in wars in the Eastern Hemisphere. This was one of his fundamental beliefs," Friedman said. "He is now facing a war in which it is possible that it cannot be won without ground forces being put in place." Iran is a massive country, the IRGC is a large and apparently professional force, and defeating it from the air alone has proven far harder than anticipated.
Trump wanted what Friedman called "an antiseptic war" - destroy the government, scatter whatever resistance remained, and move on. Instead, the IRGC survived the opening strikes intact and responded by closing the Strait of Hormuz, creating a global oil crisis that was never part of the plan. The formal government fell, but the force that actually runs Iran did not.
The political dilemma is acute. Backing out of the war now would be extremely difficult given the stakes involved - Iran's nuclear program remains unresolved, and the Strait of Hormuz remains blocked. But committing ground troops to Iran would mean an extended conflict with casualties in a country Friedman described as "massively large" - precisely the quagmire Trump promised American voters he would avoid.
"The one thing that he did not want to do, he now is facing a problem - he must do it if he is going to win. And that is not going to be a short thing, it appears," Friedman said. He added that Trump now has "a deep political problem that he has to deal with very quickly," regardless of whether the intelligence and strategic failures are his personal responsibility or a systemic breakdown across the national security establishment.
Also read: "Mowing the Grass" Forever: Trump's Iran Victory Risks Repeating Israel's Gaza Trap.