Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily.

Three days into his war on Iran, it seems clearer than ever that President Donald Trump, the U.S. commander in chief, has no idea—or, perhaps worse, contradictory ideas—of what he wants from the conflict or how to get it.

In his eight-minute video, posted on social media early Saturday morning, Trump said the goals of his “major combat operation” were to obliterate (once again) Iran’s nuclear program, demolish its ballistic-missile arsenal, and—above all—overthrow the Islamic regime, imploring “the Iranian people” to take control of their government.

However, later that day, he told Axios that he also had in mind several “off-ramps” from the conflict, saying, “I can go long and take over the whole thing or end it in two or three days and tell the Iranians, ‘See you again in a few years if you start rebuilding [your nuclear program].’ ”

Then, on Sunday, in a six-minute phone conversation with the New York Times, Trump, after once again calling on “the Iranian people” to rise up, invoked “what we did in Venezuela” as “the perfect scenario” for Iran.

This remark has two lamentable consequences. First, the survivors of Iran’s regime could take it as a signal to hold on and not surrender. Second, Iran’s democratic activists could take his obsession with the Venezuela scenario—in which, as he described it, everyone in the regime “kept their job except for two people”—as a disincentive to take to the streets. When unarmed protesters did so last month after Trump said he had their backs, thousands of them were mowed down by police and military forces. The protesters are still unarmed—which would make it hard for them to take over a government, even under less forbidding circumstances—and the police and military are still very well armed.

Trump added, as he has said a couple times in recent days, that the elite military forces should lay down their arms and “surrender to the people.” He did not explain why the Revolutionary Guard—the elite force, with its 190,000 members and deep interests in the survival of the regime and its economic assets—would suddenly turn meek. He also didn’t explain just who “the people” taking power........

© Slate