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Conrad Black: Iran stands no chance against Donald Trump

The president's strategy may be confusing but the U.S. will ultimately prevail

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Since U.S. President Donald Trump is acutely conscious of his credibility and of the retention of his power at home and in the world, and specifically of his leverage as commander-in-chief of the world’s most powerful military, there must be some indiscernible purpose in his waffling over what to do next in Iran. On March 21, he said that if there were any interference in the Hormuz Strait after 48 hours, he would begin destroying Iranian power plants. Two days later, he extended his deadline for five days and then for a further 10 days, and then in an extremely coarse social media post on April 7, he threatened Iran that “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again,” if his terms were not met. A day later, he announced a further suspension of bombing for two weeks.

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On June 11, he promised to hit Iran “very hard,” but a few hours later cancelled that. The so-called memorandum of understanding broke down days after it was signed and, on July 31, Trump began again promising to hit Iran “very hard.” But on August 1, that threat was inoperative and he claimed that “the perimeters of a deal (have) been agreed to,” which was promptly dismissed as fiction by the government of Iran. On June 17, he had said that Iran’s new leaders were ”very smart and much less radical” than the previous crew whom the Americans and Israelis had killed. On July 8, doubtlessly closer to the truth, he said that the same leaders were “scum.” All this toing and froing is presumably a........

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