Trump is caught in an "escalation trap" in Iran war: Analysis

Chicago and speak with Robert Pape. He's a professor of political science at the University of Chicago. He's also the author of the substack Escalation Trap. Professor Pape, thank you for joining us. Tell us about the Escalation Trap. And it's something that you predicted the U.S. would be in with Iran before this conflict even began. That's right. So we are in the most wicked escalation trap in history. And I'm choosing my words carefully. We're in a trap where the United States has used military force and it's been tactically successful. Bombs have hit targets and killed leaders. But it has failed to achieve any of its strategic objectives. And in fact, Iran has emerged more powerful than before the war and is more powerful today than at any time in Iran's modern history. This is creating the trap. Either President Trump surrenders and allows Iran to continue gaining power to become a rising power in the Persian Gulf, probably acquire nuclear weapons in the future, or he escalates. There's no third option. That's the escalation trap. So what you're saying right now is he would be forced to escalate, and if so, how would he escalate? Would this mean a ground invasion? Yes, he may not do ground operations in the next few days, even the next few weeks. But President Trump is already seeing the limits of air power. He's being told that on a daily basis. He's also seeing the limits of naval power. Well, there's only one branch left, and that's ground power. Now I believe ground power will also be shown to have heavy limits. However, this is the escalation trap. Either he moves in that direction or he surrenders and Iran becomes the fourth center of world power. This would be a stunning defeat for President Trump. His legacy in history would be in tatters. So we would have a new hegemon, is what you're suggesting, and one where, given what's happened in the last five months, would be perhaps the biggest incentive a country could ever have to build a nuclear device, considering also that Israel has one, the United States has one, neighboring Pakistan has one, India, and also, of course, on top of that, Russia too. And Saudi Arabia is now talking, we're giving an agreement for Saudi Arabia to have all of the physical capability to build a nuclear weapon. This is even, it's almost unimaginable at this point that Iran could go for two, three more years and not test nuclear weapons. So in your view, how will this play out if he didn't do anything and sort of slunk off? He will oscillate back and forth. So keep in mind that we still have the naval blockade in place. Keep in mind that just a week ago we had just finished 13 days in a row of bombing Iran. What you're going to see is oscillation and likely creeping closer and closer to a ground operation. Why? As we head to the midterms, President Trump will want a symbolic victory. And it may be taking an island, taking a beachhead on part of Iran's coast. That is the kind of symbolic victory that he may be able to make use of as we get into the midterms. Will he, in your view, accept the state of Hormuz as being essentially Iranian and Omani water and them taking tolls from it? I don't think he will be able to accept that for more than a day or two. That's what you saw with the MOU. For almost 24, 48 hours, President Trump signed the MOU on June 17th. He said he did it because the world's economy was going to go off a cliff in a few weeks. And it appeared as if he owned the loss, the strategic defeat. But within days, he was undermining the very MOU that he had just signed. He undermined Article 1, was sending his secretary of state, Rubio, to make a framework accord with the government of Lebanon that completely violates Article 1 of the MOU. He started to undermine Article 5 of the MOU, encouraging ships to bypass Iran's control and the channels that it wanted to control in the Strait of Hormuz. And there were other areas as well. This is just reflecting that President Trump is stuck in an escalation trap where owning the loss is a devastating defeat politically. And it's for history. Professor Pape, thank you so much for joining us there from the University of Chicago. It's talking about the escalation trap that he argues Donald Trump is caught in. Thank you for having me.