Who Will He Blame?

When he can't spin the war as a win

The war in Iran may not be the stupidest decision Donld Trump ever made. This is, after all, the man who bought the Eastern Shuttle for $365 million and lost it to his creditors two years later. Who declared bankruptcy on three different Atlantic City casinos. Who made Kash Patel head of the FBI. Donald Trump has spent a lifetime making stupid decisions. But the Iran war may turn out to be the most consequential stupid decision he has ever made.

There is, however, one fixed rule in the Trump universe: the boss is never wrong. When his failures become public, Trump either insists that he didn’t fail at all (“Atlantic City fueled a lot of growth for me”) or he finds someone to blame. His tariff policy ran aground because the conservatives on the Supreme Court went soft. Inflation is Joe Biden’s fault. Pam Bondi couldn’t deliver convictions on James Comey. Etc. The more public and mortifying the failure, the more rancorous Trump becomes.

There’s Always Hegseth

Let us suppose that the Iran war ends in a way that cannot be spun as victory–or rather, that Trump’s attempt to do so fails the laugh test. This has become an increasingly plausible supposition. Trump’s extension of the ceasefire based on a possibly invented Pakistani plea shows how reluctant he is to resume hostilities that have brought diminishing returns at stupefying costs. He may hope that the naval blockade will, in effect, starve Iran into submission. But, as I wrote several weeks ago, Trump underestimates the willingness of others to make sacrifices that he himself never would. Rising inflation may force his hand before economic catastrophe moves Tehran. Trump could wind up agreeing to something like the status quo ante. Or he could roll the dice by sending special forces to destroy Iran’s stock of enriched uranium–and his luck could run out.

Not a convincing scapegoat

What then? Who does he throw under the bus? He can blame his Democratic predecessors for leaving him with the situation that he claims compelled him to go to war, but he can’t blame them for the war itself. He can blame Europe for not agreeing after the fact to patrol the Strait of Hormuz, but he can’t blame the continent for a war in which they had no say. He can’t blame his bankers or his contractors.

That leaves Trump’s own advisors–the Kristi Noems or Pam Bondis of the Iran War. He could sack Gen. Dan Caine, Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff, just as presidents from the time of Lincoln have fired their top generals when wars go wrong. But since Gen. Caine has been a voice of sobriety on the war, both privately and publicly, and since the failure has not been military but political, razing Caine might not quell the public outcry. The head most likely to roll would belong to Pete Hegseth, the public face and chief propagandist of the war. Recall that when George W. Bush needed a scapegoat for Iraq, he sent Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld into retirement.

Could It Be. . .Bibi?

But a cornered and desperate Donald Trump might lash out at someone whom the American public dislikes even more than Hegseth–Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. It was Netanyahu, after all, who persuaded Trump to resume the war the two had begun the previous June. According to an account in the Times, Netanyahu and his top intelligence officials told Trump that a sustained bombing campaign could destroy Iran’s missile capacity, prevent Iran from retaliating against neighbors or closing the Strait of Hormuz and spark a public uprising that could topple the regime. Every one of those predictions has proved to be wrong.

That doesn’t actually mean that the war is Israel’s fault. According to the Times story, Trump ignored warnings from his entire national security team (except Hegseth) and listened to Netanyahu, who told him what he wanted to hear. But the truth, of course, does not figure in Trump’s calculations. What will figure is his reluctance to give the impression–also true–that the President of the United States allowed another state to drag us into war because it suited that country’s national security interests. That’s a bad look. But Trump could spin that one to his advantage.

Israel is the ideal target. The most recent polls have found that 60 percent of Americans now have an unfavorable view of the country. And while older Republicans still support Israel, younger ones do not. And for good reason: the Israeli government appears to have been as deluded about Iran as the neocons around Bush were about Iraq.

Insofar as “Israel” means “the Netanyahu government,” I share the prevailing view. But in this case it is also likely to mean “the Jews.” That is not because, as the right claims, criticism of Israel constitutes to anti-Semitism; it doesn’t. But Trump may find it all too useful to conflate the two. Among the young conservatives who call themselves Groypers, anti-Semitism is virtually the coin of the realm. (See this recent sickening piece in the New Yorker.) That is also the element of MAGA most hostile to the Iran war. Trump might calculate that he could regain their loyalty by pinning the blame on Bibi and, perhaps more vaguely, the “Jewish lobby.”

I fear, in short, a new version of “the stab in the back”--the fable manufactured by Germany’s World War I generals that transferred blame for the defeat to the heavily Jewish and socialist civilian government. Trump protests that he has a Jewish daughter and grandchildren, etc., but he hasn’t hesitated to exploit Jewish stereotypes in the past. And that was when Israel was much more popular than it is today. While Trump will probably not traffic in overt anti-Semitism–he needs Miriam Adelson and Laura Loomer too much–he’ll be happy to revive some of his old cracks about Jewish dual loyalty.

Donald Trump’s entire career demonstrates a rare genius for avoiding blame. If he has a real gift, it’s that. He may succeed once again in finding some back to shove the knife into. But maybe not; this one may prove to be a tar baby. Perhaps, for once, the blame will go where it belongs.